I believe that every one of us will definitely encounter at least one conflict in your lifetime, be it with your family members or with your friends. When that happens, what kind of approach would you want to take? Would you insist that you are right and wait for the person to resolve the conflict or would you take the initiative to solve the quarrel before it gets worse? Well, below is a scenario of a conflict in which I find myself once in.
I befriended friend A during my university life. We took a number of modules together and often hang out together. One day, he asked me to accompany him to sign up for some part-time student leader position at some NUS event. As there were many applicants, one can go for the interview session anytime between 1pm to 5pm. We arranged to meet at 1pm and on the day itself, knowing that I would be late for 15 minutes, I immediately sent him a message to inform him of the situation. I even ran from the bus stop at science to YIH to meet him.
Upon reaching the place, I realized he had already asked his other friends along and I was told by him that he had already signed up for an interview time slot with his group of friends. The interview session was to be conducted in groups of 5 and as I came late, I ended up with another time slot with 4 other people.
Here comes the conflict. I thought that none of his friends wanted to accompany him for this event; thus I agreed to accompany him. At the same time, I was expecting him to wait for me, since I already informed him that I would only be late for 15 minutes. My mentality was that one would usually wait for his friends to come before signing up for the timeslot. I felt that if I were him, I would have asked my other friends to sign up first while I waited for my friend to arrive before signing up with him. As such, I became agitated and asked him to explain why he didn’t wait for me. His reply was “Cause you are late. “ I felt that the reason was inappropriate, as a result, I was unhappy and did not speak to him in the following few weeks, waiting for him to take the initiative. However, he did not speak to me as well and the misunderstanding continued.
Things got worse as we had already signed up for one particular project in school. Due to the incident, I did not have his cooperation throughout the whole semester and he constantly thought I was against him which wasn’t true. Consequently, we did not score well for that module.
After the end of semester, I tried putting myself in his shoes and thought from his perspective. My thinking was that maybe that was his way with friends and since I was late, he did not feel the need to wait for me. Perhaps, nobody was really at fault. It was merely a difference in the way of thinking between the both of us.
After sorting this out, I tried messaging him to end the conflict. However, what I got from him was a series of messages filled with vulgarities describing me and the statement “It was my loss to lose him as a friend”.
Consequently, things were no longer the same between us. What would you have done if you were me? Will you approach this problem differently? Feel free to give your comments yea?
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Hey Weixi,
ReplyDeleteI think that the way people react at a time of conflict directly influences the outcome of it. However, different people have different ways of behaving when they are worried or angry. So in your case, I would say that the way you reacted was rational even though it did end up affecting your relationship in a negative way. But if I was in your shoes, I would have apologized to him and then told him that I was unhappy at about him going and signing up before me. From his point of view, maybe he considers being punctual to be important and maybe he thought that you being late was an indication that you were not so interested to join the event.
Mind you, these are just my thoughts and as I said earlier, when you actually are facing the problem, you can't plan ahead on what to say, so even I might have reacted in a totally different way.
As to waiting for the other person to apologize first, I know from experience that it is almost always a huge mistake. Each person waiting for the other person to take the initiative would normally, as it happened with your situation, end up with an unresolved conflict. I guess with all these kind of incidents, what we can do is to take it as an experience, understand that no two people are the same, and do your best to avoid something like that happening again....
=)
Madhu
Hi Weixi
ReplyDeleteI think when communicating with other individuals, we tend to impose our thinking/perspective on the other party. As such when the outcome or response of the other party is not what we expect, we get disappointed or even angry(in your case). I think this is a very common "error" to all people especially when the other party is someone whom you think you know rather well.
I feel that when communicating with others, it won't be wise to expect the outcome too early as you'll never fully understand what the norm is to the other person. This is especially so if say you are working in a multi cultural environment. For example, Singaporeans would always assume the other party to be late, therefore they tend to be more forgiving if the other party shows up 5 minutes late. In another similar situation, your European friend would look upon you very differently if you were 5 minutes late.
In your case i feel the issue is more of a difference between how one handles promises. He maybe someone who likes to just "say say only" while you maybe a person who takes conversation seriously. He may just be casually asking you to join him for the interview as he know he'll have friends with him, but this was not as you perceive it.
In conclusion, i would think that maybe in future conversation with others, try to find answers rather than perceive answers. That way, such incident would occur less and you won't get disappointed that often.
=)
Let me know what you think ya
Alex
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI guess you felt pretty upset and betrayed with him as you treated him as a very close friend. However he didn’t behave the way you expected from a close friend. I agree with Alex that he have probably asked a few people other than you. He probably asked a few of his friends (including you) to meet at that place at 1. It may be the case that his other friends and him were close friends since primary school, they got to rush for lessons at 2, and hence when they keep pressurising him to sign up for the slot, he decided to go ahead. Hmm ... Guess there can be 101 reasons as to why he didn’t wait for you and there’s no point guessing.
With regards to the issue of the project, I feel that there are always 2 sides to the picture for every action. It’s just how the each individual choose to look at it. It’s like, on your part you may have reject some of his suggestions as you truly felt that it’s not feasible, however, to him, he felt otherwise. To him, it may be a great idea, hence when u point the weakness out, he felt you are just out to criticize him. Especially since the two of you still had an unresolved argument, he probably just chooses to see it from the negative side of the picture.
Wells as for you taking the initiative to message him, I felt it was a good attempt to try save the friendship, however, a message is something containing just words and no emotions. Hence the way he interpreted it, may not be the way you meant, resulting in further misunderstanding. Wells, at least u tried.
I hope, sometime in the future, the paths of the 2 of you will cross again and hopefully by then, everything will be forgiven.
xoxo,
Student A
Weixi, thanks for sharing this post with us. I also appreciate the self-relfection towards the end, concluding with an appropriate question on how your readers would have handled the situation. Good job.
ReplyDeleteYour classmates have also shared some thoughtful comments/solutions - what do you think of their suggestions?