Developing & Maintaining Relationships

1. Developing and Maintaining
Relationships

2.  Explain key aspects of interpersonal
relationships
 Understand how and why we form
relationships
 Understand that every relationship has
advantages and disadvantages

3.  Consider how people in relationships
choose to divulge or withhold personal
information
 Outline the predictable stages of most
relationships

4. The
interconnections
and
interdependence
between two
individuals

5. The exchange of verbal and
nonverbal messages between
two people who have a
relationship and are
influenced by their partner’s
messages

6. A web of
relationships that
connect individuals
to one another

7.  Family
Small social group
bound by ties of
blood, civil
contract, and a
commitment to care
for one another

8.  Friendship
◦ Close and caring relationship
between two people
◦ Perceived as mutually
satisfying and beneficial

9.  Romantic Relationships
◦ Love
◦ Intimacy

10.  Online Relationships
◦ Virtual relationships
◦ Hyperpersonal
communication

11.  Companionship
 Stimulation
 Achieving goals
 Proximity
 Physical attraction
 Similarity

12.  Costs and rewards
◦ Social exchange of
costs and benefits
◦ Rewards
 Extrinsic
 Instrumental
 Intrinsic
◦ Costs

13.  Reducing Uncertainty
◦ Uncertainty reduction theory
◦ Monitoring
◦ Proactive Strategies
◦ Indirect Strategies

14.  Dialectical Tensions
◦ Relational dialectics theory
◦ Autonomy vs. Connection
◦ Openness vs. Closedness
◦ Predictability vs. Novelty

15.  Social Penetration Theory
(SPT)
How relationships move from
superficial levels to levels of
intimacy

16.  Communication Privacy
Management Theory (CPM)
◦ We own private information
◦ We control that information

17.  Strategic Topic Avoidance
◦ Maneuvering the conversation
away from undesirable topics

19.  Initiating Stage
◦ Make contact with another
◦ Many relationships don’t move
beyond this stage

20.  Exploratory Stage
◦ Small talk
◦ Uncertainty reduction

21.  Intensification Stage
◦ Personal self-disclosure
◦ Share affection verbally
◦ Pet names

22.  Stable Stage
◦ Integrating or becoming one
◦ Bonding by sharing public
messages about relationship

23.  Declining Stage
◦ Uncertainty Events
 Interference
 Unmet expectations
◦ Relationship Repair
 Repair tactics

24.  Termination Stage
◦ Passing away
Relationship gradually fades
◦ Sudden death
Unexpected termination for
one partner

25.  Reconciliation
◦ Spontaneous development
◦ Third-party mediation
◦ High affect
◦ Tacit persistence
◦ Mutual interaction
◦ Avoidance