Our minds are constantly working to create coherence. We naturally look for narratives that help the world feel predictable, understandable, and emotionally manageable. Our minds prefer efficiency, much like our bodies prefer conserving energy. When someone holds a very different narrative than we do politically, religiously, morally, or relationally, it creates dissonance inside of us. Our minds are forced to work harder to reconcile competing realities. This is not simply an intellectual disagreement; it is often an emotional and physiological experience. The mind prefers efficiency, and relationships with people who share our worldview generally require far less cognitive and emotional energy than relationships where our core narratives are frequently challenged. Difference can feel like emotional resistance training.
Because of this, many people choose distance over discomfort. Sometimes we cut people out of our lives not because we are incapable of love, but because maintaining connection across major differences can feel exhausting. When people we care about hold narratives that clash with our own, relationships can quickly become strained. Each interaction activates competing interpretations of reality. Over time, this dissonance can lead to ruptures, polarization, and emotional cutoff. Our minds seek relief, and separation can feel like the easiest path to reducing internal stress.
Yet growth rarely happens in complete comfort. Like the Goldilocks principle, our minds need the right amount of stress: not too much, not too little, but enough to stretch us without overwhelming us. Without enough resistance, no muscle grows. Too much weight too quickly can injure us; too little leaves us unchanged. Too little challenge keeps us rigid; too much challenge can push us into defensiveness, fear, or shutdown. Healthy relational growth often requires learning how to remain connected while tolerating moderate levels of dissonance. This process strengthens emotional flexibility and increases our capacity for curiosity, empathy, and resilience.
The art of managing relationships begins with recognizing that our minds naturally seek the path of least resistance. Instead of automatically seeing the other person as the problem, we can begin to recognize that often the difference itself is the challenge. The Gottmans refer to many of these ongoing tensions as “perpetual problems” enduring differences in personality, values, experiences, or perspectives that are not meant to be solved so much as managed with understanding and respect. The goal is not to defeat the dumbbell (yes i chose this analogy on purpose), but to build the capacity to carry it.
Just as we would strengthen a muscle gradually, we can strengthen our relational capacity intentionally. We do not walk into a gym and immediately try to lift the heaviest weight possible without preparation, recovery, or consistency. We warm up before exertion, engage carefully, and then rest before returning again. Over time, the repeated practice of tolerating manageable amounts of stress builds endurance, flexibility, and strength. Every difficult conversation becomes another repetition. Curiosity functions like progressive overload for the relational mind. Some of the muscles we strengthen in this process are the capacity to separate our identity from our beliefs, the endurance to listen deeply rather than respond defensively, and the flexibility to attune to another person’s emotional experience without immediately needing agreement. Tolerance for dissonance is built through reps, not epiphany.
These muscles are needed now more than ever across every level of human relationship, from marriages and parent child relationships to communities, nations, and global relationships. Rupture and the conflict that follows are enormously expensive physically, emotionally, and financially. In families, unresolved cutoff can lead to years of grief, chronic stress, divided holidays, and legal battles over caregiving, inheritance, or divorce. In communities, polarization can erode trust, increase isolation, and weaken the social fabric needed for cooperation and safety. At the national level, competing narratives can escalate into political paralysis, economic instability, hostility, and even violence.
When we engage in what Monica Guzman describes as sorting, siloing, and othering, division deepens and relationships become more vulnerable to rupture. Conflict can slowly become a battle for “the narrative,” where each side is focused on proving are are “good” and the other is “bad.”
Yet there is another path. We can learn to tolerate difference without dehumanizing one another. We can remain curious instead of certain, connected instead of cut off, and aware that disagreement does not have to erase relationship. These practices do not eliminate dissonance, but they help us carry it in ways that preserve both our relationships and our humanity. With enough intentional practice, we can become body builders of managing dissonance, developing the endurance, flexibility, and strength required to stay connected in the middle of difference. Maybe the goal is not to avoid tension altogether, but to become the Hulk Hogan (RIP) of healthy relationships, strong enough to hold complexity without tearing connection apart. Unlike Hulk Hogan tearing apart his shirt, the goal in healthy relationships is learning how not to tear each other apart when tension rises.
And perhaps, in honor of the late Hulk Hogan, we can all aspire to become a little more emotionally and psychologically ripped. So if you want to look ripped at the emotional and psychological beach this summer, maybe it is worth spending some time working out these muscles. Then when life hands you conflict, dissonance, and difference, people might look at you and say, “Wow… that person is emotionally and relationally ripped.”