How Do You Handle Disagreement?

How do you respond when someone disagrees with you? This is a vital question if you are entertaining a life long relationship with someone. You can’t have a meaningful relationship with another human being without disagreeing about things. No two people are alike. No two people think alike. The big question is not whether you will disagree, but how you disagree.

Many people have a response to disagreement that short-circuits their ability to negotiate or have any meaningful communication. To put it in simple terms, if you are secure about who you are and what you believe, you can listen to someone with another opinion and respond rationally. If you are insecure, you may respond with anger, hurt, or withdrawal.

Check your heart and see if you respond in any of these ways to disagreement:

• Some people have been hurt and take disagreement as a personal attack.
• Some people have had unstable lives and have a strong need to control others. They view disagreement as a threat to their control.
• Some people have very low opinions of themselves. They view disagreement as evidence that they need to abandon their viewpoint.

If you are a person who has a difficult time responding to disagreement, you may think that you should limit close relationships to people who will always agree with you or people who you can control. You are wrong. You need to grow and become secure enough that you can have a close relationship with someone who disagrees with you. A good marriage, and any close relationship, requires healthy disagreements. Healthy disagreements require healthy people.