Erin Chen

About

A single point deserves making immediately: the presence of conflict tells you almost nothing useful. Plenty of durable arrangements involve a lot of arguing, and plenty of quiet ones are in serious difficulty underneath. What matters is repair. A relationship survives on whether the two people can find their way back after a disagreement rather than on whether they have them. That capacity is measurable, learnable, and improvable in a way that temperament is not. We work on the return rather than on the argument itself. Most people have been trying to eliminate the conflict, which is both impossible and beside the point. Crisis services is where I came up, and it left me fairly unbothered by raised voices and much more interested in what happens afterwards. Afterwards is where the information is. If you have been trying to stop arguing, we can aim at something more useful.