Conflicts: Men vs Women

Pg 246.

My mother and I over the summer had a conflict over my interest in becoming one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I had became interested this past spring semester after talking to several of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Part of the reason for this conflict was my negligence to tell anyone in my family that I was even meeting with them much less my intention on joining. I waited to tell both my parents, until I came home for the summer, this was over two months after I started becoming interested. Neither of my parents were very happy in my new interest. The conflict I had with my mother was a little different from the one I had with my father. I think a lot of it can be connected to the problems that men and women have when they have a conversation.

The biggest problem my mother and I had in discussing this conflict was how much either one of us was willing to talk about it. My mom was very concerned and regularly wanted to discuss what I had been doing. I on the other had tried to shy away from that topic of conversation. A reason for this is I did not think of it as a very big deal and was willing to jump from subject to subject with little regard for the seriousness of the first topic.  To help solve this problem I should have been more open to the idea that my mother, being a woman prefers to keep within one topic of conversation. I could have been more willing to listen and make it obvious that I was listening to what my mother had to say. I also could have made an effort not to just talk about whatever topic was on my mind.  In reality if I done those things we probably would have been able to get this issue resolved a lot quicker

Another way in which my making an effort to talk when my mother wanted to, and making an effort to keep the same conversation topic would have helped is like Tannen explains: conversation to my women is what helps build relationships and helps keep them strong. I could have put more effort into building our relationship through conversation. What I did instead was I thought that our relationship could be built just through being together and doing whatever came to mind. I can kind of relate to the male version of relationship building which is doing things together. Although I also see a problem in it as I don’t see how it could change the conflict me and mother had. The only thing I think it could do is help us forget that we have a conflict between us.