DeVito Interpersonal Messages, 4e Instructor’s Manual
Chapter 9: Interpersonal Relationships
Chapter Overview
This chapter explores the nature of interpersonal relationships, including the stages
relationships go through, the movements within relationships, the dark side of
interpersonal relationships, relationship types and theories, and the role of culture and
technology in relationships.
Interpersonal relationships have both advantages and disadvantages. Among the
advantages are that they stimulate you, help you learn about yourself, and generally
enhance your self-esteem. Among the disadvantages are that they force you to expose
your vulnerabilities, make great demands on your time, and often cause you to abandon
other relationships. Most relationships occur in stages, including: contact, involvement,
intimacy, deterioration, repair, and dissolution.
In contact there is first perceptual contact and then interaction. Involvement includes a
testing phase (will this be a suitable relationship?) and an intensifying of the interaction;
often a sense of mutuality, of connectedness, begins. In intimacy there is an
interpersonal commitment and perhaps a social bonding, in which the commitment is
made public.
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Chapter Objectives
1 Describe the advantages and disadvantages of interpersonal relationships and
assess your own relationships in light of these.
2. Explain the relationship stages of contact, involvement, intimacy, deterioration,
3. Define jealousy, bullying, and relationship violence and use the suggestions for
managing such relationship dark sides.
Student Objectives
Content Objectives:
To better understand the dynamics of relationships
To explain why you form relationships
To recognize the ways culture and technology influence your relationships
Skills Objectives:
To communicate to develop and maintain meaningful interpersonal relationships
Skills Evaluation
1. Objective: To communicate to develop and maintain meaningful interpersonal
relationships in friendship, love, family, and work relationships. Use the form
Enriching Relationship Skills Evaluation Form at the end of Chapter 9 in this
2. Objective: To communicate more effectively in friendship, love, family, and
work relationships.
Chapter Outline
I. Advantages and Disadvantages of Interpersonal Relationships
II. Relationship Stages
A. Contact
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F. Dissolution
G. Movement Among the Stages: Explaining the Arrows
2. Turning points
4. Relationship politeness
III. The Dark Side of Interpersonal Relationships
A. Relationship jealousy
1. Types of jealousy
2. Dealing with jealousy
C. Relationship Violence
Strategies
The Relationship Journey. Students map a relationship (romantic or friendship)
Enrich a Relationship. Have students choose to enrich an interpersonal
relationship that already exists, but that has, in some way, been neglected or did
not develop as fully as they would like. Examples are with a grandparent they
Talk. Have students (in pairs or small groups) discuss the materials in
“Interpersonal Choice Points” in the text. Several situations adapt to role-playing
as well.
Talking Cherishing. This Skill Building Exercise at the end of the chapter sets
up a lively discussion of concepts and theories in interpersonal relationships. To
Ethical Messages. Have students complete the checklist Your Obligation to
Reveal Yourself in the chapter and discuss why they responded as they did.
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Bullying Awareness. Assign small teams of students to investigate recent
situations of bullying (cyber or other) that have occurred in the news. Report what
Vignette
This vignette is useful because it’s an example of an extraordinary romantic relationship
and is an effective way of establishing the idea that all relationships are special and
different from each other.
The story is told that in ancient Greece a young man named Cupid fell in love with
Psyche. Cupid’s mother Venus was jealous of Psyche’s beauty. Venus did horrible
things to her. Yet, Psyche did what was asked of her in hope of finding a husband.
Cupid promised to marry Psyche, but in return she could never know his true idenity.
She got to stay in a palace and have eveything her heart desired, but she was sad,
because she did not really know her husband. Her sisters came to visit her and
encouraged her to try to find out who her husband was. They told her to prepare a knife
and kill him if he was a monster. She arose early and prepared to see her husband,
Cupid. Cupid found out and was very angry. He said that “love can not stay where there
is no trust.”
Activities for Student-Based Learning
Turning Points
Ask each student to take out a sheet of paper and list all the turning points that he or
she has had in a romantic relationship. If they prefer, students can think of a book or
movie and list all the major turning points for that relationship. After a few minutes, ask
students to share what they wrote. Have a discussion on the significant turning points.
Were they similar? Were they different? Is there a difference between genders? What
made these turning points so significant?
Relationship Stages
Similar to the first activity, ask students to think about the relationship stages of former
romantic relationships. Have them list examples of behaviors for each stage of the
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Relationship Violence
Have a representative from a local domestic violence shelter come to class to share
local statistics and situations. In addition, some shelters have domestic violence
survivors who are willing to share their stories with students. Have students complete a
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Enriching Relationship Skills Evaluation Form
Class: _____________________ Section: ______________ Date: _______________
Student Name: ___________________________________ Skills Evaluation: _______
2. Describe the type of relationship (friendship, family, workplace) you have with this
person. Why are you seeking a closer relationship?
3. Describe your plan for meeting with this person. Report how and when you made an
4. Tell what took place during the visit, and describe the tone of the visit. At what stage
were you the last time you saw this person? Did you sense the stage had stayed the
same or deteriorated? Did you get any indications of testing, increased or decreased
trust, wariness, increased or decreased intimacy, and the like?
5. In retrospect, evaluate your plan for the visit and the ways in which you
communicated during the visit.
6. What do you see as the outcome of the visit? Was it positive or negative overall?