Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Conflict Resolution -- Avoiders

[Howard Landman (howard]

> We have members who are clearly "avoiders" who find the term highly
> offensive. The only term I can find that is more descriptive is "ignorers"
> or "isolators". 
> 
> I desperately need an inoffensive term in order to discuss this phenomenon.
> It's hard enough to engage them without using a term they find offensive.

I don't like the term either.  And I see multiple kinds of "avoiders".
Some of them simply don't do conflict.  Others suppress their objections
for as long as possible until they explode, often at things unrelated to
the original issue.  Lumping these together is NOT useful.

> Even referring to them as a group is offensive to them.

Some people hate being categorized even (or especially) when the category
fits like a glove.

One way of slicing it is to look at "low-maintenance" and "high-maintenance"
relationships.  "Low-maintenance" people may be perfectly happy to sit
around the house all night reading or puttering and not saying a word to
each other.  "High-maintenance" people REQUIRE constant interaction or they
go crazy, even if there's nothing otherwise wrong.  They may start fights
just to have something to interact about, behavior that a low-maintenance
person perceives as utterly insane.  They may be described as "needy"
or "having to have their hand held all the time" or "demanding".  All of
these are about as pejorative as "avoider".  In reality it's just two
personality styles (that happen not to be very compatible).  Neither one
is really "better" or "worse" than the other.

So, if you've got a bunch of "demanders" wondering what's wrong with
the "avoiders", you've probably also got a bunch of "avoiders" wondering
what's wrong with the "demanders".

I will observe in passing that cohousing selectively filters for
high-interactivity types, and low-interactivity types may often feel
somewhat outnumbered and put-upon in it, especially in the early days
of countless interminable meetings.  (It gets better.  We just cancelled
our last community business meeting because there were no agenda items
submitted by the deadline. :-)

More sophisticated personality-typing systems such as Meyers-Briggs
(16 basic types) or the Enneagram (9 basic types with many sub-types)
have finer distinctions and tend to be more useful.  Heck, I even
sometimes use the Firesign Theater's "Five Lifestyles of the Future"
(bozo, beaner, boogie, berserker, zip) as categories when they fit,
often in the form "He/she is an X who thinks they ought to be a Y but
really wants to be a Z" which gives 125 types.  For example, I'm a bozo
who thinks he ought to be a zip but really wants to be a beaner.  At
least I used to be.  Hmm, I wonder if cohousing also selectively
filters for people who think they ought to be bozos ... :-)

        Howard A. Landman
                Meyers-Briggs ENTP (heavy on the T)
                Enneagram 5 (so Carol tells me)
        River Rock Commons, Fort Collins CO
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