Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

As individuals whose lives intersect those of other individuals, we are sure to and bound to experience conflict. I am sure everybody has had their fair share of conflict that always makes for juicy fodder in conversation with others outside the problem!

I know I have. And I've had more than my fair share of it. I've had plenty enough that a change in phone number is just pending! I admit that I can indeed be rather callous in my interpersonal relationships,and rather shamelessly I also admit that most times this works to my advantage, but there are also times I truly regret my actions. I have cut many people off without telling them why, and I have told as many people off harshly. I definitely want to change my habits,which is why I am taking this module! For this post,I will talk about one of my more recent conflicts which still feels unresolved today. It involves one of my closest friends.

I've known my friend for about 6 years. Not a very long time, but we became close really quickly. I felt it wasn't like the usual best friend relationship I had with my other close friends. We've been through really bad episodes that could break the friendship up,and indeed many times we've fought and not spoken to each other for months on end. Yet in the end no matter how ugly the fight was,or how big the issue was, we always could talk things out and resume our friendship. It seemed to bring us closer together too. It really was a friendship different from the others!

Being as close as we were, I bothered my friend any time I wanted and about anything I wanted. Of course this goes both ways! Towards the end of our friendship, my friend became less and less responsive. I didn't even expect him to entertain my random musings anymore,so I stopped my habits.

When I had real problems though, I would still reach out to him. When I drop him a message he doesn't reply, when I call, he promises to call back but this almost never happened. Listening to each other's problems was something I thought even the most basic level of friends did. I started to resent him for his behaviour and the more this happened the more my resentment for him grew. What was odd was that after each one of these episodes,we just pretended all was fine and behaved like it never happened.

I felt like I was being made use of,because I would always be there when he wanted yet he did not treat me the same way. He was treating me worse everyday,till finally I decided to end the friendship.

I am the confrontational type,so when I feel there is a problem, I would talk about it. Since the friendship started falling apart, I have tried many times to get him to talk about his feelings, but he never did. He just never cooperated with my attempts to straighten out our issues and mend the friendship. He never gave me the chance to understand him. So I thought to end it.

I tried again,for the last time to seek closure,telling him exactly how I felt about the friendship. I put a lot of thought and great care in expressing my thoughts and emotions,making sure to be tactful and considerate of his thoughts and emotions. However,again,there was no response.

So here I am today, with a friendship I ended that still needs some closure. There is still this hope inside me that he would and could be honest with me with his side of the story even though the friendship is dead. I am not greatly troubled with the way things turned out,but it definitely could have been better. At least with a response, I would feel a little more at peace.

Maybe the problem lay with us being too close and hence too comfortable with each other. When this happens people tend to take each other for granted, and become less sensitive to the likes,dislikes even feelings of each other. I found this to be true in my case. I was also definitely to blame. Sometimes even when he told me was busy I would still bother him with the most mundane of issues. Things he probably did not want to be involved in,i sometimes got him involved. I just assumed as a level 10000 friend he wouldn't mind! But he never was direct me,hence many times i had to guess myself how he felt. Just as my resentment for him grew, his towards me probably did too, just that he was annoyingly silent about it.

In anything,including this failed friendship,it always takes two hands to clap. We were both at fault.

How would you have handled the situation? Would you have tried to save the friendship and how? Or would you also have ended it and what would your approach be?