University essay

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Writing Prompt:

Chapter 11 discusses communication in romantic relationships. What do you think are the FOUR main points that are important to know and remember regarding communication in romantic relationships (in your own words) and give examples of what those important things could be to do/remember. Explain and give examples. Do 1” margins all the way around, 12pt font, double spaced. Minimum 1200 words. Turn it to the turnitin.com tab for submission.

Committed Romantic Relationship

Committed Romantic Relationships
Relationships between individuals who assume they will be primary and continuing parts of each other’s lives.
They are voluntary.

Dimensions of Romantic Relationships
Three dimensions:
Passion
Commitment
Intimacy

Passion
Intense, positive feelings and desire
May involve powerful emotional, spiritual, and intellectual excitement.
“Butterflies in our stomach”
NOT the principal foundation (comes and goes)

Commitment
More durable than passion
Intention/ decision to remain in the relationship
Main reasons to commit in relationship:
Comfortable and pleasing
Avoid negative consequences
Westerners want passion and commitment
Willingness to sacrifice for and invest in

Intimacy
Closeness, connection, and tenderness
Underlies both passion and commitment
Enjoy being around each other even when there’s no fireworks
Honesty, respect, trust, etc.

Styles of Loving
People experience and express love differently
Primary styles of love
Secondary styles of love

Eros
Powerful, passionate style
Intense love
Spontaneous and fast moving
Fall in love fast
Men more likely to be erotic lovers

Storge
Comfortable, based on friendship/ compatibility
Ends up being peaceful and stable
Grows out of common interests, values, life goals

Ludus
Playful love
Not taken seriously
Suitable to those who like being involved in romance but not ready to settle down

Pragma
Pragmatic love
Blends the planning of ludus and a stable security from storge
Clear criteria for what they want in their partners

Mania
Passion of eros and play by ludic rules
Unsure if their partner really loves them
Experience extremes in emotions

Agape
Storge + eros
Intense passion of eros and loyalty of storge
Generous and selfless
Giving love is awarding for them
**Most of us are a mixture of these styles of loving**

The Development of Romantic Relationships
Social Penetration Theory: Explains how romantic intimacy progresses in Western Culture.
Intimacy grows as interaction between people penetrates from the outer to inner layer of each person’s personality.
Meaning we assign to behaviors in romantic relationships are not entirely individualistic.
Growth, Navigation, Deterioration

In other words, we have to move beyond the surface of another person to know them better, such as getting to know who they truly are instead of the surface level.

They reflect broad cultural views, which we learn and often internalize. There are strong consistencies in how people socialize in the same culture and social groups attribute meanings to communication in romantic relationships. Investigations show that westerners typically perceive romantic relationships as evolving through three broad phases: growth, navigation and deterioration.

Growth

Invitational
Communication
Individuality
Explorational Communication
Intensifying Communication
Revising Communication
Commitment

Growth can be defined in six stages:
. How we determine who to be romantically involved with would depend on our individual histories and attachment styles

Individuality: How we determine who to be romantically involved with would depend on our individual histories and attachment styles
Invitational Communication: People signal that they are interested in interacting
Explorational Communication: Focuses on learning about each other and it’s also the stage in which we start asking questions, find common interests to reduce our uncertainty about the person
Types of Growth

Individuality: Each of us is an individual with particular needs, goals, love styles, perceptual tendencies and qualities that affect what we look for in relationships
Invitational: during this stage they respond to invitations from others. The most important meaning of this type of growth is found on the relationship level and not the content level.
Explorational: What we tell each other during the early stages of a relationship isn’t necessarily true. We may assert aspects about ourselves to better position us to be more desirable. Examples would be claiming the salary we make, false traits we have and so forth.

Intensifying Communication: Partners spend more time together, and they rely less on external structures such as films or parties.
Revising Communication: This stage would allow the partners to recognize the problems in their relationships and work towards solving it.
Commitment: The relationship becomes a given, around which they arrange other aspects of their lives
Types of Growth (continue)

Intensifying: During this stage, couples usually agree to make their relationship exclusive, meaning having complete faith to one another. They may immerse themselves in the relationship and may feel that they can’t be together enough.
Revising: Not technically a stage in the development of all romantic relationships. But it’s still important to note.
Partners come out of the clouds to look at their relationship more realistically. It’s past the ‘love craze’ phase of a relationship and usually occurs past a longer time span of being together.
Commitment: Which is the decision to stay with the relationship. Leads partners to invest more in a relationship to maintain satisfaction.

Navigation
Ongoing process of staying committed and living a life together despite individual disagreements.
In an established relationship, couples will continue to adjust and work through the problems encountered and accommodate the needs of their partner.

You would need to adjust and work through the problems, revisit old ones and accommodate the changes in each of your individual and relational lives to prevent conflicts

Relational Culture
Nucleus of Intimacy
Develop over time
Evolves and changes throughout the life of the relationship
I.e: Commemorating a special event such as birthdays or a memorable day within the relationship.

a private world of rules, understandings, meanings and patterns of acting and interpreting that partners create for their relationship.
Includes the ways in which a couple manages their relational dialectics. This type of relationship would include different rules and rituals. Couples would set out rules that are typically unspoken but known on both sides of the relationships. An example would be commemorating special times such as birthdays and holidays in a relationship

Placemaking
Process of creating a comfortable personal environment that reflects the values, experiences and tastes of the couple.

They are typically filled with personal items that relate to the individual within a relationship

Deterioration
Intrapsychic
Dyadic
Social support
Grave-dressing
Resurrection processes.

Relationship can end, and sometimes, it might’ve been because someone was cheating, or the significant other moves away for work or military service. There can be multiple reasons for a relationship to deteriorate. However, deterioration happens in series of stages

Intrapsychic Processes
One or both partners begin to feel dissatisfied with the relationship and focuses on their own thoughts in regards to the problems and shortcomings of the relationship.

Dyadic Processes
Involves the breakdown of established patterns, rules and rituals set in the relational culture.

Intrapsychic: Instead of aiming to solve the problem, the solution would be to think of an alternative to the relationship
Dyadic: Partners may stop talking to each other, no longer texting or calling or mention even the slightest thing such as updating each other when either one of them are running late.

Social Support
Grave-Dressing
Partners look to friends and family as to how they feel about the relationship.
Burying the relationship itself and accepting that it’s the end.
Resurrection Processes
Moving on with life without viewing the other person as an intimate.

Social Support: This would allow the partner to secure sympathy and support of others in regards to their side of the relationship. It’s not typically constructive as it would include furthering the breakup and push regrettable thoughts of actions.
Grave Dressing: We would work to make sense of the breakup and mentally process why it has failed and how it has affected us. It would include describing to others why the breakup occurred and why it was inevitable.
Resurrection Processes: We would view ourselves as being single again and we reorganize aspects of our lives in which we originally changed in order to accommodate the initial relationship.

Social Media and Romantic Relationships
Before social media, we were restricted
Long distance relationships made easy
Social media= easier to from and maintain relationships
New challenges
Misinterpretations
Giving false info about physical attractiveness
Cyberstalking
Cheating

Guidelines for Romantic Relationships

Engagement in Dual Perspective
Understanding of our own perspective as well as others
When you love someone, you want to be known by that person
You want to feel like the other partner takes your perspective into account
This requires us to get to know the other person really well and use that knowledge to guide out communicative choices

Practice Safe Sex
Reduce risk for getting STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases:
Like: chlamydia, herpes, HPV)
Committing to communication about safer sex is a matter of health and survival
Effective interpersonal communication can help ease the discomfort of negotiating safer sex.

Manage Conflict Effectively
Romantic bonds are important
Lack of skills of handling conflict can ruin a relationship
Many romantic relationships are not just loving
Arguments can turn violent
It is best to use verbal communication

Adapt Communication in Long-Distance Relationships
Majority of students are or have been in distance relationships
Problems or tensions can be resolved using communication
Greatest problem: lack of daily sharing of small events, and trust
Unrealistic expectations about time together
Unequal effort invested by both partners

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