Stages in Interpersonal Relationship

"Communication is to a relationship what breathing is to maintaining life"

Stages in Interpersonal Relationships

Contact

• Kind of perceptual contact- sense( see. touch, hear , smell)


• Form a mental and physical picture- gender, age, height


• there is usually interaction contact- superficial and relatively impersonal
  
• Start exchanging basic information that is preliminary to :-


• Intense involvement ( "Hello, my name is Tasha")


• initiate interaction ("May i join you?")


• Invitational communication ("May i buy you a drink?")


• At this stage, we decide whether to pursue in the relationship
  
• In face to face interaction, physical appearance is especially important because it is readily seen
  
• Through verbal and non-verbal behaviours, qualities such as friendliness, warmth, openness and dynamism also are revealed.


• In contrast, computer mediated contact, attitudinal sameness and wanting essentially the same things may be almost influential in the beginning.
  
  
  

Involvement

• A sense of mutuality, of being connected develops
  
• Here we experiment and try to learn more about the other person


• At the initial phase of involvement, a kind of testing goes on


• You want to seek whether your initial judgement proves reasonable


• Questions will be asked:- ( Where do you work, What are you majoring in?)


• You might continue your involvement by intensifying your interaction by beginning to reveal yourself, though in a preliminary way


• In a dating relationship you might use a variety of strategies to help you move to the next stage and perhaps to intimacy.


• For eg: Increase contact with your partner tokens of affection such as gifts, cards or flowers
  
• Increase your own personal attractiveness


• Throughout the relationship process, especially during the involvement and early intimacy stages, we test or partner


• Try to find how our partner feels about the relationship.


• The strategies are :-


• Directness-ask partner directly how they feel,


• Indirect suggestions-joke bout a a shared future together or touch more intimately


• Public presentations- introduce your partner as your boyfriend/ girlfriend


• Third party- ask your mutual friends about your partners feelings and intentions

Intimacy

• Feelings that we cloud be honest and open when talking about our self our thoughts and feelings that we don't reveal in other relationships.


• Commit yourself still further o the other person and establish a relationship
  
• An individual becomes your best or closest friend, lover or companion


• All start sharing the same social networks


• Relationship satisfaction also increase with the move to this stage
  Intimacy as the feelings that you could be honest and open when talking about yourself, your thoughts


• The relationship satisfaction also increases with the move to this stage
  
• Intimacy stages divided to two:-
  
• Interpersonal commitment-


• two people commit themselves to each other in a private way


• Social bonding
  
• commitment is made in public ( family, friends & large public)


• We and our partner become a unit, an identifiable pair


• When intimacy stage involves a lifetime


• Security anxiety- ( Worry that our partner might leave us for someone else)


• Fulfillment Anxiety- (We may not be able to achieve a close, warm and special rapport)


• Excitement anxiety-( boredom and routine may set in or you'll lose your freedom and become trapped)

Deterioration

• Characterized by a weakening of the bonds between the friends and lovers


• Intrapersonal dissatisfaction (personal dissatisfaction with everyday interactions, begin to view the future negatively)


• If dissatisfaction grows, we pass the second phase, interpersonal deterioration


• You withdraw and grow farther apart
  
• Share less of our free time


• When we are together, there will be awkward silence, fewer disclosures, less physical contacts and lack of psychological closeness.
  
• relationship begins to deteriorate, the breadth and depth


• A process of deterioration, sometimes referred to as the reversal hypothesis. ( In the process of terminating a relationship, you may eliminate certain topics from your interpersonal interactions)


• you may also reduce the level of your self disclosure, revealing less and less of your inner feelings

Repair

• A stage that is not always pursued.


• May pause during deterioration and try to repair the relationship


• Intrapersonal repair ( analyze what went wrong and consider the ways of solving you relational difficulties.


• At this stage, consider changing your behaviours or perhaps changing your expectations of your partner
  
• To repair your relationship you might discuss this with your partner at the interpersonal relationship phase


• Might talk about the problem in the relationship, the changes you wanted to see


• Negotiating new agreements and new behaviours


• You and your partner might try to repair your relationships yourself


• Seek advice from friends, family or counsellor

Dissolution

• The stage where the bond between the individuals are broken


• Interpersonal separation- go to separate apartments, lead lives apart


• Social or public separation- marriage will end up in divorce.


• Some former partners change the definition of their relationship:- ex-lovers becomes friends
  
• Ex-partners begin to look up upon themselves as individuals rather than halves of a pair


• Try to establish a new and different life, either alone or with another person


• Some people continue to live psychologically- Recall all the sweet memory they spent with their partner

A divorce cake

Chapter 6 Universals of Interpersonal Relationship

Characteristics of Interpersonal Relationships

Relationship may be viewed as a continuum from the impersonal at one end to highly personal (that's interpersonal) at the other end. We can distinguish interpersonal relationships from impersonal relationships on the basis of three main factors:-

# Psychological data

# Explanatory Knowledge

# Personally Established Rules

Psychological Data

• In interpersonal relationship, people respond to each other chiefly as members of the class or group to which each belongs.

• For eg: Usually prof interacts to you as how he interacts with other students. When your relationship gets closer, you begin to respond to each other not as members of groups but as unique individuals.


• In impersonal relationships, the social or cultural roles of the person governs your interaction.


• In personal or interpersonal relationships, the psychological uniqueness of the person tells you how to interact.


• This progression from social to psychological data happens in US and in most Europeans cultures.


• Relationship more than seen


• eg: friendship ( Very close friends even after class / work)

Explanatory Knowledge

• In impersonal relationship you we can do a little more then describing a person or the person's way of communicating.


• A we get to know a person better, we can predict his/ her behaviour.


• We'll be able to explain a person's behaviour.


• For eg: Ms Cheryl is able to describe our behaviour, such as coming late to class.


• Ms Cheryl can go beyond these levels to explain the behaviour such as the reason we are late.

Personally Established Rules

• The rules of interaction are set down by social norms


• Students and prof behave towards each other in impersonal situations


• According to social norms established by their culture and society.


• As the relationship between students and professor becomes interpersonal, the social rules no longer regulate the interaction.


• They begin to see each other as unique individuals rather than student and prof.

A good way to begin the study of interpersonal relationship is to examine our own relationships ( past, present, or those we look forward to.