Dysfunctional Communication

A detailed Summary of Dysfunctional Communication

Dysfunctional Conflict: A Newlywed's Nightmare

I have been married for almost eight months. In these past eight months I have learned a lot about myself and my wife, Amber. I have come to learn that conflict isn't always bad. Conflict can be beneficial if both parties argue in a functional manner. I was taught that you fall in love, get married, and then get the "world", but soon after my wedding day I learned otherwise. In this paper I will address two examples of dysfunctional conflict from my own marriage, and then I will discuss in detail why the conflict is dysfunctional, the consequences, the possible outcomes if the conflict was handled functionally, and how I could have communicated differently to make the conflict more functional.

"Conflict is an expressed struggle between at least two interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scarce rewards, and interference from the other party in achieving their goals" (Adler, Lawrence, and Proctor II 351). This means that there is something getting in the way of resolving a problem. For example, if I want to stay up and watch TV, and my wife wants to go to sleep early, a conflict appears. There are two different ways to deal with a conflict. The first i

s to deal with it functionally. This means to try and "realize that the other person's needs are legitimate too" (Adler et al. 355). The other way is to handle it in a dysfunctional manner by communication that is coercive, uncooperative, and unfocused (Adler et al. 385).

There are two main consequences of this dysfunctional conflict. The first are hurt feelings. My wife and I waited for the bus to Disneyland silently and disgusted, while everyone in the background was excited and happy. The second consequence of this dysfunctional conflict was that we didn't even enjoy Disneyland for a few hours. We were still scowling at each other three hours after we walked through the gates. Trust me; it isn't fun waiting in line with an angry wife. I almost felt uncomfortable because everyone could pick up on our tension.

The second conflict I will discuss is about my car. I am a runner for a prestigious law firm down town. My future career relies on my job, and my job relies on my car. The other morning I got in my car and couldn't put it into reverse. When I took it to the shop they told me that I needed a new transmission, and it would cost me sixteen hundred dollars. This is a big problem. I called my dad to see if he'd help me out. He told me that he would fix my car, but it would be the last time. I sat my wife down and we discussed our options. I told her that my dad would fix my car, but that he wouldn't pay to fix it again. I told her that I could continue to drive the car, but it had 90,000 miles on it. The only other option we had would be to trade my car in and buy a new car with an extended warrantee that would cover the car until I graduated from law school. This is the option that I thought well. Soon our discussion turned into conflict. I wanted a new car. I thought that it would be cheaper in the long run to buy a new car. My wife on the other hand thought different. This conservation quickly became a dysfunctional argument that lasted a few days.

This argument was dysfunctional because of two important factors. The first factor was our letting the conflict drift. This means we brought in issues that had little or nothing to do with the problem at hand (Adler et al. 355). The argument started about weather or not to eat lunch at Disneyland, went on to be about me always wanting to make things more difficult, and ended up being about how I always ruin everything. By letting the argument start to drift from whether or not to eat lunch at Disneyland to other irrelevant things that had nothing to do with where were going to eat lunch our conflict became dysfunctional. The second reason this conflict is considered dysfunctional is that we let it escalate. This means that as we talked about the conflict it began to grow larger and larger, instead of smaller. I think that drifting and escalation go hand in hand. I think they compliment each other. When you let things drift they usually begin to escalate. The conflict started off small, lunch really isn't a big deal, but very quickly feelings we

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Approximate Word count = 2036
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

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