The Hidden Agenda in Conflict and How It Keeps You Stuck

A tough truth about relationship conflict is that we often walk into “the talk” with a hidden agenda: we want the other person to change. I unpack why that hope can keep you stuck, especially when you’re dealing with chronic behavior patterns that have already hurt you more than once. The turning point is a question that sounds almost too simple: what outcome do I want for my life? When you start there, boundary setting stops being a debate and starts becoming a plan you can actually follow.

I also get specific about communication and why it’s so hard to do well when emotions are high. If your real goal is to change someone else, you’re likely to slide into repeating yourself, over-explaining, or making an ultimatum you can’t enforce. And an unenforced ultimatum doesn’t create safety or respect, it creates weaker leverage the next time around. Healthy boundaries are about your behavior and your choices, not a speech designed to produce a light-bulb moment in someone who has shown you, repeatedly, that they won’t shift.

We talk through what this can look like in real life, including the subtle pain of a one-way friendship where you’re always the one reaching out. Sometimes the strongest move is not another announcement or confrontation, but a quiet decision to step back and protect your time, energy, and self-respect.

Plus, I share launch updates for my book, Nature Knows: Grow and Thrive Through the Wisdom of Plants, including the launch party details and a limited-time ebook price drop. If this mini-episode helps you think differently about boundaries, subscribe and share it with a friend who needs it.

Register for the launch party! https://maryrothwell.net/launchparty

Get my ebook for .99 during launch week HERE! Email me a screen shot of your order along with your Tshirt size and I'll pick a winner and send them a free tshirt! Make sure you email me by 5/19/26 at nsvpodcast@gmail.com to be entered.

Transcript

Welcome And Launch Party Details

Mary 0:00

Hi, and welcome to a mini episode of No Shrinking Violets. So this episode is dropping on Monday, May 11th. And tomorrow, May 12th, is my launch party for my book, Nature Knows Grow and Thrive Through the Wisdom of Plants. If you are in the central Pennsylvania area, you still have time to sign up. The link is in the show notes. It's really going to be fun. There's so much that you can learn and bring a friend because we're going to have a photo booth and snacks and prizes and a swag bag. I want to take a minute to acknowledge my community supporters, which is the Lancaster Loop and Lancaster Review. Those are both wonderful newsletters that come out once a week for the Lancaster County area, but is a wonderful resource for anyone in central Pennsylvania to know what is happening in this amazing city of Lancaster. And I also want to give a sincere thank you to Ken's Gardens. I'm going to be having plants in all of the swag bags, and they also have given a very generous coupon for me to include. They've been wonderful support. So I want to acknowledge Ken's Gardens, which has two locations in Lancaster County. Alright, so today what I want to talk about is when we enter into a situation where there's a conflict or where we are unhappy with a relationship, we often think about what we should do. We think about our disappointment often with the other person. Sometimes there's confusion. And last week, the mini episode was about something related to that, that we often try to figure out why someone does something. And when it's chronic, doing that really just gets in the way of creating a healthy boundary because our empathy gets in the way. We might understand that someone does it because they've been hurt, or they don't trust people, or they're busy with their children, but that understanding only goes so far because it really doesn't help your situation, because your goal is to make a healthy boundary. So you can hear that um episode, it was it dropped last Monday. Um, but what I want to talk about today is a little bit related. So when you're in a situation and you decide you want to try to communicate how you feel, the first question that you should ask is, what outcome do you want? Because often when we want to communicate feelings about a situation, we envision in our mind that this is going to miraculously change someone's behavior. So if your goal is to change behavior of someone, that is a losing battle. So that is a really important thing to consider because I think we often imagine we're going to have this conversation, and if we are heartfelt and we talk about how we feel and our concern for the person or the history of the relationship, that that person will just the light bulb will go on over their head and they'll get it, and all the conflict or the misunderstanding is going to go away. That might happen maybe 5% of the time. And again, it depends on what has caused it. If it's an anomaly, if it's a weird thing that hasn't happened before, then perhaps someone just doesn't get it. But if there is the chronic situation of there's behavior that tends to hurt you over and over, or behavior that causes anger, or you feel that the person is being unfair, or there's just frustration, the first thing to consider is what outcome do you want for your life? And how do you get there? Just you. This is your behavior. What do you need to do to create the situation you want? And yeah, sometimes that means communicating, but it's really hard to communicate when there's a lot of um emotion unless you're really used to it, or you have a therapist or you have a coach or you have a really good resource to figure out how to communicate. But again, if you do that, it's really to, I don't know, if you feel like you want to have sort of the final, the final expression of your frustration, but again, being really careful of two things. One, that you're going to convince the person to change, and two, that you are creating an ultimatum. Because if you aren't ready to follow through with that ultimatum, then all you've done is made a threat that the next time is going to be even weaker if you try to negotiate or express yourself. So if it's a behavior where maybe it's an intimate relationship and you feel like, okay, we can work this out, but it can't happen again, that's a clear communication. But again, if it happens again, then you act. You follow through on what you said you were going to do. Um, if it's a situation where you think threatening is going to change the behavior, that's where you have to be careful. And oftentimes you don't even need to say something. So what I mean by that is again, if it's chronic, if you've had the conversation numerous times, or it's pretty clear that the person knows it's a problem, you've addressed it before, and it continues to happen, you can simply make a decision about what boundary you want. And you may decide, I'm going to move away from this relationship. Maybe it's a friendship. Maybe there are often things that you find the person is connecting with other people, they're not reaching out to you, but you tend to be the one to invite them to lunch or, you know, to go shopping or to go to a movie. If you're the one that's always reaching out and you realize that's not reciprocated, then you might just recognize that that friendship is a one-way street. You are not reaping a benefit from that relationship, and you don't need to make a big declaration. You know, I think it's always, you know, people get made fun of on social media when there's something that happens, and typically it's a group, right? A Facebook group, and they announce they're leaving, and they get so much crap for that. Because that is sort of like I'm just taking my toys and going home. Well, you don't have to announce that. The strength of a boundary is knowing what you need to do and just making the choice. And if you're feeling like you are still trying to create a change in that other person, then that's not truly a boundary. Because a boundary is based on what you want for your life. And if someone else's behavior or treatment of you isn't making you feel a fulfillment in that relationship or making you feel safe, or whatever that word is, fill in whatever your word is, then that relationship either needs to change or you need to move on. And often we want that other person's behavior to change. It's sort of that if only they would fill in the blank. Well, that's not going to happen if you recognize it's chronic. So that question, when you go into these conflicts or you decide you want to communicate yet again about something with someone, think about what outcome do you want. And if you're honest with yourself and the outcome that you want is someone else's behavior to change, when there's been no indication from past behavior that it's going to change, then that is probably something where you need to look inward and decide what you need to do. Okay. So that was my thought for this week. And one more real quick thing. So I want to revisit my book. So um Tuesday, May 12th is when it launches officially. And for the first week or two, the ebook is going to be 99 cents. So if you want to grab that book, this if you do it within a week and you send a screenshot of that that you bought my ebook, because this we're trying to for a big launch this week. If you send a screenshot of that to my email from my podcast, which is nsvpodcast at gmail.com, and that's in the show notes. Send me that screenshot. Tell me what t-shirt size you want, small, medium, large, extra large. And I'm gonna do a drawing of all the people that send me a screenshot, and I will announce the winner probably in my next mini, but for sure I will send an email to the person that whose name that I draw. So I would love to have lots of response. 99 cents for the book. You can't beat it. It's on Amazon. Send me a screenshot if you buy it within this week, because this is my launch week starting Tuesday, May 12th. Okay, I hope I see an email from you in my inbox. So I hope today's topic resonated a little bit with you. Thanks for listening, and until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.