Interpersonal Relationships

1. 7 Interpersonal Relationships

2. Interpersonal Relationships • Interpersonal Relationships • Emotional Intelligence • Attraction to Others • Motives for Interpersonal Communication • Talking to Each Other • Self-Disclosure: Important Talk • Family Communication • Relational Dialectics (Tension and Balance) • Summary

3. Interpersonal Relationships • Interpersonal Relationships • Interaction with others is called interpersonal communication, and it occurs whenever one person interacts with another—usually in an informal setting.

4. Emotional Intelligence • Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and get along with others. • Being Self-Aware • Managing Emotions • Motivating Yourself • Recognizing Emotions in Others • Empathy, the ability to recognize and share someone else’s feelings, is essential to human relationships. • Handling Relationships

5. Emotional Intelligence • Emotional Intelligence • Another Point of View 1. After having read about emotional intelligence, do you think improvement in it is likely to have positive results with respect to social relationships? Communication with others? 2. Is the concept of emotional intelligence completely obvious? Common sense?

6. Emotional Intelligence • Emotional Intelligence • Another Point of View (continued) 3. Do you agree with Ratey that the essential questions regarding emotional intelligence are “Can it be measured in any meaningful way?” and “Can it be taught?” Do you think the elements of emotional intelligence are important enough, in and of themselves, that they should be taught?

7. Attraction to Others • Attraction to Others • Physical Attraction/Perceived Gain • Similarities • Your beliefs are your convictions; your attitudes are the deeply felt beliefs that govern how you behave. • Compatibility is made up of attitudes, personality, and a liking for the same activities. • Differences • Proximity • Proximity is the close contact that occurs when people share an experience.

8. Attraction to Others • Attraction to Others (continued) • Pleasure • Affection • Affection is the feeling of warm attachment you have for people you appreciate and care for. • Inclusion • Inclusion is the involvement with others. • Escape/Relaxation • Control • In a broad sense control is defined as being able to make choices.

9. Talking to Each Other • Roles, Relationships, and Communication • Often the roles you know best are those that are the most traditionally defined. • Beginning Conversation: The Art of Small Talk • Most people begin conversations with small talk—social conversation about unimportant topics that will allow a person to maintain contact without making a deep commitment.

10. Talking to Each Other • Bids and the Bidding Process • A bid “can be a question, a gesture, a look, a touch—any single expression that says, ‘I want to feel connected to you’” (Gottman, 2001). • “A response to a bid is a positive or negative answer to somebody’s request for emotional connection” (Gottman & DeClaire, p.4). • What determines your ability to bid and to respond to bids? • How common is the bidding process?

11. Talking to Each Other • Bids and the Bidding Process • Does bidding have anything to do with relationship conflict? • How do relationships develop? • How important is the bidding process? • What are some ways you have to encourage bids?

12. Talking to Each Other • Owned Messages • An owned message is “an acknowledgement of subjectivity by a message-sender through the use of first-person-singular terms (I, me, my, mine).”

13. Talking to Each Other How People Begin Conversations

14. Self-Disclosure: Important Talk • The Importance of Self-Disclosure • Self-disclosure is the process in which one person tells another person something he or she would not reveal to just anyone. • The Process of Self-Disclosure • Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham labeled their model the Johari Window (Luft, 1970). • Free to self and others • Blind to self, seen by others • Self-knowledge hidden from others • Unknown

15. Self-Disclosure: Important Talk • Self-Disclosure and Intimacy: Rewards and Fears • Fear of having your faults exposed. • Fear that your partner will become your critic. • Fear of losing your individuality. • Fear of being abandoned. • When Should Self-Disclosure Occur? • Disclosure should occur only in relationships that are important to you.

16. Self-Disclosure: Important Talk The Johari Window

17. Self-Disclosure: Important Talk The Johari Window after a Relationship has Developed

18. Self-Disclosure: Important Talk • Self-Disclosure: Important Talk • Consider This 1. From your own personal experience, or the experience of friends you know, to what extent is sex part of male-female friendships? 2. How does one partner’s willingness to self-disclosure with the other—sharing his or her personal feelings about the relationship and about the role of sex in the relationship—bear on whether or not the friendship will survive? 3. Do you agree with the assessment that for friendship to work, “communication is key”?

19. Self-Disclosure: Important Talk • Self-Disclosure: Important Talk • Consider This (continued) 4. From your experience, is it easier for same-sex pairs to be friends than it is for opposite-sex pairs? Why or why not? 5. In most opposite-sex pairings of college students, do you think those involved prefer friendship over sex? (“...Of more than 300 college students surveyed, 67 percent reported having had sex with a friend. Interestingly, 56 percent of those subjects did not transition the friendship into a romantic relationship, suggesting that they preferred friendship over sex?) (Chatterjee, 2001, p. 67)

20. Family Communication • Family Communication • A family is made up of two or more individuals who are joined together at a particular point in time through the biological or sociological means of genetics, marriage, or adoptions (Noller & Fitzpatrick, 1993, pp. 2-3). • The Systems Theory of Family • The systems theory of family holds that a family is “a dynamic whole composed of constantly shifting interrelationships but still bounded and rule-governed” (Noller & Fitzpatrick, 1993, pp. 39-40).

21. Family Communication • Intimacy in Couples and Families • Intimacy is defined by some or all of the following characteristics: spontaneity, self-disclosure, motivation, interdependence, and tension and balance. • Spontaneity • Spontaneity is the ability to be yourself, showing both your good side and your bad. • Self-Disclosure • Motivation • Interdependence

22. Relational Dialectics (Tension and Balance) • Relational Dialectics • Baxter and Montgomery call their approach relational dialectics, the dynamic interplay between unified oppositions (1996, p. 8). • Certainty versus uncertainty and openness versus closedness. • Denial is responding to one element of a dialectic while ignoring the other. • Disorientation involves being overwhelmed by the contradictions dialectics present. • Spiraling alteration involves separating the dialectical forces and responding to one pull now, the other pull later. • Segmentation is a strategy of compartmentalizing different aspects of a relationship.

23. Relational Dialectics (Tension and Balance) • Relational Dialectics (Tension and Balance) • Baxter and Montgomery (continued) • Balance falters when couples try to meet the conflicting demands of the dialectic. • Integration is a way that partners simultaneously respond to opposing forces without dilution or delusion. • Recalibration allows couples reframe situation so the tugs and pulls on partners do not seem to be in opposite directions. • Reaffirmation involves an active recognition by both partners that dialectical tensions will never go away.

24. Relational Dialectics (Tension and Balance) • Relational Dialectics (Tension and Balance) • Another Point of View 1. Do you have any friends or family members who would offer evidence (personal experience) of the injuries that cohabitation can provide? 2. To what extent is the freedom to leave a partner at any time—the freedom cohabitation provides—a freedom you would trade for the deep intimacy, commitment, and mutual support that marriage provides?

25. Relational Dialectics (Tension and Balance) • Relational Dialectics (Tension and Balance) • Another Point of View (continued) 3. Do you believe that cohabitation is simply “institutionalized adolescence,” or do you believe this is simply a label attached to it by those who disagree with it? 4. Do you believe that the state has any business interfering in people’s lives, curtailing their freedom of personal action, and regulating their domestic arrangements? Should these decisions be left to individuals alone with no interference from the state?

26. Relational Dialectics (Tension and Balance) • Communication between Parents and Children • Support messages make a child feel comfortable and secure in the family relationship. • Control messages are designed to get children to behave in acceptable ways. • Reactive messages are used when undesirable behavior appears. • Proactive messages are used when the parent anticipates undesirable behavior and diverts the child.

27. Relational Dialectics (Tension and Balance) • Stepfamilies • Quality Communication in a Family • Openness • Confirmation • Rules for Interaction • Adaptability • Subjects Better Left Unsaid in Families • Most kids know, and it has been confirmed by research, that there are certain subjects that are avoided in families (Guerrero & Afifi, 1995).

28. Summary • Interpersonal communication, or one-on-one communication, is necessary for your to function in society. • Emotional intelligence is an important part of interpersonal communication. • All relationships begin with attraction. • The motives for seeking our interpersonal relationships are pleasure, affection, inclusion, escape, relaxation, and control.

29. Summary • Relationships with others are governed by the roles you are expected to play. • First contacts with others begin with small talk. • Bidding and the bidding process are the glue that holds relationships together. • Owned messages are acknowledgments of subjectivity by messages senders through the use of first-person singular terms.

30. Summary • If you want a relationship to grow beyond superficiality, you must engage in self-disclosure. • In systems theory, a family is a dynamic group of people who shift interrelationships often but are still bound by rules. • Communication between parents and children takes two forms: support messages and control messages.

31. Summary • Quality communication in a family seems to have four components: openness, confirmation, rules for interaction, and adaptability.