October Blog Post

In class, we have talked about interpersonal communication which the book defines as , “the interpersonal or exchange that occurs between people who are in a independent relationship.” In other words, a relationship where a person relies on the other person to fulfill a need. The book then goes on to say how all contents within a relationship are marked by a time and our perceptions on how we build and sustain our relationships. For example, I met most of my friends in high school through my high school dance team when I joined my senior year. All of us had a common bond and wanted the same goals and aspirations as a team and worked toward those goals together. When I left high school, I realized that because I had graduated and moved on from high school, I wasn't in the same “frame” as everyone else anymore, or mindset for that matter. Because of this,the girls who were still on the team did not feel to engage with me anymore and distanced themselves .

With talking about Interpersonal communication , we talked about Baxter's Relational Dialectics that consists of, “Connection vs separation, predictability vs novelty, and openness vs closedness”.  One example where I experienced the “openness and closeness” part of a relationship is a conversation I had with my boyfriend one time after he had a tough day at work. Since I am the kind of person that wears my heart on my sleeve, I usually like to vent my emotions and get them out right away so they don't bottle up because If i do that I just get anxious about it. My boyfriend on the other hand brushes almost anything off and has a different mindset when something is bother him. After he got done with work and I asked him what was wrong, he just was short about it and said I don't want to talk about it. Me being me, this made me worry even more so I started to ask questions to get the gist of what was making him so upset. This didn't work out so well as it made him shutdown even more. It turns out me almost forcing him to be open with him about it actually made him more closed off towards me, which was the opposite of what I wanted to do. I think it's important to know these aspects of communication within a relationship because, as Baxter state , “Social life is a dynamic knot of contradictions, a ceaseless interplay between contrary or opposing tendencies.” (https://www.businesstopia.net/communication/relational-dialectics-theory)