Stuck In The Middle

Katie and David were the best of friends. They shared many common interests and spent a lot of time with each other. Although Katie regarded their relationship as purely platonic, David developed romantic feelings for Katie after some time. This made Katie uncomfortable at first, but as David promised that this would not affect their friendship in any way, Katie agreed to put her concerns aside.

Things between Katie and David were great, until Katie also began spending time with another friend, Peter. David then became jealous of Peter and often badmouthed Peter in Katie’s presence. As David’s animosity towards Peter was one-sided and irrational, Katie became increasingly uncomfortable with his behaviour. Katie could also sense that David was pressuring her to end her friendship with Peter. Katie knew that she should confront David about his behaviour, but as she did not know how to approach the matter, she chose to suffer in silence.

Soon, Katie could no longer stand being pushed and pulled in the middle and reckoned that the only way to escape her predicament was to end her friendship with one of them. She then decided to cut ties with David as she could not stomach his negativity any longer. Without warning, Katie began to avoid David altogether. She rationalized that going “cold turkey” was the only way to end David’s attachment to her. Unfortunately, her rash decision and action brought about newfound hostility towards her from David. Till this day, Katie deeply regrets how things ended with David. Alas, she feels that too much time had already passed to mend things and have a proper closure with him.

As shown from this story, it is often difficult to make the best decisions in the heat of a crisis. Thus, it is my belief that fresh perspectives from outsiders are extremely helpful in dealing with our inter-personal conflicts. What would you have done, if you were Katie, to minimize hurt for all parties?

Why is Effective Communication important to me?

I guess I have always taken effective communication for granted. To tell you the truth, it was quite a foreign concept to me till I started my university education. See, I have always thought that effective communication is instinctive. Some people will excel at it and some people would just struggle with it, naturally. And I still believe that, that is true to a certain extent. For instance, I have always admired my eldest sister, who could hold a conversation with just about anyone she meets, regardless of age group or gender or culture. However, I have also realised recently that effective communication skills can actually be nurtured and that I can be intentional about it to improve myself in this regard.

Sometimes I would wonder why certain conversations with certain people would end with awkward silences. Most times, I attributed it to the fact that we just do not “click” and then I would just try to avoid conversation with said person the next time. It really did not occur to me that, hey, perhaps I should be trying to be a more effective communicator. Perhaps I am asking closed-ended questions that are killing the conversation. Or perhaps I am just not providing enough verbal and non-verbal feedback to the other party to encourage them to share more with me.

I still have a long way to go in learning how to communicate effectively, especially in formal settings but better late than never, right?