Some conflicts can’t be resolved or managed, at least not in the short run.
When a conflict becomes so intense and self-reinforcing that neither party will budge, negotiate, or collaborate without rancor, it is time to stop pursuing a peaceful resolution and to create a complete separation instead.
While it should be considered a last option, total separation or independence is often the best chance the parties have of avoiding a miserable existence yoked to each other.
When people or groups rely on each other to attain goals or outcomes, they are said to be interdependent. This reliance increases the stakes of the relationship, making cooperation more valuable and conflict more consequential. As ties increase, both intensify.
Most people and groups work through any conflict, avoiding destructive escalation, because they want to achieve their desired outcomes.
But on occasion, a conflict becomes so contentious that interdependence produces a flood of disagreements, bitter disputes, and hard feelings.
Over time, such a conflict becomes intractable. Once it crosses this threshold, the parties become locked into self-reinforcing cycles of mistrust, moral condemnation, and hostility that ordinary negotiation cannot unwind.
Under these conditions, continued interdependence doesn’t just fail to produce progress. It actively deepens the wound, with every interaction becoming another occasion for the conflict to reassert itself.
When a conflict is deemed intractable, the best leaders separate the parties and create independence.
Separation often works because it removes the reliance that keeps the disagreement alive and escalating. People and groups trapped in intractable conflict need distance before there can be any hope of eventual reconciliation.
Rather than letting the conflict continue to escalate, the wiser course is sometimes a complete separation between the parties.
Leaders don’t deploy the power of separation often enough. They falsely believe every conflict can be managed or resolved, or they fall prey to the view that insisting on separation abdicates leadership. It doesn’t.
Opponents of separation see it as a defeatist outcome, a surrender to a rift that could have been repaired. They believe separation is usually impractical given the impact it can have on others.
This is why people and groups often stay connected in an intractable conflict for far too long. They don’t want to appear unreasonable or weak, so they maintain the struggle. Leaders don’t push them toward the one option that might actually help.
They need to.
Leaders who recognize the true nature of an intractable conflict know better. They remind themselves that separation does not require severing the connection permanently. It only requires enough distance to break the escalatory cycle. And they wisely believe that sometimes the fastest way back together is to first let go.
