The 'Sheila Agreement': How To Manage Conflict Like Big Girls (And Boys)

An ex-friend pulled a Mean Girl on both myself and another friend, so we devised a way to avoid hurt feelings with better conflict resolution. It works very well!

Little girls: We’re adorable, but we just can’t get along! Photo by Kampus Production

We call it the ‘Sheila Agreement’. Its purpose is to manage the disagreement that happens in any friendship or relationship.

Named for the ex-friend who handled conflict like an eight-year-old (and wasn’t honest why she de-friended us on and offline), the Sheila Agreement outlines how Melissa and I handle conflict in divided times where the definition of a sundress can ignite a global flame war.

Sheila pushed us both out of her sizeable friends group a few years ago. First she ejected Melissa, then, a year later, me and my good friend David. We don’t know why. Sheila never tells you because she’d rather bite off her own arm than engage in confrontation. She gives weird vague nonsensical reasons.

It was Year 2 of the pandemic. Everyone had gone batspit nuts, as (continuously) did American politics; she and her husband are Americans and all us Yanks were on edge. I felt Sheila had been deliberately hurtful to us both; Melissa doesn’t think it was anything personal.

Post-Sheila, Melissa started to worry about me. I’m not always the most attentive friend. I’m always writing, reading, researching, or catching up on things I’ve put off. I spend little time on social media. Or email. Sometimes Melissa would message me and I’d take awhile to get back. It made her a little crazy. Am I getting Sheila’ed? What did I do???

Or she wouldn’t respond to me and I’d comb back through my Facebook messages wondering, Did I say something to upset her? Melissa’s sensitive about certain things and maybe I made a joke that fell flat. Does she hate me???

Such are the thought patterns of biologically-born females. We’re wired for friendships, relationships and emotional connection. We’d rather bite off our own arms and suffer a slight in simmering silence than confront a friend with it. The cruelest thing you can do to a female of any age is cut her out of the friendship group. It’s done deliberately to spite and hurt another. It happens from the sandbox to the grave. It’s childish, but we live in an age where many are grown-ass children and what passes for grown-ass feminism is a reversion to the mass Mean Girlism of cancel culture and campus protests.

But it’s also fair to note just how critically everyday social relations have degraded for decades, especially during the pandemic and the George Floyd protests, radicalizing both political sides further. Melissa is conflict-aversive to begin with and only speaks up if something is super-critically important. I think a lot of us are the same way. Very few enjoy conflict unless they’re abusive jerks. But biting your tongue is a recipe for a Big Blowup later which is how friendships end and feelings get far more hurt than if the two of you could just hash them out.

I suspect that’s what happened with Sheila: She bit her tongue because she hates conflict. To be fair, I have a temper and a sharp, sarcastic tongue; but she also was there when I began exploring Buddhism and made a conscious effort with real progress to de-trigger myself, cut down the sarcasm, and find better ways to communicate with others. It’s one way we bonded; she discovered Buddhism before we met.

As for Melissa, she is, in my experience, one of the kindest, most even-keeled people I know, so Sheila had less reason to fear working out a conflict with her.

But hey, even Buddhists can be crap at handling conflict, n’est-ce pas?

Melissa and I have done a lot of inner work on ourselves to be Better Grownups, so after multiple instances of her worrying I was mad at her I said, “We need a Sheila Agreement to handle conflict intelligently and maturely. The purpose is to work out misunderstandings and disagreements like big girls, rather than a third-grader.”

The basic precepts:

• When one of us is unhappy with the other, we will bring it up to that person calmly, once we’re out of our anger phase

• The other person needs to listen calmly, and do their best not to get defensive

• The first person needs to say what they didn’t like in kind, non-emotional language. No swearing. No insults. No unfair judgements. “You think I—” never nails what the other person is thinking.

• The offender needs to listen (or read) politely and respond calmly and rationally, once again not in anger. Maybe step away from the computer or put down the mobile and cogitate for awhile.

• One great method is the Sandwich Approach: Say something good and positive about the other person, then offer the grievance, then finish with something positive. In this way you relieve some of the negative feelings criticism can’t avoid generating by observing the good things about the other person too.

Melissa has a few points for basic communication overall that she uses with her husband:

• No ‘should’ing - no telling someone else what they should do or how they should feel

• No minimizing, diminishing, deflecting or invalidating the other's feelings. You may not agree with them, but their feelings still deserve to be heard and respected.

• Use ‘I’ statements to describe how you feel and the effect someone's words or actions had on you, not attacks regarding what they said or did. “I felt hurt when you said this.” Not “You did this, you did that.” 

• No personal, character, or ad hominem attacks

• No blaming, shaming, criticizing, labeling, attributing motives

• Stick to the point at hand. Period.

• No add-on insults, generalizations, blanket statements, absolutes, or references to the past or to others

• No aggression, violent language, profanity, or name-calling

• Only communicate when calm

So far, so good!

Melissa and I don’t argue much, but we have the typical misunderstandings or minor communication offenses between busy and sometimes inattentive friends. We’ve both invoked the Sheila Agreement on occasion and it’s worked out very well. Most recently we had a serious political disagreement and we invoked it on each other when it got a little heated. It’s the sort of disagreement that might break up a lot of friends or family members. We got through it okay without anyone nearing Facebook Block of Death mode.

I’m really proud of us both!

Later, I introduced it to David, my close buddy who had gotten ejected from Sheila’s friend group along with me and then later invited back in a classic Mean Girl move intentionally designed to twist the knife in my back. Sheila had offered one criticism of us that rang true: She complained we squabbled too much. It was her one moment of honesty.

“She’s right,” I told David, “and I’m tired of it too. Melissa and I came up with something we call the Sheila Agreement and I think you and I should do this too. Let me explain it and see what you think.”

He agreed, and we don’t argue anymore. It’s rather a relief, as we’d argued about stupid crap for years. We even had a break in the friendship for a few months several years ago. We get along much better now, and can even discuss politics without wanting to kill each other. I’m genuinely grateful to Sheila for that, at least.

I introduced the Sheila Agreement to my neighbor. She’s socially anxious and worries that she’s offended me or put me out in some way. I sometimes worry the same. So we invoked the Sheila Agreement and now we explain things like, “You can text me a few times during the day; don’t expect an immediate response as I’m working, but don’t text a lot because the beeping can be distracting.”

She’s told me that when I don’t get an immediate response from her not to take it personally either. We have fewer misunderstandings now.

A Sheila Agreement returns the basic rules of courtesy sorely lacking in our deteriorating culture. We can’t blame Trump or the pandemic; I lost friends years ago for being ‘insufficiently liberal’. I didn’t move right; these ex-friends moved farther left. (They defriended me.)

Perhaps others can forge their own Sheila Agreement with their remaining friends and family. It could be altered to lay down the guidelines of engagement (I don’t like rules), for example, for discussing politics. A Sheila Agreement requires a certain level of social maturity that may be difficult to stick to at first. Melissa has a degree in psychology and works a job in which she teaches people to communicate better with each other. Buddhist philosophy years ago taught me to actively de-trigger myself and not react so quickly with anger when someone disagrees with me or calls me a nasty name. I understand now it says far more about them than it does me.

I find conflict with my Sheila Agreement friends is less stressful. The heart of success is to keep your emotions in check. That can be hard to do when we’re angry, but in anger is when we say the worst things we can’t take back or hurl accusations or judgements not easily forgotten. You need to consider that you might be wrong about something or at least acknowledge how the other person feels. And talk about it. Maybe you messed up. Maybe they misinterpreted something or are being overly-emotional. I find apologizing can be empowering. I’m being a Big Girl!

I hope others can benefit from their own version of the Sheila Agreement so we can get along better and not sunder what few friendships we have left. Life is far more peaceful, and you have a better sense of which of your friends you can truly trust.

Here’s to my Empowered Girl Posse and David! Photo by Jonathan Borba on Pexels

When I’m not picking fights with the local pigeons (who simply won’t listen to my enlightened Buddhist communication skills when I point out I don’t take dumps in their nests, so can they please not treat my balcony like a public restroom?), I help women and others reclaim their power here at Grow Some Labia.