Continuing Conflict Management

One concept that I would have liked to discuss further would definitely be conflict management. In any relationship, no matter what the type, there is always some sort of conflict, and I feel as if most people don’t know the best way to deal with it. Also, as I have experienced since reading that chapter, when one side of the relationship knows how to effectively manage conflict, the quality of communication in the relationship greatly improves. I am even considering making some people in my relationships read that chapter, because I feel like if both of us knew the techniques for effective conflict management, our relationships would benefit greatly. Conflict management is an important concept, because people who manage conflict poorly risk ruining good relationships. I have definitely experienced times where my relationship with someone almost fell apart completely because neither of us could listen to the other or focus on the main point rather than kitchensinking during a conflict. I think conflict management is a topic that could be discussed endlessly, due to its importance in any and every relationship.

Likes and Dislikes

One of my favorite things about this class was the availability of the professor. Whenever I had a question, it was answered promptly through e-mail, or even better, I loved the instant message office hours. I wish all professors held office hours like that, even if only once a week. One of the things I liked the least in this class was having to wait 12 hours in between each of my posts. There were times were I just wanted to finish all my homework, and while I could write them all at once, I still had to remember to log online and post them at three separate times, which at times was inconvenient. I also didn’t like having to comment on three separate peoples’ posts. Sometimes people wouldn’t post until the last part of the week, which was inconvenient if I wanted to get things done early on. Also, sometimes all the posts available to comment on would be on the same topic, making writing the comments very repetitive. I think this class could be improved if the blogging requirements were slightly altered, but other than that I didn’t really have any problems.

What I've Learned

In this class, I learned a lot about managing and growing successful relationships through communication. Before this class, one of the weakest points in the relationship between my boyfriend and I was that we couldn’t manage conflict effectively. After reading that chapter in the book, I was able to apply the concepts I learned to our actual relationship and see how they were able to make our communication ten times better. I also learned a lot about communication in society. I learned that there is acceptable and not acceptable ways and situations to communicate in in our current day society, and that these expectations are always changing. Through learning about all the aspects of communication- such as listening, confirming, constructive criticism, internal and external obstacles, etc.- I have been able to analyze all relationships in my life and figure out how to help them grow. I learned how to better my lifelong best friend that I rarely see relationship, and how to keep our friendship strong even when we’re not able to talk or see each other often. On the other hand, I also learned how to better deal with my family members relationships, who I see often. I also learned how to act with strangers and people I hardly know, and how to communicate with new friends in order to grow friendships with them. I personally feel as if I have greatly benefited from all I’ve learned in this class.

Family Stages

A concept I found interesting this week is the typical life cycle of families with childre. This 7 stage cycle was clearly defined step by step in our book. The book acknowledged that not every stage would be followed by every family, but that this was a generalized cycle. Seeing the cycle written in Figure 12.2 put life in a new perspective for me and made it appear extremely short and compact. In reality, however, each stage does ideally last for a good amount of time. I feel like one of the most difficult stages for a couple would be Stage 6, or the postlaunching of children. This stage seems hard, because after having a long life of watching and helping your children grow, it all ends. They leave home and I could imagine that would be a very startling transition for a couple. Returning to a relationship where the couple is once again the primary unit could be odd at first. However, maybe it would just take a little time to get back into the old rhythm, and a couple would begin to enjoy more freedom with less responsibilities. I know that after seeing this cycle, if I plan to have kids I would want to have them spread out over years, in order to prolong the cycle and keep Stage 6 as far away as possible.

Marriage

The definition of marriage has evolved greatly over the years. While it once was considered something to be help sacred and kept no matter what, nowadays it is looser and less restricting. People marry for love more often than for obligation now, and if that love runs out people have accepted that it is ok to go find a new happiness elsewhere. This can be seen in the increasing rates of divorce and then second marriages after divorce. Over the next fifty years, I see these numbers staying the same, because people have come to terms with the fact that no one’s perfect but we all deserve happiness in our lives. If a relationship that began with love is now bringing frustration or sadness, it has become okay to leave the sadness in search of a new happiness, and I don’t see people developing a diversion to searching for happiness. A more significant change in marriage that I see happening hopefully sooner than in 50 years is the widespread acceptance and acknowledgment of same sex marriage. Not civil union, not partnership- nothing short of true, pure, equal marriage that heterosexual couples have had access to since the dawn of time. I believe our values and culture is changing, slowly but surely, and soon will no longer see any justice in denying this right to our peers. Hopefully we will all see that this is just an extension of our developing search for lifelong happiness.

Definition of Family

I believe family should be defined as a group of people who care for each other and make commitments to stay loyal and supportive. They need not be related or married, but could be families of friends based on different circumstances. Family members should help each other when there are problems and always be supportive of one another. They should not feel obligated to do anything, but should want to be with each other. Family members should trust one another and not do anything to betray that trust. I believe the total marriage relationship described in this chapter best fits this description. Removing the married aspect, it applies to all types of families I described. Family members should have separate interests and activities, yet look forward to being with each other. Devitalized and conflict-habituated relationships strongly does not fit. A family should like each other and should not stay together only because they are obligated.

Love and Commitment

In one of my first relationships, I experienced love without commitment. While I and the guy I was seeing both experienced love, only I wanted commitment. As a result, we didn’t last long, because I wanted more from him than he was willing to give at the time. Relationships that I can think of where there is commitment but not love might be one between a waning couple. Although I can’t think of a time I’ve been in a relationship like that, I can imagine it would come when a couple has been together for a long time and is therefore committed, but does not want to admit that the love they once had is now gone. In the first type of relationship, there could be a negative impact on the person who wanted commitment from the person who didn’t want to give it. However, if both people wanted love with no commitment, I think it could be a fun but not serious relationship. A relationship like the second might be a hard one to be in and have a negative impact on both people. While they have invested so much time and energy and are still so committed, it is hard to recognize that love might be gone and it’s even harder to walk away from the relationship. I don’t think either type of relationship is positive, and one should work on having a romantic relationship with equal parts commitment and love.

Online Deceit

I agree that online there is a greater potential to be deceitful and to be fooled or lied to. I do not believe this is ethical. Online communication should be treated no differently that personal face to face communication. The only difference is that online makes it easier to speak to people far away that we wouldn’t have been able to meet otherwise. Although deception is likely in either kind of interaction, it is slightly easier and doesn’t feel as wrong when it’s done online, and therefore I believe it is more likely online. Face to face, people can deceive by lying, skewing information, omitting important facts. Online, all of this can be done too, but the extent of the lies is much greater. You can’t lie about you gender, hair color, or height face to face, but online you can create yourself to be any person you want. Although not ethical, it is easily and often done, either with the intention of deceit or because the person is insecure of their true traits.

Styles of Loving

One concept I found interesting this week was the different styles of loving. I had no idea that there were different types of loving, let alone six distinct types. When I was reading them, I was with my boyfriend, and we tried to determine what our specific type of loving is. I think our relationship is strongly storge. We began as friends and slowly built a romantic relationship that turned into love. We both have common goals in life of being successful in our jobs, moving away from our hometown, and someday building a family. We also have the same religious and moral values, seeing as we met through our church. We do have occasional crazy fights however, which is slightly in the eros style of loving. Also, we tend to have playful and fun periods, which lean slightly ludus. It was very interesting to try to figure out our loving type, and to learn that we can and do have parts of multiple types. Also, knowing that our loving type is not permanent is a nice thing to know, that maybe in the future we will be more eros or ludus than we currently are, because nothing is set in stone.

Development of Friendship

A concept I found interesting this week was the set of stages of the development of friendship. The little diagram the book included was very helpful for remembering the stages. I can relate each stage to a friendship I had in high school. Our role-limited interaction began when we accidentally met through other friends. I became best friends with two girls, and these two girls were a part of a five girl group of friends that had known each other since elementary school. As a result, those two girls brought me to hang out with their group, and I met this one girl, let’s call her T. As I hung out with that group, we moved to step two, friendly relations, trying to see if we could develop a better friendship. T and I began moving towards friendship by hanging out outside of the group, or talking in the hallways and at lunch. We began to consider each other friends, and moved to step four, or nascent friendship. We stabilized our friendship by creating rules and establishing trust. We hung out a lot one-on-one outside of school too. A few years later, however, our friendship began to wane. She had very different ideas and opinions that severely clashed with mine, and she did not allow us to have differing personalities. There was a time where all communication was extremely defensive- and now it doesn’t exist at all.

Friendship Page

The Friendship Page was a very interesting site that I didn’t know existed. It seems to be a very useful place to go in order to get advice about challenges within friendships. The issues raised in the forum reflect all of the challenges to friendship discussed in this chapter. There are posts about how to keep in contact with a friend that is moving, as well as people asking about how to reconnect with a friend who has personally changed into a completely new person. There are also posts about friends who have competing demands, where one friend has gotten a new boyfriend and focuses all of her attention on him while her best friend is upset that she never hangs out anymore. I didn’t read any in regards to diverse communication styles, but there was one about sexual attraction. A man developed feelings for his coworker, while both of them were married, which really confused him. The difference between the book and the forum, however, is that while the book states the problems and examples, the forums involve real life situations which can be much more complicated and sticky than the book could ever describe. The forum is also great because of the opportunity for discussion and interaction, as well as personable help with a specific problem rather than just reading a “most likely” solution in a book.

Best Friends

I have been best friends with Rachel for 9 years now. We have made all of the investments imaginable. We have spent a ton of time together, especially during the summers when we both go back home, we make efforts to talk about our thoughts and feelings, and we spend energy doing things together. Over the 9 years we build and communicate acceptance by learning and recognizing each other’s flaws and coming to the realization that they’re just a part of us. For example, she has a very different mindset about some things, and that caused problems for us early on when I got upset because she couldn’t do things my way. Now, I’ve accepted those traits of hers, and she’s accepted mine. We build and communicate trust over the years by keeping numerous secrets and being able to depend on one another for help no matter what. We build and communicate closeness through late night talks and always showing that we care about each other. The dynamics of our friendship could definitely be seen as consistent with those identified by researchers as discussed in this chapter.

Constructive Criticism

A concept I found hard for myself this week is responding to others’ criticism constructively. I participate in many things that provide opportunity for me to get better at. However, whenever someone who I consider my equal criticizes me, I take it very badly. If the person is obviously superior, such as an instructor or coach, I definitely learn from and thank the person for the constructive criticism. Yet, if the person is my age or same skill level and they criticize me, even constructively, I get upset because I don’t think they have any right to be judging me. By reading this section this week, I’ve learned how to better take criticism from peers. I can begin by asking for more information when I’m criticized in order to better understand where I went wrong. After I ask questions and have more information is when I can actually decide if the criticism is valid. Then I can decide on how I want to act on the criticism. Finally, I can thank the person, regardless of if I thought the criticism was valid or not, in order to maintain a good relationship with the other person.

Disconfirmed and Defensive

There was a time a while back where I had to learn a routine for a dance class and the choreographers were a few of my peers. They hadn’t completely figured out the steps, and were asking us participants for help. However, whenever I gave an idea to one of the choreographers, I always felt disconfirmed and defensive because that person obviously didn’t want my opinion. Other participants also felt the same way as I did with that one choreographer, and we all were upset together about it. The other choreographers who were nicer, however, didn’t notice our problem, and just kept going on with teaching. That one choreographer was using three of Gibb’s defensiveness-producing communication behaviors. They were evaluating, or judging, us whenever we did a run of the routine. While the other choreographers were constructively criticizing or focusing on what we did well and using description, that one choreographer would judge every little thing we did wrong. They were also controlling the communication. Rather than trying to finish the routine as a group and problem solving, that one choreographer consistently tried to push her own opinion and moves and ideas. Lastly, that choreographer was acting superior, when really we were all the exact same age, gender, and skill level.

Confirming Others

I find it relatively easy to confirm others, but when I disagree with them it is a little more difficult to. Reading this chapter has taught me the three different ways to confirm others. Recognizing is this simplest, because it just requires acknowledging that a person exists. With someone I don’t agree with, I still at least will speak to them or look at them and recognize their existence as a person. Acknowledging is a second way to confirm, and involves acknowledging the feelings, thoughts, and words of another person. If I don’t agree with someone, I still find it easy to at least understand where a person is coming from and to agree that they can have their own different feelings and thoughts. The last way to confirm is endorsing, or accepting someone’s thoughts and feelings as valid. This one is tough when I disagree with the person, because in order to be honest with the person sometimes I need to let them know I don’t endorse them. Confirming others as people and endorsing particular ideas is easy to distinguish between, because while I may acknowledge and recognize a friend and their thoughts and feelings, I can also not endorse their choices or ideas on particular things.

Counterfeit Emotional Language

Counterfeit emotional language is a concept this week that really interested me. This is defined as communication that appears to express one’s feelings but in reality does not describe how the person is feeling. The book used the example of someone shouting “Why can’t you leave me alone!” While it is clear that the person shouting this is feeling something, it is unclear as to if they’re angry at someone, frustrated with a situation, stressed over something, etc. Instead, the person needs to describe how they’re feeling, whether it be angry, frustrated, or stressed, and the reason for that feeling. Another type of counterfeit emotional language that I found applicable to my communication was the phrase “That’s just how I feel”. I find myself saying this a lot when asked why I’m upset or angry. After reading about counterfeit emotional language, I now know that it’s not an acceptable phrase. I use it because I really don’t know why I’m feeling upset or angry but I want to justify the feeling to the other person. Instead, I need to learn how to begin by acknowledging that I’m not sure why I’m feeling upset or angry. Then, I need to slow down so I can understand why I’m feeling the way I am and better communicate that reason.

Fallacies in Intrapersonal Communication

Some of the fallacies discussed in this chapter include perfectionism, obsession with shoulds, overgeneralization, taking responsibility for others, helplessness, and fear of catastrophic failure. The fallacies that show up in my intrapersonal communication the most would be helplessness and perfectionism. A lot of the time, I hold myself to unrealistically high standards, and when I fail to meet them, I become stressed and dissatisfied with myself, which then leads to me feeling helpless to change how I’m feeling. After reading about the fallacies and ways to challenge them, I definitely see how I can monitor and revise my intrapersonal communication. I can begin by adapting a rational-emotive approach to feelings. That way, I can identify when I’m reacting too extremely to something that I do not need to be perfect at, and then I can work to dispute the perfectionism. I can also monitor my self-talk to work for me instead of against me. If I have positive self-talk after a negative situation, I can keep myself from feeling helpless.

Perspectives on Emotions

A few different perspectives on emotions are discussed in the book, including the organismic view, perceptual view, cognitive view, and interactive view. The perspective that makes the most sense to me would be the interactive view of emotions. I feel like this perspective takes into account more outside factors that affect us compared to the other perspectives. There are three key concepts in the interactive view of emotions. Framing rules are guidelines determined by one’s culture that help define the emotional meanings of events and situations. Feeling rules are also culturally based, and tell us how we should feel in certain situations. Emotion work is the effort that we put in to convince ourselves to feel the way our culture deems appropriate and to not feel how our culture deems inappropriate. These three concepts that make up this perspective make the most sense to me because I feel like the culture we live in is the basis of what influences our feelings. Our culture has a strong impact on how we live our day to day lives, and as a result it influences our thoughts and feelings. The other perspectives only consider stimuli or events, whereas this perspective takes it even deeper to the root of where we learn to interpret the stimuli or events.

Internal Obstacles

One specific topic I found interesting this week was internal obstacles. I feel like reading about these internal obstacles was very informative. In addition, by acknowledging these obstacles I’m now able to overcome them and become a better listener. I often suffer from preoccupation. There have been many times were I have a test later on in the day or week, and as a result that is the only thing I am focusing on during my other classes. Now that I realize this is a problem to my listening, I can use Anna Deavere Smith’s tactic of “emptying” myself out when I’m listening. I don’t often prejudge, or think I know what’s going to be said, so I didn’t feel this internal obstacle was too applicable. I recognize the validity of the internal obstacle of reacting to emotionally loaded language in politics. You can clearly see how politicians consciously use words with a positive emotional meaning in order to appeal to more of the general public. However, I have a hard time recognizing that it happens much elsewhere, other than a few people here and there. Lack of effort, however, is another internal obstacle I definitely need to learn to overcome. It’s easy for my to just lie back and listen when someone’s speaking, but making an effort to ask questions and engage the speaker will definitely make for better conversation. The last internal obstacle discussed was not realizing and adjusting to diverse listening styles. I feel like this cultural obstacle is widely recognized, and as a result many people consciously try to overcome it in day to day interactions. All five of these internal obstacles are important to acknowledge in order to become a better listener.

Listening is a Ten Part Skill

Through reading Ralph G. Nichol's "Listening is a 10 Part Skill", I learned a lot about how to be a better listener. A few ideas especially caught my eye that I'd like to work on personally. I learned that it's better to listen for central ideas than for facts. I know I find myself listening for facts most of the time when I am in a lecture class, and as a result, I take down an overload of information. If I instead only focused on finding the central idea, I could save myself some time and energy. Going along with that, I also need to learn a few more styles of note taking in order to become more flexible. I would have believed that note-taking and outlining were near synonymous. However, after further thought, I agree that note-taking for me often becomes a distraction to where I focus more on mindlessly writing words than listening to the actual points. If I could come up with a few more "systems" of taking notes, perhaps I could better retain and understand the information I was receiving. Another new idea I found to work on is capitalizing on thought speed. I had no idea that we think for times faster than we speak! It's understandable then that many people subconsciously become impatient with the speaker's slowness and let our thoughts run at their normal speed. I am guilty of doing this when I feel like the person speaking to me is saying too little to be worth my time. I let my thoughts take over and only appear to be listening, which could later result in me missing important information. Therefore, I need to work on anticipating what the speaker is going to say, mentally summarize their message, weigh the speaker's evidence, and listen between the lines. If I practice these four things, I will be able to slow down my brain to fully listen to people when they speak to me and avoid becoming easily distracted. This little booklet taught me a lot about being a good listener, and I will definitely use some of its ideas to help make myself a better listener.