Chap 9: Hey, I like conflict!

Although most people don't think conflicts are good because they can bring a lot of pain as well as understanding to a relationship, I actually really enjoyed reading this chapter because I feel that, if you can look past the pain, conflicts can be really constructive and helpful to better understanding each person's perspective in a relationship.  Conflicts mean that the communication line is at least open or attempting to be more open.  As humans we all have our ups and downs, good days and bad days, so conflict is really inevitable, even in the most perfect of relationships.  What can be changed is the way we approach and deal with conflict when it arises- whether we tend to avoid conflict, or eagerly incite it, or keep a passive aggressive distance between you and the other person by pretending to be fine when you're really not. For myself, I personally feel that my own family has a lot to learn about conflict because I feel that I observe us often avoiding or suppressing the things we are dissatisfied with about each other until something big happens or an emergency occurs.  For example, in my family  according to our zodiac animals, my mom is actually a Tiger, while the rest of us are almost like her prey: I'm a chicken, my brother is a sheep, and my father is monkey.  While I love my mother and the advice she's always giving me is 9 out of 10 times right, I do feel that sometimes she can be overly dominating in our household and sometimes be unwilling to see other people's sides of an argument.  If she is upset, she'll probably be upset for a good amount time and not much reasoning or cajoling will change that.  In contrast my father opts for the more avoidance technique when it comes to conflicts, and often uses the exit response when it comes to conflicts between himself and my mom.  Rather than argue over an issue if she's not listening or having any of the other side, he will go to work or back to his computer to finish projects.  So I feel that if we had more civilized, open, reasonable debates over some of our family issues, and used the voice response to directly address and attempt to resolve the issues, we would all be able to feel a lot more satisfied with our family structure and our relationships to each other.  And in the end it's the people you argue with that you truly care about because if you use the voice response correctly, you'll be able to not only express your own views but hear out their views and thus promote natural open communication.