Communications Chapter 6 Homework Bonded Step families Are Characterized Low Dissension And Avoidance And relatively High Stepfamily Involvement

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Chapter 6:

Intimacy within Partnerships and Families

Chapter Preview

• Communicating Commitment

• Self-Disclosure, Privacy Management, and Intimacy

• Sexuality and Communication in Families

• Intimacy Factors: Effort, Sacrifice, Forgiveness, and Sanctification

• Barriers to Intimacy

• Maintaining Intimacy Across Diverse Family Forms

Chapter Outline

I. Introduction

a. Intimacy: Experiential outcome of an interpersonal, transactional process whereby

two individuals communicate in ways that are transparent and responsive

i. Family connections depend on members’ communicative efforts to create

connections and intimacy

ii. Cluster of interpersonal emotions including love, warmth, passion, and joy

b. All definitions of intimacy share one important feature: a feeling of closeness and

c. Reflects each member’s past intimate experiences, current needs, perception of the

other, and desire for maintaining or increasing connections within the relationship

d. Needs and expectations for intimacy change throughout the life of the

family/partnership

i. Relational calibration occurs when members of the family system update or

alter their needs or expectations to bring the family into balance

II. Communicating Commitment

a. Commitment: ongoing, intentional choice to maintain a relationship

i. Personal commitment: want to stay; based on rewards inherent to the

relationship itself

1. It is through personal commitment that loving relationships remain a

vital and vibrant part of one’s life

2. Implies an intense, intrinsic desire to be with a partner in the future

ii. Moral commitment: ought to stay; based on an obligation to the partner

iii. Structural commitment: have to stay; based on barriers to leaving the

relationship and the absence of viable alternatives

b. Strong commitment can be challenged over time and during challenges

c. Depth of commitment is associated with higher relationship satisfaction, stability, and

maintenance behaviors

d. Commitment talk is supported by intensity, repetition, and codification

e. Express and celebrate commitment through a ritual (e.g., engagement, wedding)

III. Self-Disclosure, Privacy Management, and Intimacy

a. Self-disclosure: one person intentionally reveals personal or private information

about him or herself to one or more others who would not discover otherwise

i. To experience intimacy, others must respond, verbally or nonverbally, in a

manner that conveys validation, understanding, and caring

ii. Creates intersubjectivity: the extent to which each is communicator is able to

access the other person’s thoughts and feelings

b. Trust is the foundation of disclosure; the expectation that another person or members

c. Too much or too little information shared in a relationship, or consistently high levels

of negative self-disclosure, can lead to conflict and anger

d. Family background and intimacy

i. Family of origin experiences, cultural heritage, and gender set up expectations

for appropriate management of privacy boundaries

ii. Partner relationships

1. Marital self-disclosure involves a disclosure and responses, perceived

as supportive, understanding, accepting, or caring

2. Self and partner disclosure positively predict ratings of intimacy

3. Negative disclosures negatively linked to satisfaction

4. Health issues raise disclosure concerns for couples; may differ on

whether, or how, to share this type of information

iii. Parent-child relationships

1. Mothers receive more disclosures from children than fathers

2. Parents who are more nurturing/supportive get more disclosures

3. Smaller families, desire to remain interconnected, and accessibility to

mediated communication contribute to a greater sense of openness

4. Adolescents tend to narrow topics parents can share or regulate, which

leads to subterfuge (e.g., partial disclosure, distortion, lying)

e. Managing privacy boundaries

i. By making it a priority to spend time together and engage in everyday talk,

couples and families establish patterns of disclosure critical to building and

maintaining relationships

1. Debriefing conversations: talk about how day unfolded; related

positively to marital satisfaction

2. If families avoid intimate and difficult conversations, they limit their

ability to interact and work together in difficult situations

ii. Face to face or via technology, family members must navigate private

information, establishing shared rules for managing privacy boundaries

1. Boundary turbulence: occurs when messages are not coordinated

(a) Common in both parent-child and sibling relationships

(b) Medical advancements may create turbulence (e.g., sharing

genetic testing results, sharing decision to use sperm donor)

IV. Sexuality and Communication in Families

a. Sexuality: Members’ sexual identities, history of sexual issues, mutual perceptions of

each other’s needs, feelings for their partners, the implicit messages within their

sexual expression, and the nature of their sexual communication

b. Sexual communication: Individuals exchange verbal and nonverbal messages to co-

create meaning about sexual beliefs, attitudes, values, and behavior

1. Monological sex: One or both partners attempt to satisfy only their

own personal needs

2. Dialogical sex: Mutual concern and the sharing of pleasure; achieved

1. Expressive pathway: Reciprocal sexual self-disclosure contributes to

relationship satisfaction, which leads to greater sexual satisfaction

2. Instrumental pathway: One’s own sexual disclosure leads to greater

partner understanding of one’s sexual likes and dislikes; promotes

greater sexual satisfaction

vi. Sexuality remains important through lifespan, yet sexual expectations are

altered due to developmental changes and health issues

d. Parent-child communication about sexuality

1. Mothers discuss sex more frequently with kids, particularly daughters

2. Culture influences sex talk

3. Increasingly, fathers play a significant role in the sexual socialization

of their children through the discussions of sociosexual issues

4. Parents are more likely to talk about sex with daughters than with sons

iv. Four principles of effective parent-child communication about sex

v. Families differ greatly in approach to discussing sex and sexuality

1. Sexually neglectful families: sex discussed very little, discussion

abstract/indirect, no link between the topic and personal experience

2. Sexually abusive families: boundary confusion between individuals

and generations; perpetrator-victim communication pattern, resulting

V. Intimacy Factors: Effort, Sacrifice, Forgiveness, and Sanctification

a. Effort: Unless family relationships receive conscious attention, relationships “go on

automatic pilot” and eventually stagnate or fall apart

i. Conscious shared determination to focus on relationship and keep family ties

at high priority

ii. Balancing work and home obligations

c. Sacrifice: Choosing to give up something in order to benefit another person

i. Demonstrates strong commitment, high satisfaction, and longer relationships

ii. Shows effort that shifts away from self interest

iii. Attitudes about sacrifice predicted marital success and relational maintenance

in the early years of marriage

iv. Whether or not partners value sacrifices made to maintain their relationship

may depend on other characteristics of the individuals (e.g., attachment styles)

or the relationship (e.g., intimacy levels)

v. Occurs across relationships

d. Forgiveness: A relational process whereby harmful conduct is acknowledged by one

or both partners, the harmed partner extends undeserved mercy on transgressor, one

or both experience a transformation from negative to positive, and the meaning of the

relationship is renegotiated with possibility of reconciliation

e. Sanctification: Psychological process through which aspects of life are perceived as

having a spiritual character and significance; source of relational connectedness

i. Theistic, or a manifestation of one’s images, beliefs, or experience of God;

this is more common for believers in a God or deity

ii. Transcendence, ultimate purpose, and timelessness that creates a sense of the

spiritual without reference to a specific deity

ii. Romantic jealousy most commonly considered

iii. Sibling jealousy is tied to favoritism, which can lead to increased sibling

rivalry, lowered self esteem, and perceptions of low family support

b. Deception: involves communicating or withholding information knowingly and

intentionally for the purpose of creating false belief

VII. Maintaining Intimacy across Diverse Family Forms

a. Relational quality for same-sex partners is built from feelings of equality, ongoing

attraction, and shared decision-making

b. Stepfamilies can also be sources of great satisfaction and intimacy, although deep

relational connections usually develop more slowly

c. Single parents may need to find more intimacy and support within their extended

families because they do not have a partner

i. Fearing the loss of parental intimacy, children may intentionally or

unintentionally sabotage a parent’s efforts to develop new romantic ties

ii. Single parents, pressured with parenting on own, may report difficulty in

sustaining strong, intimate adult relationships

VIII. Discussion Questions

a. What does marital and/or committed partnership intimacy mean to you? Provide two

examples of relationships characterized by intimate communication.

d. Under what circumstances, if any, would you recommend withholding full self-

disclosure of a very serious issue in a marital and/or family relationship?

e. After you say “I forgive you” how long does it take until you actually forgive? When

do you know you have been forgiven? Can someone ever be completely forgiven?

Does the expression “forgive and forget” ring true – can you ever forget?

IX. Case Study Questions

a. What different types of relational intimacy did you see in “Sister–in-law and Best

Friends”? How does each pair develop intimacy differently? What barriers to

intimacy could you imagine occurring between the three?

b. In what ways did Julie and Max reaffirm their love and commitment to each other?

What do you think is most effective for them in maintaining a strong bond? Do you

think they will be able to overcome their fertility struggles? Why/why not? What

recalibration might they need?

Activities

Commitment Talk: Ask students to write for 5-10 minutes about times when they have

participated in commitment talk with other people (i.e., family members, friends, romantic

partners). Analyze those commitment conversations using the following discussion questions:

• In which of their relationships have these conversations occurred the most frequently?

• Under what circumstances have these types of conversations taken place (e.g.,

celebrations, crises)?

• Have they ever initiated the commitment talk? If so, what compelled them to do so? What

effect (short term or long term) did this conversation have on the relationship, if any?

Students may share their reflections in small groups or in large group discussions.

Forgiveness Scale: Provide students with the Forgiveness Scale (Rye et al., 2001) below. Ask

them to calculate their scores and bring them to class. You may also ask them to reflect on their

responses in a journal log. In class, you can discuss the scale and the difference between the

absence of negative and presence of positive forgiveness behaviors. Do students think this is a

valid measure of forgiveness? Why or why not?

Think of how you have responded to the person who has wronged or mistreated you. Indicate the

degree to which you agree or disagree with the following statements on a scale of 1 (strongly

disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

1. I can’t stop thinking about how I was wronged by this person.

6. I pray for the person who wronged me.

7. If I encountered the person who wronged me I would feel at peace.

8. This person’s wrongful actions have kept me from enjoying life.

9. I have been able to let go of my anger toward the person who wronged me.

10. I become depressed when I think of how I was mistreated by this person.

11. I think that many of the emotional wounds related to this person’s wrongful actions have

Scoring:

• Reverse code: 1,3,4,5,8,10,12,14

• Absence of Negative subscale items: ADD 1,3,4,5,8,9,10,11,12,14 = ____

• Presence of Positive subscale items: ADD 2,6,7,13,15 = ____

Self-Disclosure Styles: Ask students to rank themselves on a scale from 1-5 (1= low in self-

disclosure (more private), 5 = high in self-disclosure (more open)). Then, divide the class into

groups based upon their self-rankings. Ask students to discuss in their group how they feel about

self- disclosure and how it plays a role in their lives and relationships. To whom are they most

likely to self-disclose? When are they most likely to self-disclose? Each group should choose a

representative to speak on behalf of their group to the rest of the class, and as a whole, the class

should discuss the differences (and similarity) of responses among the groups. What does this

information reveal to them about how to build a relationship with people who have different

comfort levels with self-disclosure? Are any students interested in changing their approach to

self-disclosure?

Self-Disclosure Backgrounds and Personal Preferences: Ask students to interview their

nuclear family members and two of their good friends about their self-disclosure practices:

• How open or private do they feel they are?

• Under what conditions will they disclose personal information to someone else?

Debriefing Behavior Journal: Students should spend a week keeping track of the debriefing

conversations they have, how frequently and with whom. Ask them to reflect upon the purposes

that each of these debriefing conversations serve (e.g., catharsis, relationship maintenance, etc.),

and then to write about how comfortable they would feel self-disclosing something more

important or personal to the person(s) with which they held debriefing conversations. What do

their findings demonstrate about the functions of debriefing conversations? Are they linked to

self-disclosure behaviors? Why or why not?

Sexual Communication: Have students poll their friends about the development of sexual

communication within their family system. Suggest that they use such questions as (or develop a

list as a class):

• What words were used in your family for “private parts” of your body when you were a

child?

• How did you learn where “babies come from”?

Cross Cultural Differences in Family Sex Talk: Ask students to interview someone who grew

up in a different culture from their own and ask him/her to describe how talk about sexuality

occurred in his/her family-of-origin. Students might also consider how comfortable (or not) their

interviewee was in answering questions about sex. Then they should record the answers and

compare or contrast them to their own experience in a two-page paper (or journal log).

Sex Communication in the Media: Sex is everywhere in the media. Ask students to find one

example of healthy sex communication between partners or parent-child in a TV show or movie.

How easy was the search health sex communication? How easy is it to find unhealthy sex

communication? To what extent do the media emphasize the importance of communication in

sexuality and intimacy? Why does the depiction of sex communication matter?

Comparing Own and Others’ Parent-Child Sex Talk Experiences: The following activity

encourages students to reflect upon their own family’s sex communication, and how it relates to

others’ and to depictions in the media. Show the episode “I Think We Should Have Sex” (Season