Communications

 

Friendships
Friendship

Here is a list of common idioms (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. and expressions used in the United States to describe friends and friendship. Can you explain what each means? (from rpi.edu – see link)
• Fair-weathered friend
• Lady friend
• Girlfriend/boyfriend
• Blood brothers
• Birds of a feather flock together
• One rotten apple spoils the whole bunch
• A friend in need is a friend indeed
• Familiarity breeds contempt

Friendship – is a voluntary interpersonal relationship characterized by intimacy and liking, and provides social support.
• Friendship is voluntary
• Friendship is driven by shared interests
• Friendship is driven by Self-Disclosure
• Friendship is rooted in Liking (affection and respect)
• Friendship is volatile (high chance for change and easy to break off)
Friendship is an important source of emotional security and self-esteem, and provides a sense of belonging.

Rawlin’s 6 Stage Model of Friendship
Focuses on the creation, maintenance and termination of friendships. Limits to the model are that stabilized friendship stage doesn’t fully explain relational maintenance and the same is true of waning friendship for termination.
1.Role-limited interaction
2.Friendly relations
3.Moving towards friendship
4.Nascent friendship
5.Stabilized friendship
6.Waning friendship

What about this clips demonstrates concepts of making friendships and what also about this method would fail in making a friend?Sheldon Makes a Friend (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Maintain Friendships
Friendship Rules (Similar list in Communication in Successful Friendships list in the text)
1. Show support
2. Seek support
3. Respect privacy
4. Keep confidences
5. Defend your friends
6. Avoid pubic criticism
7. Make your friends happy
8. Manage Jealousy
9. Share Humor
10. Maintain equity
Maintenance Strategies
• Sharing Activities
• Self-Disclosure

Characteristics of Best Friends – what makes them different
1. Typically same sex rather than cross-sex
2. Include greater intimacy, more disclosure and deeper commitment
3. Listen to their problems with out judging and provide unconditional support
4. The degree to which shared activities commit the friends to each other in substantial ways.
5. Identity support: behaving in ways that convey understanding, acceptance and support for a friend’s valued social identities. Valued social identities are the aspects of your public self that you deem the most important in defining who you are.

Additional Resources
Building Friendships (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Building Friendships (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. – by David Masello
Open source – Friendship (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Stories of Friendship (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Lessons learned from making a new friend every day for a year: Maria Scileppi (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Intimate Relationships
Defining Romantic Relationships
In English there is only one word for “love” but how do we exactly define “romantic love”
Is isthis?The Bachelor (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Or nerdy guy gets the girl?
Big Bang – Penny Finally said “I love you” (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Or the most romantic story ever told?

Over and over again.

Or the other most romantic story ever told?

*P.S. I hate both stories 🙂

Research found that the words associated with romantic love are:
• trust
• honesty
• happiness
• bondedness
• companionship
• communication
• caring
• intimacy
• shared laughter
• sexual desire
Are there words you would say are missing?
Definition – is a chosen interpersonal involvement forge through communication in which the participants perceive the bond as romantic.
Key Elements
1. Perception
2. Diversity
3. Choice
4. Commitment
5. Tensions (Dialectics)
6. Communication

Liking and Loving
Liking – is a feeling of affection and respect that we typically have for our friends
• Affection – is a sense of warmth and fondness toward another person
• Respect – is admiration for another person apart from how they treat you or communicate with you
Loving – is a vastly deeper and more intense emotional experience and consists of three components: intimacy, caring, and attachment.
• Intimacy – is a feeling of closeness and “union” (bonding) between you and your partner
o Emotional
o Physical
o Intellectual
o Shared Experiences/Activities
• Caring – is the concern you have for your partners welfare and the desire to keep him or her happy
• Attachment – is the longing to be in your partner’s presence as much as possible
Long term success = both liking and loving

Types of Love
Pragma – practical love (shared goals)
Philia – brotherly love
Agape – unearned or unconditional love
Storge – stable love (also family love)
Mania – extremes/obsessive
Ludus – playful love
Eros – passionate love

Relational Maintenance Strategies
Active Maintenance – relationships take work and are not effortless, so maintenance must be purposeful and active rather than passive. Think the small, every day acts you do for the other person.
Relational Maintenance – refers to communication and supportive behaviors to sustain a desired relationship status and level of satisfaction.
• Positivity
• Assurances
• Sharing Tasks
• Acceptance
• Self-Disclosure
• Relationship Talks/Openness
• Social Networks

5 Love Languages
1. Words of Affirmation
2. Quality Time
3. Receiving Gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Physical Touch
To take the quiz to find out your love language go here (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. You can do a pdf version if you don’t want to give them your information.
Long-Distance Maintenance Strategies
1. Use technology to regularly communicate
2. Still follow the above maintenance strategies – primarily focusing on positivity and assurances
3. When you reunite be prepared for an adjustment period that may be filled with tension, disappointment, and conflict. Do not expect everything to be perfect and use strategies for conflict (upcoming) as they arise.

Additional Resources:
Types of Intimacy (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Gottman Method (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. – Gottman Institute (We will cover this a lot more next week for conflict)
Skills for Healthy Relationships – Joanne Davila (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

 

Relationship Dynamics
Relationships
Relationships of Circumstance – based on life’s circumstances
Relationships of Choice – you have chosen to initiate, maintain or terminate
• All relationships go through ups and downs
Attraction – Why we form relationships
• Appearance – for romantic relationship, research shows that people don’t want to be paired with someone they view as substantially below or above themselves in looks.
• Similarity –
• Complementary
• Rewards
• Competency
• Proximity
• Disclosure
• Reciprocal Liking – we are attracted to people who are attracted to us

Social Exchange Theory (Rewards Theory) – the benefits of a relationship must outweigh the costs of the relationship
Relationship Models
• All these models have a lot of similarities. Each also have limits to explaining relationships
Knapp’s Model
Has limits to explaining friendship relationships and some of the ebb and flow of relationships. Often you can be in one of the stages but some of the other stages may also be present. Some stages you may move through pretty quickly but they will be present.

The top four (4-7) are where the relational maintenance would happen.
Dialectical Model
Conflicts arise when two opposing or incompatible forces exist simultaneously. (Think tug-of-war) These tensions are constantly changing where the point of tension may be at in the relationship and each relationship you have is different for where the tension might be.
*Often dialectical tensions are only referred to by the internal manifestations: Connection vs Autonomy, Predictability vs Novelty and Openness vs Privacy (closedness)
Integration vs Separation
Connection vs Autonomy – The needs of having a separate identity (independence and autonomy) and connections with others.
Inclusion vs Seclusion – desire for involvement with the outside world with the desire to live their own lives
Stability vs Change
Predictability vs Novelty – The needs of having a stable, known relationship vs not being bored in the relationship and having the unpredictable and new.
Conventionality vs Uniqueness – the needs of other peoples expectations (that tend to be conventional and sometimes stifling) with the needs of being an unique individual in a unique relationship.
Expression vs Privacy
Openness vs Privacy (Closedness)
Revelation vs Concealment
Management of Dialectical Tensions
• Denial
• Disorientation
• Alternation
• Segmentation
• Balance
• Integration
• Recalibration
• Reaffirmation

Devito’s 6-stage Model of Relationships (not in text)
Read about it here (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. This model emphasizes the making and breaking of relationships – a little better about allowing for romantic and friendship relationships.
1. Contact
2. Involvement
3. Intimacy
4. Deterioration
5. Repair
6. Dissolution
Content and Relational Messages
Content messages are about the information being exchanged but all messages have a relational dynamic, which are messages that make statements about the speakers feel towards one another.
• Nonverbal – but this can be ambiguous and not intentional
• Metacommunication – messages that refer to other messages
 

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