RELATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

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RELATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
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What is a Relationship

• Interaction between two people over time
• Verbal and nonverbal exchanges

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Aspects of Interaction

• CONTENT
• what people say and do breadth and depth
• PATTERN
• Structure of how people say and do sequences
• CONTEXT
• Interaction takes place within a context that
  affects meaning
• CONTINUITY
• Past, present, future

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Properties of Relationship Development

• Partners interact more often, for longer periods
  of time, and in a widening array of settings
• Partners attempt to restore proximity when
  separated, and feel comfortable when proximity is
  regained
• Partners open up to each other, in the sense
  that they disclose secrets and share physical
  intimacies
• Partners become less inhibited, more willing to
  share positive negative feelings, to praise
  and criticize each other.

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• Partners develop their own communication system
  and become ever more efficient in using it
• Partners increase their ability to map and
  anticipate each others views of social reality
• They begin to synchronize their goals behavior
  develop stable interpersonal patterns
• They increase in the relationship, thus their
  investment enhancing its importance in their
  life space
• they begin increasingly to feel that their
  separate interests are inextricably tied to the
  well-being of their relationship

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• Partners increase their liking, trust love for
  each other
• Partners see the relationship as irreplaceable,
  or at least as unique
• Partners more and more relate to others as a
  couple rather than as individuals