Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

—LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

At this point in the book, perhaps you are thinking, “I get smog and cocoon views of conflict and that my conflict style is informed by each view. But what if my fears are real? Dangerous love is scary. The folks I’m in conflict with aren’t like your daughter. They can’t be trusted. It feels too risky.”

There is a major gap between what we think about conflict and also, in turn, about what we do about it. This gap is what keeps us from practicing dangerous love, from being the first to turn. And in the center of that gap lie two major obstacles—separation and self-deception. They are the reason that crossing the bridge between fear and love feels so daunting.

Jennifer was exasperated. This was her third visit to my office and things weren’t going well at home. She had tried helping Hirota be a better husband. She knew that an intercultural marriage posed unique challenges. She knew that a pattern of miscommunication and misunderstanding was rocking the foundations of her marriage. For the last few weeks she had left my office hopeful after a premediation session only to come back frustrated.

“I think the problem is that he doesn’t see me as a person,” she confided. “I can see him, but every time I try to get him to see me, it’s like I’m nothing.”

She started to wipe a tear away from her eye. When I asked her how she was trying to get him to see her as a person, she straightened up in her chair. “By getting him to come to a mediation session with you. I told him if he could just spend a few hours talking with you, he’d see that he needs to change too and that it would help our marriage.”

There’s a lot to unpack in Jennifer’s conflict story. But I want to focus on one particular aspect of it. The first obstacle in the gap to getting to real conflict transformation and reconciliation is something called separation.¹

Have you ever noticed that when you’re really angry at a partner or a child, the physical distance between you grows? Have you noticed yourself literally with your back up against the wall in a difficult conversation? Or pretending you’re asleep? Or ignoring phone calls or texts from the other person? Or avoiding someone in the hallway or the break room? Or pretending to be on the phone when you see someone heading your way?

In the larger global sphere, think about how many times conflict leads to the expelling of a group or the building of fences or walls to separate the two sides. Consider the segregation of neighborhoods and cities or even genocide—the ultimate form of separation, where one group decides that the other group must cease to exist.

The idea behind separation is that when two or more people get in conflict with one another, they tend to separate—both physically and emotionally.² How can I see the humanity of my spouse, coworker, or neighbor if I can’t even stand to be in the same space with the person?

Jennifer wants to engage with Hirota, but Hirota doesn’t want to engage with Jennifer. Perhaps he views conflict as smog. (Actually, he’d tell me later that “conflict as a volcano” was the proper metaphor.) And if he does, getting in a room with his wife, especially when she’s telling him that he’ll hear things he doesn’t want to hear and he’ll have to change things he doesn’t want to change, is akin to playing a game that my kids love called “The Floor Is Lava.”

In that game, my kids do everything in their power to avoid touching the floor. The floor, they imagine, is lava, and anyone who touches it is burned alive and thus out of the game. They jump between chairs and tables, throw safe pillows on the ground, anything to avoid getting burned.

Conflict, to Hirota, and to so many of us, is “The Floor Is Lava” game. He’s trying to stay as far away from it as he can.

In conflict, people create distance from one another both as a protection mechanism and because they’ve convinced themselves that the other person or other side is wrong or evil and they need to create psychological distance.

A major correlation exists between what we think about conflict and what we do about it. Fear not only limits our willingness to engage the humanity of another person but also limits the possible solutions to problems.

Separation is a major obstacle. But the second problem in the gap is even more intimidating. It’s self-deception. Self-deception convinces us that the only solution to the problem is for others to stop being the problem.

Eventually Hirota grudgingly agreed to a joint mediation session. Jennifer was thrilled. She knew that Hirota would now see her challenges and problems and change.

I wasn’t so confident.

Hirota was reluctant to open up at first. He admitted that he had challenges as a husband and was trying to meet his wife’s needs but didn’t add much in the way of detail.

Jennifer started getting frustrated. She kept interrupting Hirota, filling in the blanks with how difficult he was as a husband whenever he was vague.

She kept using the words “my truth” as if somehow it was going to convince Hirota that what she was saying was the truth.

It didn’t. And thirty minutes into the session, Hirota finally decided to tell “his truth.” It wasn’t pretty. He began discussing in vivid detail the ways Jennifer was a problem for him.

Jennifer was unable to see or consider Hirota’s truth in the moment. The more details Hirota provided, the angrier Jennifer grew. She eventually stood up and walked out the door.

On her way out, she told both of us that this session was a waste of time. Talking wouldn’t accomplish anything. She was done.

Just forty-five minutes earlier she said her deepest desire was to get Hirota in the room to talk. Now? She never wanted to talk to either of us again.

If you can manage to get the two people or parties in the room together, what happens when both sides claim that they aren’t the problem and therefore the other side needs to change? Or they admit they have a problem but believe their problem is a result of the other side’s problems and therefore they won’t change until the other side changes?

This paradox at the heart of deep-rooted problems is called self-deception. The Arbinger Institute defines self-deception as “the problem of not knowing and resisting the possibility that one has a problem.”³

What happens when a friend comes to you and starts describing a problem he has and it becomes apparent to you, rather quickly, that your friend is either causing the problem or contributing to it, but he is completely blind to his culpability in the problem he describes?

I’m sure you’re thinking, “Well, there’s a simple solution to that. I would just tell my friend, ‘Hey, this is your fault. You’re the one messing everything up. Stop it, and your problem will go away!’”

Except that you know as well as I do how we react when people tell us we have a problem. What happens? We get angry and claim that our friends aren’t supporting us. We push back.

In short, we resist any suggestion that we have a problem. This second part of the definition is what creates the paradox: Self-deception isn’t just having a problem and not knowing you have a problem. It’s also resisting any suggestion that you have a problem.⁴

The primary way that self-deception deceives us is by convincing us that the people we are in relationship with during conflict aren’t actually people at all. They are objects that do not deserve to be seen the same way we do. Self-deception convinces us that the negative connection we feel toward someone can be solved by either forcing it or breaking it.

The deception part of self-deception arises from the fact that people are actually people, not objects—no matter how badly they are treating us or we are treating them. Disconnecting doesn’t disconnect us at all. It just bonds us to others negatively. Our smog lens does not protect us. It simply creates the illusion of self-protection. In every way it is the more “dangerous” lens to cling to in conflict.

We are always in relationship.⁵ It’s up to us to choose which type.

Philosopher Martin Buber argued that no matter what we are doing and who we are with, we are always in the world in either an “I-Thou” or “I-It” way.

Buber described an I-Thou relationship as a symmetrical one. In the relationship, you and I count the same. We both have needs, wants, fears, hopes, and desires, and yours are no better or worse than my own. You are as real to me as I am to myself (figure 9).⁶

The I-It relationship is an asymmetrical one. You are no longer a Thou. You are an It. Your needs, wants, fears, hopes, and desires are not as valuable as mine are. You are somehow less than I am—less real, less important. Or perhaps, in certain manifestations, you are more than I am—more real, more important (figure 10).

In both cases, I-Thou and I-It, we are still in relationship. However, we are connected in two very different ways. One offers the possibilities of collaboration, joy, and love. The other offers pain, suffering, and anguish. But nonetheless, we are always connected.

Understanding that connection is the key to bridging the gap between love and fear in conflict.