Interpersonal Conflict: Who is right?

There are 2 main characters in my story, named Samantha and Gregory. They are married with two children, ages 14 and 18. Every time when Gregory returns home from work, he would look forward to having a proper homemade dinner with his family. However, because Samantha is a modern career woman and is ever more occupied with her work after her recent promotion, she has been coming home even later than Gregory for the past two months. Their children are also busy with exams. Gregory is starting to feel neglected by his family and wishes his wife could care for him more. Hence, when Samantha reached home, he asked, "Can you cut some fruits for me?" Samantha was really worn out by work then and was not keen on doing it. She felt that Gregory did not understand the demands of her work and was imposing his expectations on her to serve him. At first she bottled her grievances and obliged him. However, Gregory could see her unwillingness through her body language and was disappointed with her. Eventually both of them reached their tolerance limit and exploded with unhappiness towards each other.

The main problem is Gregory is receiving less than the attention he needs. The couple seldom sees each other now that Samantha has advanced in her career. There is also a lack of mutual understanding. Samantha misunderstood Gregory that by requesting her to cut fruits for him, he is being insensitive and expects her to serve him even after a long working day. The misunderstanding is most possibly due to Gregory's tone of voice. It is said that majority of the strain in relationships is caused by the wrong tone of voice. Gregory may have unintentionally sounded too demanding. Another likely reason is the couple has too high expectations of each other. Gregory expects more time and concern from Samantha while Samantha expects him to be more sensitive. She should have told him her feelings right from the start; bottling it up would only accumulate her unhappiness. It could also be that Samantha and Gregory have different primary love languages. There are five main love languages: touch, gifts, quality time, acts of service and words of appreciation. Gregory's could be acts of service while Samantha's could be words of appreciation. Hence, without understanding what each other's primary love language is, they would not be able to let each other feel loved as their form of showing concern is not effectively received by the other.

Dear friends, how can the family help themselves stay closely bonded regardless of their differences and busy schedules?

Effective Communication In My Perspective

Personally, when I get very busy with school, I would minimize online chatting time. This results in my interacting with people being very limited to just face-to-face and exchanging text messages. I would want my friends to understand exactly my message in the already precious time I have with them. In my situation, learning how to pick up and give out nonverbal communication cues is all the more essential as half my social time is face-to-face instead of virtually online. Nonverbal signals are more significant than spoken words as I am a more visual than phonetics person. Thus I pay more attention to what I see than hear. The skill of communicating nonverbally gives me additional information other than words to interpret the actual feelings of the other person.

As a chemistry student, I often have to work with different people as we cooperate in pairs or groups during lab experiments. I also aspire to be a chemist in future, in which research work is done by a group rather than individually. Thus communicating efficiently amongst group members is important so as to minimize confusion and optimize our findings during the experiment. Being able to convey our ideas correctly in written lab reports also allows readers to have better understanding of the subject.

Also, I have many friends of different religions and cultures. It is vital that I learn the various nonverbal languages that different cultures adopt. This heightens my level of awareness and sensitivity so I would not offend them unintentionally.

Hence effective communication is important for me.