Resolving Interpersonal Conflict.

"You can't shake hands with a clenched fist." - Indira Gandhi

I've realised over time, that healthy interpersonal relationships with people can turn sour even over the smallest of things - it can be a longing resentment against someone that breaks into conflict, or it can be a sudden and unexpected burst of conflict. One of the many things that cause these conflicts would be resentment. I would like to share one of my personal experiences in one of these conflicts. 

After coming to NUS, me and few others formed a clique in engineering. As most of the people in the group are guys, we tend to behave like 'how guys do'. We can be rude, insensitive and lack tact when we talk. Most of time we joke around and do not take things too seriously, as we do not really mean the things we say to each other when we joke about a person. However, things turned a little sour when one of the guys got a little upset over the fact that he was always being picked on by another friend. Let's name the victim person A and the perpetrator person B. I feel it was no ill-intention on B's part, but maybe there was a little crossing over the line. However, it did not stop there. Each time we hung out, B always found a reason to pick on A. I feel by now, A was already having a growing resentment over B and it just got worse over time. 

Once, A was hanging out with his own friends and B joined in. Eventually B joined in A's conversation and constantly interrupted A. A tolerated it at first but B started to get personal when he shared A's personal stories with people he just met. All this while, A was withholding his anger but after his friends left, burst into a heated argument with B and the argument almost broke into an ugly fight. Even though the two of them eventually  resolved their conflict, I cannot deny the fact that, tacitly, there is a bigger unresolved resentment that makes their friendship with each other questionable. There's always a 'let's not go there' atmosphere when we joke about together as a group and hypothetically, another argument between the two might be imminent if they do not sort their feelings towards each other.

While I understand that such things are normal especially amongst people in our age group, the question I have to ask is, if you were person A, how would you put forth to B that he is unhappy with him when he is aware that that could alter his relationship with B and probably the rest?