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Chapter 9
Managing Interpersonal Relationships
CHAPTER OUTCOMES
In this chapter, students will learn:
• Ways to use self-disclosure to build relationships
• How to manage relationship tensions
CHAPTER OUTLINE
SELF-DISCLOSURE RELATIONSHIPS
When you share private information with others, you open up your innermost self to them. Such sharing,
known as self-disclosure, is the foundation for intimacy in a relationship. But it’s not as simple as
SELF-DISCLOSURE AND RELATIONSHIP DEVELOPMENT
• Self-disclosure is when you reveal private information about yourself to others, and it is a key part of
building and sustaining relationships. When you self-disclose to someone, you reveal aspects of
yourself that you had previously kept hidden.
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1. Outermost layers include demographic characteristics, such as your birthplace, age, gender, and
ethnicity, and are usually revealed when you meet someone for the first time.
2. Intermediate layers contain your attitudes and opinions about things like music, politics, food,
and entertainment.
• Intimacy is the feeling of closeness between you and others that develops with deeper and broader
self-disclosure. It is self-perpetuating: the more intimacy you feel, the more you disclose; and as you
disclose more, feelings of intimacy deepen. The following conditions must be met for self-disclosure:
o
Both partners must disclose private thoughts and feelings, or the relationship isn’t intimate—it’s
one-sided.
COMMUNICATING SELF-DISCLOSURE
• Studies suggest five important facts about how people self-disclose:
1. Self-disclosure seems to promote mental health and relieve stress, especially when information is
troubling.
2. People self-disclose more during online interactions than during face-to-face exchanges because
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Studies suggest that both men and women feel more comfortable disclosing to females than to
males.
4. People of all cultures vary widely in the degree to which they self-disclose. Some people
naturally share more of their thoughts and feelings, while others don’t. Trying to force someone
SELF-DISCLOSURE SKILLS
• There are six ways to strengthen self-disclosure skills:
1. Know your thoughts and feelings. You’re ethically obligated to be certain about the truth of
information before you share it; this is especially important when disclosing intimate feelings,
such as romantic interest.
2. Know your audience. Think carefully about how others will perceive your disclosure and how it
3. Don’t make assumptions about gender. Just because someone is a woman doesn’t mean she
will disclose freely, and just because a person is a man doesn’t mean he’s incapable of discussing
his feelings. Be aware of how individual people respond to
your disclosures and adjust accordingly.
4. Be sensitive to cultural differences. When you’re interacting with people from cultural
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5. Don’t force others to self-disclose. It’s unethical and destructive to try to make others share
personal information with you if they don’t want to. When others disclose to you, actively listen,
6. When others disclose to you, actively listen and express empathy. Be sure to treat others’
disclosures with the same respect you expect when you share information. Show them you are
MANAGING
RELATIONSHIP
TENSIONS
Self-disclosure can create positive outcomes, including a sense of trust and increased intimacy. But it also
brings with it challenges—such as how to avoid feeling vulnerable and how to retain a sense of your
separate self as you get closer to others. Learning how to resolve such tensions is critical for maintaining
healthy, happy interpersonal relationships.
• Relational dialectics are competing impulses or tensions that often arise in your feelings toward your
relational partners. For example, sometimes you want your partner to be predictable, but then again,
you don’t want things to get boring. Such dialectics aren’t necessarily bad for relationships, and they
occur naturally as you become more intimate.
OPENNESS VERSUS PROTECTION
• While people want to be open with their relationship partners, they also desire to keep private
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• The communication privacy management theory describes how individuals create information
boundaries by choosing carefully the kind of private information they reveal and the people with
whom they share it. These boundaries are constantly shifting, depending on the degree of risk
associated with disclosing information.
o
The more comfortable people feel disclosing, the more likely they are to reveal sensitive
information.
o
Within families, different communication rules exist. Breaking a family communication rule by
forcing discussion of a “forbidden” topic can cause intense emotional discomfort and may even
prompt the family to exclude the “rule breaker” from future family interactions.
AUTONOMY VERSUS CONNECTION
• This refers to the fact that as we form close relationships to bond with others, we feel our own
identity dissolving, and we may choose to pull back and reclaim some of our autonomy, or
independence.
• In a romantic relationship that enters the integrating stage, this can feel more pronounced.
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NOVELTY VERSUS PREDICTABILITY
• This explains the tension between people’s need for stability and their need for excitement and
change.
• In romantic relationships, romances are more successful when the partners act in predictable ways
that reduce uncertainty, yet this can also trigger boredom. As you get to know people better, the
excitement you felt when the relationship was new wears off, and things can start to feel boring.
SUSTAINING
YOUR
RELATIONSHIP
Some relationships make it, and some don’t, and there’s not much you can do about it, right? Wrong.
Relationships don’t survive because of fate or magic; they survive because people invest time and energy
into making them work. You can help your relationships endure by learning relational maintenance
tactics and by providing support when others need it.
RELATIONAL MAINTENANCE
Positivity
• Positivity is communicating in a cheerful and optimistic fashion, doing unsolicited favors, and giving
unexpected gifts; it is arguably the most powerful maintenance tactic in sustaining healthy
relationships and is routinely cited as the most important maintenance tactic for ensuring happiness.
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• You use positivity when you try to make interactions with others enjoyable, give others compliments,
and strive to be fun, upbeat, and optimistic.
Assurances
• Assurances are messages that emphasize how much your relationship partners mean to you, that point
out how important the relationships are to you, and that show you see a secure future together.
• You use assurances when you regularly tell your partners how important they are to you, talk about
future plans, and do and say things to demonstrate the depth of your feelings.
Self-Disclosure
• Self-disclosure is the revealing of private information about yourself to others in interpersonal
communication; it can foster intimacy with another person.
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o
You undermine self-disclosure when you make fun of or criticize your relationship partners’
perspectives, routinely hide important information, and share their confidential information with
others.
o To foster disclosure with your lovers, friends, and family members, routinely:
• Make time just to talk.
• Encourage sharing thoughts and feelings about issues that matter to them.
SUPPORTIVE COMMUNICATION
• Supportive communication is when you express emotional support and offer personal assistance to
others when they need it.
o Skillful supportive messages convey sincere sympathy, concern, and encouragement. Messages
are not supportive when they mock another person’s need for support or indicate that the person
is somehow inadequate or blameworthy.
• Communication scholar Amanda Holmstrom offers these suggestions for providing competent
supportive communication:
1. Make sure the person is ready to talk, and if the person appears too upset to talk, don’t push it.
2. Find the right place and time where you can have a quiet conversation. Avoid distracting settings
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3. Ask good questions by starting with open-ended questions and following up with more targeted
questions. Don’t assume that because you’ve been in a similar situation, you know what someone
is going through. Resist any urge to say, “I know just how you feel.”
4. Legitimize, don’t minimize or dismiss the problem or the significance of the person’s feelings by
5. Listen actively and show interest in what the person is saying. Make eye contact, lean toward the
individual, and provide feedback like “Uh-huh” and “Yeah” when appropriate.
7. Show concern and give praise to let the person know you genuinely care and are concerned about
his or her well-being. Build the person up by praising his or her
strength in handling this challenge.
CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Do you feel that it is necessary to self-disclose everything to a romantic partner? Are there any
circumstances that one should refrain from self-disclosure to a romantic partner? If so, why?
Give an example.
• This question can spark an energetic discussion with a wide range of opinions. Help students use
2. Do you know someone who always comes across as negative? Do you know someone who always
comes across as positive? Compare and contrast your relationship with the negative and the
positive person. How do their attitudes affect your relationship with each?
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• Discuss with students how positive interpersonal communication is one of the keys to sustaining a
3. How do you think the concept of autonomy versus connection affects the relationship between
young adults and parents? How does this concept affect a couple in a long-term relationship?
• Using the examples generated by the class, discuss possible solutions to the tensions between
4. Review the social penetration theory discussed in your textbook and identify five topics that you
would place in the outermost layer of your “onion.” Explain why you selected these five topics.
Can you assume that others will select the same five topics? Why or why not?
• Open a discussion with students about the differences between what some people consider private
5. What are the ways we can undermine self-disclosure in our interpersonal relationships? What
are some reasons that we might do this to someone we care about? How could we instead use
self-disclosure to build our relationships?
• Ask students to discuss why undermining self-disclosure can be so damaging to a relationship.
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1.
TMI in Pop Culture
Goal: To explore the concepts of openness in self-disclosure.
Time: 25 minutes
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1. Divide the class into groups of three or four.
2. Ask each group to brainstorm and select individuals in popular media who they feel reveal “TMI”
3. Have each group present their results and discuss as a class. Ask students to speculate about the
effects of being a public figure and self-disclosure. How would their examples be received if the
celebrities were just “normal” citizens?
2. If I Were in Your Shoes Skits
Goal: To allow students to practice sustaining relationship skills.
Time: 60 minutes
1. Divide students into four groups.
2. Have each group choose one of the following scenarios:
a. Scenario A: Your best friend tells you that she is having an affair. You are good friends with
her husband as well.
d. Scenario D: Your parents just gave you a little extra money to make it through the semester.
Your roommate asked to borrow $50.00. She has never paid you back from the last $50.00
loan.
3. Explain that each group should write and perform two small skits related to their scenario. One
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4. Have each group perform their skits and discuss.
3. Good Friends Exercise
Goal: To help students understand the importance of self-disclosure in maintaining friendships.
Time: 25 minutes
1. Divide the class into four or five groups.
2. Have each group sit in a separate circle, and elect one student to be the note taker.
3. Explain that the goal for each group is to have each person answer the following question: “What
does it mean to be a good friend?” Once a person has answered, each group member asks that
4. Once complete, bring the groups back together and ask them to identify how many of the answers
4.
Relating to Relationships Exercise
Goal: To allow students to explore relationship dialectics.
Time: 20 minutes
1. Ask students to spend five minutes listing five social situations that make them uncomfortable.
3. Have the groups review their lists, and then select five examples for this exercise. Ask students to
use these examples as the basis for a discussion of how these social situations are affected by the
following:
a. Openness versus Protection
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4. Ask each group to share one example and explain how they think the three relationship dialectics
5.
A Supportive Communication Perfect Date
Goal: To help students identify what traits and situations encourage supportive communication.
Time: 45 minutes
1. Divide students into groups of three or four.
2. Ask the groups to review the guidelines for supportive communication in the textbook. Ask them to
design three options for a “perfect date,” with the goal of the date being to provide your date with
MEDIA RESOURCES
1.
Brené Brown: The Power of Vulnerability
In this TED talk, Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston, discusses her
2.
“Adult Children”
This episode of This American Life features four stories of the difficult relationships experienced by
parents and grown children. The stories range in time from three minutes to 27 minutes and can be
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3.
Meet the Patels (Four in a Billion Pictures, 2014)
This film follows Ravi Patel as his traditional Hindu parents attempt to find him a wife. Have students
4.
Relational Dialectics in Interpersonal Communication: Parts 1–4
Professor John Ulrich of Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, discusses relational
dialectics in interpersonal communication in this series of 10-minute videos. You can access Part 1
5.
Online Love and Infidelity. We’re in the Game, What Are the Rules?
In this 19-minute video, Dr. Michelle Drouin discusses building and maintaining connections with
friends, relationship partners, and lovers through the internet. She discusses how the online