Interpersonal Communication - Definitional Entry

Interpersonal communication has various aspects that help define a relationship. A relationship can develop beginning with two individuals and the many roles that take part in being a relationship can vary. The relationship between two people can evolve as it becomes more and more exposed to society. A system becomes established as well as expectations, which determines if the relationship is socially appropriate.
The unwritten (implicit and explicit) rules about behavior proposed by society are also known norms. These rules provide guidelines on how people should act whether it is for being a considerate household guest to being an ideal significant other. Interestingly enough these norms come about due to disruptive power in which “one person has the power to keep the other from doing what he or she wants to do.” Regardless of whether a relationship seems mutual it will always have one or the other who acts as the more dominant person or in other words, each individual has a certain role. A role is set of norms that fit in a subclass within society. Depending on a person’s role in a relationship, he or she is likely to encounter contradiction with their conscious by experiencing interrole or intrarrole conflict. The difference is that interrole contradicts more than one role and the other contradicts just a single role.
Through dialectics of relationships, the tension that may come up between two people can either belong to one of three main categories: 1) autonomy/connection, 2) certainty/uncertainty, and 3) openness/closedness.
There are also four top assumptions which mainly recognizes contradictions as the basic “drivers” of change and vitality, change occurs in the stability of all social systems, “we are at once both actors and objects of our own actions,” and we can understand one thing only if we already have prior knowledge of another phenomena for comparison. Altogether, the categories help explain the reasons why certain individuals can be so attached to others while others rather be solo or how some people can be more outgoing than others who prefer to be more reserved.
In 1975, Miller and Steinberg are two researchers who came up with four important concepts that differ high quality from low quality relationships. Self-disclosure has a great deal with it and it ties in with the building of trust and personal reasons for disclosing only certain information. The Johari Window is a great model that helps visualize how much each of us exposes about ourselves. Other aspects that correlate with self-disclosure would also include level of intimacy and attachment styles. Whether it is a relationship between different genders, family members, or higher authority there are both reassuring and degrading statements that could affect the relationship. Nonetheless, one’s behavior should always be considered because it could either support or hurt another’s self value.
Knowing that norms establish “traditionally known” guidelines for appropriate behavior, different judgments can be made about different relationships. For example, one roommate could get a little too comfortable and end up getting into their roommate’s business or perhaps an employee talked back their boss. With the “norms” these situations are considered absurd. However, other people get to know each other and make their own rules for their relationship. The bases of human attraction consist of proximity (the convenience of someone’s close presence), similarity (having many things in common with each other), and situations (being able to empathize, dealing with anxiety, or reciprocating the likeness feeling). In addition to initiating an “attraction” there are also specific characteristics that are always taken into consideration. A relationship must have some sort of context, time constraints, information exchange, trust, affection, and control. When a person takes on a role in the relationship both must take turns contributing these characteristics, which would determine the outcome of their relationship. Especially when it comes down to a family, the family becomes a support system for each member and together they can build a stronger bond and have healthy, positive relationships that could surely last a lifetime because they have a different understanding with one another. A model that helps visualize the life cycle of relationships would be the staircase model of human relationships.
Maintaining relationships and breaking them takes some work. The theory of relationship disengagement discusses the different phases one must go through in order to end a personal relationship. The first phase is known as the intrapsychic phase, followed by the dyadic phase, the social phase, and then the grave dressing phase. On the other hand, to retain a long-term relationship it should include positivity, openness, assurance, network, and tasks. It will help keep the relationship striving and it would allow it to continuously develop hopefully into something even greater. Keeping ties with family and friends tend to benefit and individual and how he or she can perceive them self in society according to their interpersonal communication with others.

Tubbs, Stewart, and Sylvia Moss. Human Communication. 11th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008.