My Conflict Style Essay

From the reading I believe that my main conflict style is “mutually aware that their goals are incapable; if one person 's goal is achieved, then the other person 's goal cannot be achieved.” (pg. 284) Thinking about my relationship with my boyfriend this conflict style seems to be the one that we “prefer”. I came to this conclusion by thinking about some of the arguments that we have had. Some of these arguments have been about making payments on college loans or upgrading to a bigger vehicle with a larger car payment. Another example is paying for necessities such as school textbooks but instead Theo (my boyfriend) wanting to get new strings put on his bow. I would not say that this form of conflict is always productive because normally

For avoidance I do this quite frequently where I just leave the situation so that I don 't say something I will regret later. To make this even more effective I could say something along the lines of “I need a few minutes to calm down and think, I 'll come back when I am ready to talk.” For me this has been extremely effective compared to some of the other strategies I have also used. Blame and verbal aggressiveness have been ineffective for me because when using this form of argument the other person involved always ends up getting hurt and it “is destructive” (pg.301). During this form of argument the whole argument consists of “inflicting psychological pain and attacking the other person 's self-concept” (pg. 301) once I realized I was occasionally using this form of argument I immediately stopped. This type of argument I don 't think could ever be productive. The last argumentative strategy that I have experienced is silencers where the other individual is silenced. Crying is an example the book uses and one that I have witnessed many people use, crying in my opinion makes people feel bad for starting the argument and then the majority of the time the argument just ends because no one wants to argue with someone that is