While conflict is often discussed in business relationships, in terms of reasons, resolutions, and consequences, we know less about how a conflict plays out in a relationship. Through capturing discursive strategies used by conflicting parties, this paper creates understanding for how conflicts on relational levels may both escalate and deescalate during the course of a conflict, and may move from individual over organizations to relationship and network levels, in how parties beyond the conflict are blamed or used as components to declare power. Building on the conflict of a divesting party and an acquirer in a private-public merger, this paper identifies different discursive strategies as escalating or deescalating the conflict. Five blaming strategies were identified; decoupling, empowerment, superiority and dedication as direct and indirect strategies. The paper contributes to past research through providing a micro-level account on conflicts that helps us to, through discursive strategies, capture the conflict as a process that escalates and deescalates not only in terms of its severance but also in how various parties become included as blaming and power-enhancing parties.