Unpleasant encounters

I spent nye at a dear friend's and it was wonderful except for about 15 minutes. During that 15 min, I watched a couple of other friends get into a nasty little squabble that ended with jbro getting hurt feelings and jhar leaving and dragging his wife with him. Looking at this strictly from a *conflict resolution practioner's (crp) perspective, it was kind of interesting but mainly sad. I realized (belatedly) that the entire argument was personal. What they were arguing about was completely irrelevant, they were just looking for a reason to pick at each other. Secondly, that without one or both parties interested in resolving the issue, don't even bother.

I make one or two feeble attempts to either steer the conversation to a safer topic but it was pretty much a waste. I sat there, like ther other three noncombatants, flabbergasted that this was happening at all - especially considering the location, the occasion, and the fact that one of the participants was a close relative of the hostess. It was highly unpleasant all the way around. After jharv made the fight personal (it had been kind of hostile but not personal), jbro left the table. I had realized fairly early that I had no place even trying to resolve their fight so I had mostly stayed out once I realized that. I had made some comments early on when I was under the impression we were actually having a discussion.

The final comment I made was to tell jharv that I thought his last remarks to jbro were disrespectful and mean. He said I was probably right and that he should leave. I found out later that he'd been acting strange since they got there and the general consensus was that he wanted to leave and picking a fight with jbro was an opportunity for him to do so. It's entirely possible that I shouldn't have said anything but I just felt he'd stepped over the line. I mean, he's an adult. No big deal on the clash of opinions, even though I thought they acted like idiots there also, but he totally reverted to the classroom bully with his final remarks and I thought I needed to call him on it.

For my part, I felt embarrassed and ashamed that I was even there. I felt guilty by association because I'd even peripherially participated in the conversation. I don't feel bad about not intervening - mainly because I'm glad I realized it was personal fairly quickly and that my intervention would *not* have been appreciated at all. I just felt bad for my hostess. Both jbro and jharv are adults and could have either not engaged or had polite stilted conversation - there was no reason (other than power play) to engage each other.

So what do crps do in these types of situations? It's my nature - I want to find a way to bring some kind of resolution even if it's just an agreement to not talk. I don't feel like I failed but I do feel like it was kind of an important thing for me to witness. I would imagine that a huge number of conflicts are like this. I could literally feel their intransigence. I could feel that energetically, they were both completely entrenched and focused on 'winning' over the other. How can that kind of situation be defused, gentled down? Energetically, is there anything I can do that would be effective? It happened so fast that I didn't really even have time to consider using tonglen, raising my own vibration, or sending positive energy their way. I don't think raising the vibration would have helped - irrelevant because I can't do that yet anyway!

It was sad to watch this but even worse to feel that I had no options - to feel that no matter what, I wasn't going to be able to help. I'm hoping I can change that and that next time, I won't be so caught by surprise.


*I have GOT to find a better 'title' than that long ass thing!