Mask Poor Communication

Assignment One: Miscommunication April Sherrod COM 200 Interpersonal Communication Terrance Frazier May 21, 2012 I agree with the article provided “Close Relationships Sometimes Mask Poor Communication” because I have had plenty of encounters with my loved ones where I was meaning one thing and they were interpreting what I said a completely different way and thinking I meant something totally different from what I actually meant. Have you ever had a miscommunication with someone close to you simply because you assumed that they understood you?

What happened? When it comes to having miscommunication with someone, my fiance and I should receive an “A” all the time. The miscommunication we have can be as simple as me telling him to go to the store and get me a soda and be meaning for him to get a Dr. Pepper and he will come back with a coke. However we have had more serious altercations over miscommunication than a run to the store. The most recent altercation we have had over miscommunication was over whether or not to accept a car my parents were trying to give us as a gift.

When telling him of this car, I had told him that there was still a little over $2000 owed on this car, I also told him that they said they would finish paying it off to help pay off a debt they had owed us. He completely misunderstood me and thought I was telling him we were going to make the payments ourselves, which he was completely fine with; however he isn’t fine with my parents making payments on something that we are going to be using.

In the end before I had re-explained how things were going to take place, he disagreed with us getting the car because he thought that they were just simply going to make the payments and also pay us back what they owed us from a previous encounter when they had borrowed some money. I ended up re-explaining things to him and told him that what he thought wasn’t the case that they were only going to pay off the car, not pay off the car and pay off the debt.

So now that he knows what exactly is going to happen, he has agreed with letting them pay off the car and giving it to us. How can you make sure that this kind of miscommunication does not happen in the future? Or when it does happen, what could you do to make your communication more clear? Miscommunication will always happen, however I could take actions to make sure my point is across and that everything I say is understood the exact way I say it and not the way my fiance interprets it would be by asking him what he thinks I meant before ending the conversation.

References Close Relationships Sometimes Mask Poor Communication, January 24, 2011 http://health. usnews. com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2011/01/24/close-relationships-sometimes-mask-poor-communication Sole, K. (2011). Making connections: Understanding interpersonal communication. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. https://content. ashford. edu/books/AUCOM200. 11. 1