Comm - Chapter 8

Interpersonal Relationships

One of the more complex of communications is interpersonal relationships. Whether it is with your immediate family, a lover, work associates or friends, relationships can be varied and full of misconceptions. Have you ever experienced someone asking "why did you give me that look?" When you didn't even know it was a look or why? Then an argument ensues and after a while, you don't even remember what you were fighting about but you do know that you were right!

What interested me was the stages of relationships: from beginning to end to beginning...

Initiating:
First contact, the flirting, discovery an onset of hope.

Experimentation:
In this stage there is small talk, light conversation, perhaps an acknowledgement that there is common threads on which to build a relationship.

Intensifying
Bonding, sharing and more in depth conversation. This is the stage where relationships make two people act as one.

Integrating
Allowing relationships to include individualism. Now there is joint companionship and a strong bond, a feeling of being one and not being whole without the other.

Bonding
Commitment, a phase where you are building a solid base for a couple's future

Differentiating
Going back to the 'me' stage, finding an identity within a relationship

Circumscribing
Decreasing conversation, topics that are skirted, a mental withdrawal from communication

Stagnating
Silence is not golden, not at this stage, however, there is feeling of no communication is better at this point.

Termination
Ending the relationship. A mutual agreement that communication and the relationship has stopped and is better in separation.

Depending on what stage a relationship is in, there is still a process of reinitializing the relationship, although at some stages it is more difficult than others.