Volcanoes

Rico Santacruz

Interpersonal Communication

Conflict Paper

Have you ever been faced with a problem of choosing between two people, and you know what the right decision and you do it, but you know that someone is going to get hurt. Well this is what I was faced with at the beginning of this semester and an ego conflict that I am being faced with on a daily basis. It would not be so bad, if only it were not between my best friend Joe, whom is also my roommate, and my girlfriend.

I started going out with my girlfriend over the summer. We have been inseparable since day one, and she is the only girl that I have ever loved. You would think that a good friend would be happy for us. Well, that is not the way it is. . Everything was great until we got down to school. I guess Joe got a little jealous of the amount of time that Christa and I had been spending together and the little time that I spent hanging out with him.

All semester he has been nasty to Christa. At parties he would stare at her and give her the nastiest looks. I had confronted Joe on numerous occasions about this situation just to be blown off. We still to this day sit in the same room and don’t say a word to each other.

The most recent conflict that I have been in with this situation was recently at a bar. Christa and I were out with my fraternity brothers having a good time when her ex boyfriend confronted her and started giving her a hard time. I went up to him and talked to him about our situation and she walked away towards her girlfriends. As she was

walking away Joe yelled across the bar, pardon my French, “Your girlfriend is a stupid cunt.” The moment I heard that this conflict went straight from a Simple conflict, to a super Ego conflict. I walked over to him and laid in to him like there were no tomorrow.

Now that you know the story I will discuss the process of this conflict. The source for this conflict is when we would sit in the room together and at first I would try to talk to him, but it would be question/answer with no extra conversation. So at that moment I knew he was upset about the situation, but being hard headed like he is, he would not confront me about it. There was a difference in role perception. He expected me to put him first over my girlfriend. But I put her first because I figured he would be happy for me and glad that I found someone t. Everything was great until we got down to school hat hopefully I could spend the rest of my life with.

The beginning or the frustration awareness came when he would completely blow me off. He would snicker