Communcation & Conflict Management.

Communication is the key to a good relationship. In any relationship there will be times when conflict will arise. They key to resolving such issues is communication. Learning to listen empathic ally to what your mate is saying is key in managing conflict, and understanding each other. Listening attentively without interrupting the another person, and later clarify what you heard can also be a good technique that can be used to communicate effectively in a relationship. The spoken word is always misunderstood, so it is always good to listen attentively and then ask questions to clear up what you heard. At times the situation can lead to violence, but violence is not the answer in solving conflict. In a heated exchange you might say something that may hurt the other person. After the argument is over you can't take away what you said. It is also important to not say hurtful things to your mate, and refrain from name calling. Physical abuse is also something that one should never use to resolve conflict. Your mate will never forget that day that you did put your hands on them, and that person will hate you forever. So always try to stay calm and talk things over. You lied when I said I hit you. You should tell the truth as to what really happened. How the altercation started on the top step of the school where you work and end up all in the street. You need to stop telling lies on me and speak the truth. You said you are a Christian. Christian devil... You are a freaking lesbian. Raising my daughter around your lesbian lover.

    Communication is key to a good relationship. My wife never want to let know me what she does. Only until afterwards or months later I get to find out. She borrowed money from her friend twice $5000.00 for two semesters for her son and she never told me till after two semesters later. She just do whatever she want to do and never tells me about it. I am always the last person to know about what she is doing. When I find out later and get upset that she never included me in whatever she was doing. Then it becomes a problem. Like just before Christmas, she went to purchase 4 new tires for her car and never told me till I found out on Christmas eve. That is when all this started. She is saying to me it is her car and she can do whatever she wants. Not that she wanted to say, she wanted to say it is her money and she can do whatever she wants. This is not a marriage when you want to do whatever you want and not tell me about it.

Looking Back!

It's very hard to decide how to share spending time with family, work, and school work. I have an eighteen month old daughter Sarah, she is my world. I like spending time with her and just being home. There are other important things that I have to do when I am not at work such as studying, working on the house and spending time with my family. Time is so limited. Sometimes I look at my daughter and see how much she has grown. I wonder where I have been, and where the time went since she was born. Apart from going to work and school I have always been right here. I could remember it was only yesterday we brought Sarah home for the Hospital. She was born six weeks premature and stayed in the hospital only one week. My eye was filled with tears when I first saw my daughter. She was so small, The first time I held her in my arms she opened her eyes. When she saw me she started crying, seem like she was saying to me that I should tell the nurses and doctors she was hungry and wanted a bottle. The first day she was born at the hospital she was not bottle fed, the nurses and doctors did not feed her because they said she was too small to be bottle fed. Her Lungs may not be fully developed to be bottle fed. The following day Sarah was ready for the world and began bottle feeding. There is nothing I would rather do than just spend every second of my time with my family and Sarah!

Getting Started

Just by reading the section on religious traditions, I have learned quite a bit on the different marriage traditions throughout the world. There were a few questions that came to my mind before reading this weeks material, one being, what was the significance of the breaking of the goblet by the Jewish groom? It's unique to learn how different religions treat situations differently, which gave rise to traditions that are still followed to this day. What I was very interested in reading about was the Muslim marriage traditions. In Muslim marriages, I got a feeling, that there was not much romance involved. It was more of a contract, where the woman kept her own name and was left with her own property. My impressions also were that divorce was easy to obtain in the Muslim faith, and males could have more than one wife. There were no religious sacraments associated with Islamic marriages. The purpose for marriage that came up more than once was the atmosphere to create a stable environment for raising children.