Entry 3 : Resolving Interpersonal Conflict


A few months ago, my uncle got into a quarrel with my aunt. It all started when my uncle got home from work and went straight to bed. My aunt was displeased from this action as he had just threw his stuff around the house on his way to the bed. She started shouting at him about how he does not help in keeping the house clean yet still made a mess of the place. My uncle did not argue back at first and simply picked up his things and dumped it all to one side unhappily. His attitude had made her more upset and she continued to shout at him, unable to bear it anymore he shouted back at her. My cousin unable to take the noise left the house to study.
I had later heard both side of their story. My uncle was under a lot of stress as a big project was coming up, this has caused him to overtime for many days straight. He had finally came back home and was very exhausted and just wanted to rest. He had expected my aunt to be more understanding of his situation and was annoyed when he had to clean up his stuff. His only thought was to get it over with and rest, hence he may had come off as rude. Due to his exhaustion he was grumpier than he should have been and exploded when he was shouted at again.
My auntie on the other hand was suffering from muscle ache then despite that she still continued to do the house work all by herself. It did not help that she was also a clean freak. After a long day of suffering through the pains, she had finished her chores only for my uncle to come home and making a mess of the place again. She wasn’t very happy at the way he reacted when she told him to clean his own mess up.
I never thought much about this case until recently when we had a lesson on conflict management. From what I can identify from this situation both of them thinks that they have a good reason to act the way they did. If they had understood what each other been through would they have acted the same? I believe that this quarrel may have been avoided if they had withhold judgment of each other and try to understand each other reasons and goals. This would help them come to consensus with one another.
Now a question to my readers. If you were put into a similar situation could you bring yourself to do what I suggested?

Comments

  1. COM150_ZYKMarch 11, 2018 at 11:22 PM

    Sorry to hear that and hope both of them become closer after this situation.

    For this case, the problem is that both parties did not speak out what is it in their mind. Currently, both parties have their own concern to mind off. When people only concern about themselves, they will forget opposite parties' concern. What I will suggest is both need to speak out what they have in their mind. Not just that, for this situation, it will be better to separate both of them and let them have their own space to calm down. This will help them think and might come to mutual understanding. The next time they are together, example having breakfast or dinner, they can speak out what are they thinking and come to mutual agreement. This agreement can also be sharing their workload or compromise each other with what individual like.

    -Zheng Ye

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  2. Jeryl Goh (Work)March 13, 2018 at 9:35 AM

    The conflict in the entry originated due to the fact that both parties possessed contextual information about themselves which was not known to the other party. Going with this mind-set, they assumed that is information was implicit when communicating with each other and when their respective partners did not react as expected, it resulted in conflict.

    To answer the question, rather than simply withholding judgement, one of them could have taken the initiative to bring up their own personal matters. Without bringing such issues to the surface, the other party would be unable to empathize due to a lack of information. Without this information, it would be hard for them to understand each other’s problems and come to a mutual understanding.

    In addition, rather than simply tolerating the verbal assault from each other to begin with, they should have inquired about the other’s point of view to understand the source of their displeasure. Doing so would have prevented the conflict from escalating and allowed both parties to act accordingly.

    - Jeryl

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  3. UnknownMarch 29, 2018 at 12:45 AM

    Often, conflicts happened because of built up emotions in the affected parties (especially family conflicts). Often, the lack of appreciation for family members is one of the common underlying cause.

    ReplyDelete

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