Conflict is the flame of Friendship. Put it out!!

“A friendship that can end never really began” – Publilius Syrus.

---

Friendship is...

Every people in this world must have at least one friend. It could be your college friend, playmate, social media friends or even your family is also your friend, aren’t they? In this century, people tend to have a best friend, which means she or he knows almost everything about that person. Having best friend is one of the best thing ever because a best friend can help us to see ourselves deeper with several ways that we might never do before. They are always there for us whenever we need them, and they share things with us, and also let us share with them.

Conflict between friends?

However, in several conditions friends are hard to deal with. Many people think that friendships are really tough for them to manage, especially when they have arguments with their best friend once or twice or even more than that but it does not create them to be enemies. Conflict is normally unexpected, disappointing and very uncomfortable to deal with. What will happen if a serious problem comes up? It will bring some strange feeling because friends that always in our side become step away from us by all of the sudden.

Conflict between one another.

How about you? Have you ever been in a conflict with your best friend? How did you feel about that? Of course, you will feel sad and disappointed with your best friend. There must be something missing when you do not talk to your best friend for some days. Am I wrong? No, absolutely, I am not. Literally, it’s completely normal in friendship to had a hard time with friends, and for disagreements or conflicts to arise. Even though it is normal, but it is definitely can be a pretty horrible experience, huh?

Solve it!

Obviously, we do not expect that there will be a broken friendship, right? Thus, you should solve the problem with your best friend no matter how hard it is. The best thing to do is try to get out from your ‘fight’ without any hard feeling or grudges. If you are willing to do that, you will always find a way to solve it.

"Solve the problem with your best friend no matter how hard it is."

Now, would you like to know some facts? Well, here we will show you our mini survey toward some people around us about friendship.

According to our mini survey, more than 96% of the respondents have a best friend. However, 82% of them have experienced conflicts with their best friend. They usually have conflicts with their best friend less than five times per year, either a serious problem or a small one. There are many reasons why a best friend may have conflicts. The common reasons that conflict may arise in friendship are including jealousy, poor communication skills, lack of consideration and/or respect, being selfish, miscommunication, different perceptions, and misunderstanding. Also, it may happen because of experiencing a bad day or another issue such as one person’s behavior that suddenly changed.

As an example, have you ever watch “Captain America - Civil War”? It is an interesting movie, right? In this movie, you may see the conflict that happens is all because a simple mistake, which the iron man does not want to listen to others opinions. However, soon after the Iron Man finds out the reasons, he and Captain America suddenly becoming friends again.

Captain America: Civil War poster.

Now we know....

In addition to this case, those people usually try to talk to their best friend before seven days after the conflicts happened. Thus, most of them can solve the problems only by talking to their best friend directly. Nevertheless, few of the respondents find for another person to be their mediator. Interestingly, in some cases, people can actually forgive their best friend’s mistakes as the time goes by. It happens naturally because of the power of their strong friendship. It is unbelievable, isn’t it?

Anyway, why does it happen? Do you know why? Well, sometimes, even our good friends will hurt our feeling. We are all human and make mistakes, aren’t we? So, you have to embrace forgiveness when it comes to your friends, and if you do not, you will not be friends with your best friend for long. In order to keep your friendship soundness, you have to forgive each other. When you forgive, it means that you lift your anger or hurt, so it does not continue bothering your happiness. On the other side, it does not mean that your friend was right based on what they do is simply means their mistake does not have the power to hurt you anymore.

“Communication is what makes a team strong” – Brian McClennan.

What Mr. McClennan said was true. Communication is the right way to solve the conflicts with your best friend. Thus, you should try to talk to your best friend whenever you have a problem with him or her. Or else, you may lose your best friend just because of your ego. Instead of keep talking to your best friend, you have to be a good listener too. Pay attention to what your best friend is trying to say and give them a good solution. Also, you have to understand the reasons why your best friend keeps complaining the problems. Hence, your friendship will stay longer than you expected. Your best friend is going to be your soul mate as the time goes by!

#conflict #negotiation #lifestyle