Conflict isn’t the enemy to our friendships; conflict is fodder to make them grow. Conflict is inevitable in the kind of deep community we are talking about here.
Okay. Look. It is true that we can’t have a deep relationship with another human being and never have a single conflict. That’s true. But! OTOH, I have no interest in having friends (or a partner for life) who has a bunch of fragile specifics about “what they need” for us to get along. I *had* a friend who tried to do that. As I said, we are no longer friends and are pretty much enemies. Sadly I still have some obligation to interact with that ex-friend because we are related. So that’s unfortunate. But our relationship came to a head when this person tried to dictate what I had to do for us to be friends. Basically tried to demand from me what is only going to happen naturally when I *trust* someone, and that person destroyed my trust so…Pfttt! We’re done.
