The Tug-of-War Within: Navigating Conflicting Desires
Being torn between conflicting desires is hard and confusing.
We long for intimacy but also crave independence. We’re driven to improve our health but we want super-sweet desserts. We pine for a new career but fear the leap into the unknown.
This push and pull can be exhausting and lead to feeling stuck or procrastinating. The word “ambivalent” comes from the Latin “ambi,” meaning both, and “valentia,” meaning strength or vigor.
Ambivalence sometimes arises from cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort we feel when our actions don’t align with our beliefs or when we hold conflicting beliefs at the same time: when we know we should be working, but watch YouTube instead. This discomfort can provide good intel or it can lead to rationalizing and defending our behaviors.
But we all have contradictory thoughts and feelings — it’s a natural part of being human. Add the external noise of societal expectations, inherited beliefs, and past traumas and triggers, and the internal battle gets real.
How do we reconcile contradictory desires?
- Embrace it: accepting the tension and uncertainty may be freeing
- Parse out: mindfulness, therapy, journaling – find more clarity through self-reflection and working through past experiences
- Decision-making skills: this can be improved with practice including skills of intuition, problem-solving, time management, creativity, collaboration, foresight, pros and cons, and commitment
- Align with your purpose: most importantly, let go of desires that conflict with your bigger purpose. You may have a desire to meet up with the attractive guy who’s been lukewarm and flaky, but if your purpose is to honor your needs and find a loving relationship, then you’ll have to let go of the first desire.
If you’re clear on your values and purpose, then it becomes about desire management and letting the values-based behaviors win. Desire management is often a conflict between immediate desires (alcohol, sexual interactions) and goals and values (staying sober, staying faithful).
Know also that holding conflicting ideas isn’t always a bad thing; It can be a sign of intelligence, flexibility, and can allow us to see varied perspectives and facilitate nuanced decision-making. Life and decisions are rarely black and white, and are filled with gray areas. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in 1936, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”