Week 11- Post 3

“The uncertainty theory helps explain false conflicts, which occur when at least one person in an interdependent relationship thinks that there is a conflict but after talking to the other involved, finds there is no conflict. Due to technology, text messaging is a new form of communication. I feel that this form of communication lacks important indicators that come with face-to-face or verbal interactions, thus making messages harder to interpret. With this being said, I feel that it is easy to misunderstand or misinterpret how the other person is coming off as. For example, I texted my girlfriend’s mom asking if I could use the cupcake mix she bought to give to her mom’s friend Joe. It took her a while to respond, so my girlfriend told me to go ahead and make them. After I had made them, her mom informed me through text that the cupcakes were for Halloween only, and she was suppose to make them. She also said that I needed to go buy more cake mix. I automatically, got afraid that her mom was upset with me, and started to freak out a little. However, when her mom came home she was happy I made them, because now she didn’t have to. In conclusion, it can be hard to interpret someone’s tone or voice through text and can cause a misunderstanding.

Week 11- Post 2

A couple months ago, I had plans to go out with my friend. She told me that she couldn’t go, so I decided to stay home. Then, an hour before we intended to go out, she send me a text saying that she is going. This had made me upset, because I made the assumption that she was going with someone else, and didn’t want to go with me. Because of this belief, I told her that I was upset, and disappointed because I wouldn’t have enough time to get ready. This escalated the situation because she was trying to tell me that she decided to go with me, even though she had work in the morning.

On the other hand, I have made accurate attributions about others that helped me understand their intentions. I had a friend of a friend tell me that her father had passed away. At first, I thought to myself why my friend didn’t tell me directly. I made the attribution that she was probably really upset and didn’t really know how to bring it up. It turns out that I was right, and I had to confront her about it, for her to open up. 

Week 11- Post 1

When I searched the Internet using the terms forgiveness, reconciliation, and revenge, I used the search engine of Google. Websites that I found for forgiveness was a definition from Wikipedia, and how the bible applies and defines forgiveness. Also, there was a site on Psychology Today about forgiveness that apples the psychodynamic approach theory. For the term reconciliation, I received multiple sites giving the definition, but nothing more. And for revenge, all the sites led me to the relatively new television series called revenge. Out of all three terms, forgiveness produced the most results. I feel that this is because it is common knowledge that forgiveness plays an important factor in our everyday lives. Also, because revenge is an extremely broad topic, it can be looked at in different aspects and have different meanings. On the other hand, I feel that the term reconciliation created the least amount of information. 

week 10- post 3

In chapter 10, the author states “relational transgression are extremely problematic situations in which core rules of a relationship are violated, leaving high emotion residues. One of these situations is deception. Deception is defined as “deliberately altering information to change a person’s perception about an issue”. In other words, deception means that you are lying to someone. For example, one of my friends lied to me when we were supposed to hang out. She told me that she was sick and wasn’t able to hang out, but in reality she was with her boyfriend. I feel that she lied to me to get out of a sticky situation, and to maintain our healthy relationship. Because she lied to me, this made me upset and disappointed. I felt this way because she is one of my friends and I thought that she wouldn’t lie to me. Therefore, this led to a problematic situation in our relationship. 

Week 10- Post 2

According to Abigail, “forgiveness is a cognitive process that consists of letting go of feelings of revenge and desires to retaliate”. Looking at this definition, there had been a couple of events where I had a hard time forgiving. One event that stands out the most was when my high school best friend flaked on me after I went to a funeral. This was the first funeral that I went to and I was extremely upset and emotional. So, my best friend told me that we would hang out after the funeral. However, this never happened. I tried contacting her and was unable to get a hold of her. I finally gave up and just sat in my room hurt, and disappointed. At the time, I couldn’t understand why she would have flaked on me when she knew that I was upset and needed her to be there. For this reason, I had a really hard time forgiving her.  I felt that she was a bad friend and that I shouldn’t do anything nice for her because she wasn’t there for me. Time went by, and I still held on to my anger towards her. I would pretend everything was fine, even though it wasn’t.

Week 10- Post 1

Face management is when “people generally work to support one another’s face when socializing and communicating”. I feel that I use face management when I use social networking websites, such as Facebook. The impression that I want to receive from others when people look in my Facebook is that I am a hardworking person who has a positive outlook on life. For example, when I graduated community college, I received my Associates degree in speech communication. I posted a picture of my diploma, with the notion that people will view my hardworking attitude as a success. Therefore, I am able to control what I post on Facebook and chose what I let my friends see. However, there have also been times were there were posts on my Facebook that I did not want. For example, there was a picture that my friend posted of me when I had too much to drink. I did not want certain people that I am friends with on Facebook, such as my family to think that I am a party animal. However, it is good that I can easily delete the picture and hope that not very many saw it.