One way to define conflict is “our inability to collaboratively solve problems with other people.”

Whom are you in conflict with right now? Whom are you struggling to solve a problem with? A family member? A friend? A coworker? A neighbor? An organization or a political party? All of the above?

We can handle conflict in basically one of two ways: constructively or destructively.

When we engage in constructive conflict, we can find freedom from the negativity of contention. We can find justice and mercy, unlock creativity, develop inner strength and calm, strengthen our personal and social relationships, and solve deep-rooted problems in our lives. We can even find peace—in our personal lives, our relationships with others, the organizations we work in, and the communities we live in.

Unfortunately, most of our experiences with conflict don’t look that way at all. They look more like destructive conflict. In destructive conflict, contention runs rampant. Justice and mercy are nowhere to be found. Our options feel limited. We feel weak and anxious. Broken relationships, dysfunctional workplaces, and divided communities and nations are left behind in the rubble.

Which type of conflict are you in at the moment? Are you feeling frustrated? Irritated? Angry? Confused? Trapped? Hopeless? Does a solution to the conflict seem hopelessly out of reach? Have you given up on finding peace with those you are in conflict with? Or are you still swinging away, hoping that you’ll land the blow that helps them come to their senses?

If you are feeling any of these ways toward any of these people, I wrote this book for you.

Conflict is always going to be with us—relationships are funny that way. Knowing how to transform destructive conflict into constructive conflict is critical to our personal, professional, and societal well-being. Yet, by and large, we are terrible at it.

Relationship researcher John Gottman writes that the inability of couples to talk about and work through their problems is the single biggest indicator of marital unhappiness. Sixty-nine percent of conflict in relationships is about ongoing, seemingly unsolvable problems.¹

A Stanford University study of CEOs in 2013 found that the skill set CEOs felt they needed most was conflict resolution.² And in a world that is increasingly becoming divided by political and social fissures, a 2018 Pew Research Center study found that young people are increasingly jaded about our ability to live together. The study found that they were much less likely to believe that people will help those in need, work together to solve community problems, and treat others with respect.³

What keeps us from mastering the art of conflict transformation?

Fear.

Conflict feels dangerous for most people. We flee from it if we can. If we can’t run, we either give in or prepare for war. We build walls to protect us from the impending harm—emotional and physical—we fear is coming.

Fear of conflict plagues our personal, professional, and societal relationships: fear of conflict itself, fear of the people we are in conflict with, fear of pain, fear of not being loved or seen the way we want to be seen, fear that we are woefully unprepared and ill-equipped to handle the problems that beset us. When we let that fear of conflict, and the people we are in it with, take hold, our ability to actually solve the problems that underlie our disputes diminish dramatically.

What if we could transform our fear of conflict by learning how to love the people we are in conflict with through the conflict?

Yes, love. I think it’s the crucial word in transforming conflict.

I know love is an odd word to pair with conflict, let alone the pairing of the words dangerous and love. Many people hear the word love and think “soft.” However, I’m not talking about romantic love, nor the type of love that actually means “like.” That’s easy love.

We all want to live and work with people who love us and whom we like—people who are fun to be around, understand our brilliance, agree with our ideas and dreams, see our potential, and help us on our journey to become the incredible people we ultimately know we can be. But when conflict enters our relationships, easy love makes a run for it.

Love becomes a lot more challenging when the people we live and work with don’t love us back, or when we don’t like them, they don’t get us or they drive us nuts, they don’t believe in our ideas and dreams, or, even worse, they get in the way of our journey.

Here’s the paradox that makes conflict feel dangerous: when conflict comes, our instincts are to run or fight—to stop loving.

To transform conflict, we need to turn toward others, put down our physical and emotional weapons, and really love the people we are in conflict with. I call that sort of love dangerous love—a love that overcomes fear in the face of conflict.

Nothing is “safe” in dangerous love. Dangerous love requires more than courage; it demands fearlessness. It is scary. It takes risks. Dangerous love transforms conflict by calling upon us to let go of our self-preservation instinct inspired by fear (“What will happen to me if l let down my walls and help the person I’m in conflict with?”) and embrace us-preservation (“What will happen to us if I don’t?”).⁴ It calls upon us to be vulnerable enough to open ourselves up with no guarantee that the person or people on the other side of the conflict will do the same. It asks us to be the first to turn toward the people we are in conflict with.

Dangerous love is a love that allows us to see the humanity of others so clearly that their needs and desires matter as much to us as our own, regardless of how they see us. It is the opposite of easy love. It is choosing love over fear in the face of conflict. It is choosing we over me.

Dangerous love is remarkably effective in transforming our conflicts because it creates space for us to truly see the people we are struggling with. When dangerous love takes hold, our views—of ourselves, others, and the conflict itself—transform. We no longer see enemies or others. We see us.

That is the level of care and concern toward the people we are in conflict with needed to solve the most difficult, intractable challenges we face in life. That is the type of love needed to mend relationships in our families, overcome gridlock in the workplace, solve for deep polarization in our communities and countries, and collaboratively engage in problem-solving with our adversaries internationally.

I have come to believe that dangerous love is the only way that we can transform destructive conflict into constructive conflict.

This is a book for everyday people who struggle to deal with their own conflicts at home, at work, or in their communities or nations.

It is filled with the lessons I’ve learned as a mediator, facilitator, and college professor over the past fifteen years. My work with the Arbinger Institute as a consultant and facilitator has been especially impactful. Arbinger’s work has been foundational in my view of conflict and conflict transformation and forms the basis for many of the key concepts in Dangerous Love.

If you have read Leadership and Self-Deception, The Anatomy of Peace, or The Outward Mindset, this book will give you a new way to look at key concepts from Arbinger, such as seeing people as people, outward mindset, self-deception, collusion, and the most important move, through the lens of conflict transformation. If you are new to Arbinger’s ideas or conflict resolution and peacebuilding theories in general, the book will serve as both a primer and a road map to helping us overcome our fear of conflict and the people we are in conflict with.

As you work your way through the book, thinking of one person or a group of people whom you are struggling with will be helpful. That part usually comes pretty easy.

Here’s the hard part. Instead of thinking about how this book applies to them and how much better off you would be if they read it, I want you to instead ask, “How does this book apply to me in this relationship? How could I use these tools to change?”

The goal of this book? By the end, you’ll have the ability to see conflict, specifically your conflict, in a completely different light. And once you see it differently, you’ll have the tools and the courage to change. Making even small progress toward one person can have a big impact on our personal relationships, our teams at work, and our communities.

Dangerous Love explains why we struggle with conflict, how we disconnect from the people we’re in conflict with at the very time we need to be most connected to them, and the predictable patterns of justification and escalation that ensue. Most importantly, it gives us a path to practice dangerous love in the conflicts that matter most to us.

The world may not get better. But we can be. And our being better might be the thing that actually changes the world.