Interpersonal Relationship Analysis through Observation
Introduction
Relationships in human beings refer to the state of connection between two or more people based on some common ground, such as blood, marriage, or friendship. According to Young (2008), Human beings are inherently social creatures. An interpersonal relationship is a deep acquaintance, or close association, interaction or bond between two or more people. Such a relationship may involve emotions and even strong feelings. Interpersonal communication is the general way two or more people will exchange information either verbally or nonverbally (Solomon et al., 2016). Verbal communication includes information transferred through speech.
On the other hand, non-verbal communication happens through facial expressions, body movements, posture, eye contact, paralanguage, or physiological changes. There is intensive research to determine whether there is a link between interpersonal communication and interpersonal relationship. Does one affect the other? People sharing an interpersonal relationship may exhibit different behavioral styles within themselves, which is different from others. There are four types of interpersonal relationships, which include family relationships, romantic relationships, acquaintanceships, and friendships.
Interpersonal Relationships
Family relationships involve the connection of people on the ground of blood or some type of kinship. In this case, marriage is concerned. This family relationship can extend to relatives of your relatives. For example, the eldest brother of your father becomes your uncle. Ideally, family relationships run for a lifetime in most cases (Xu et al., 2019). This means, for instance, that your biological mother remains your mother irrespective of anything. There is no possible way to undo this action. One may only denounce his/her biological parent by not recognizing him due to disagreement, dislike, or other reasons. Still, the fact will remain that the two are related as either father and son or father and daughter. Family members can have different roles to play in the relationship. For example, parents have a role to provide, support, care, and discipline their children. However, some of these roles reverse when children grow into teenagers and adults when their parents become old. Mostly, these adults will provide care and support their aged parents. People tend to have stronger bonding with their family members, especially if they grew together as a family (Xu, 2019). A proper interpersonal communication practice builds the connection between family members.
Friendship is another form of interpersonal relationship. Friendship is the choice a person makes to interact and share his/her experiences with another person (Selman et al., 2017). Usually, blood ties are not involved in friendships. Friendship does not stick to a specific gender, and so, it may involve a male and female, female and female or male and male. A person may have more than one friend, and the degree of closeness or association may vary from one friend to the other, ushering in the use of the term “best friends.” Best friends are friends who, for a lengthy period, know to each other well, and have a very close association (Floyd et al., 2018). Best friends may share a lot, including experiences, material possessions, secrets, and ideas. Trust builds up in this relationship over time, and in most cases, each party in the friendship will believe what the other party says to be true or false, depending on how they know each other. A good friendship will involve mutual respect, support, and sharing of common interests and ideas. Enmity is the reverse of friendship(Floyd et al., 2018). An enemy is a person whom one dislikes or hates. The interpersonal relationship between enemies is unreceptive and hostile.
We may encounter people regularly and loosely associated with them in our day-to-day activities. These people are not friends but are familiar, in that, we may not even know their names or background information. These people form a category of interpersonal relationships called acquaintances. A typical example of an acquaintance is a neighbor. The world has become highly populated, resulting from a closing settlement. As a result, almost everyone has a neighbor, from the North, South, East, or West-at least someone, who is not a relative or friend, surrounds them. Due to the dependency human beings have on each other, there is always an interpersonal relationship between acquaintances. At the workplace, one may be required to interact with new customers or fellow employees whom they share “friendship” for a short time. This kind of interpersonal relationship is usually short-lived and may not last long. This is because the time acquaintances spend together is relatively short, and sometimes it is a one-time event. In most cases, there is minimal or no physical contact between acquaintances.
In most cases, when one uses the term “relationship” alone, the first thing that comes to the mind of teenagers or adolescents is romance. As children grow into adolescence, they begin to develop a strong feeling towards another person of the opposite gender, except for few that practice homosexualities. This kind of attitude often leads to a romantic relationship. The method of the heterosexuality-romantic relationship between the opposite gender- leads to marriages that can form families. There can be a romantic relationship between a boy and a girl who are not married, or between a man and woman married together. Romantic relationships may build up from other interpersonal relationships like acquaintanceships and friendships except for family relationships. The practice of romantic relationships is illegal in most parts of the world. Romantic relationships vary in a period of durability. Some may run for a short time like a few hours while others last for a lifetime. People in a romantic relationship will often see and have contact with each other frequently. Romantic relationships result from two people getting attracted to each other and eventually falling in love, thus creating a strong bond with each other. This type of connection is particular and exclusive to the two partners only. Sometimes, arguments and disagreements may occur in a romantic relationship, but in most situations, it is short-lived (Selman et al., 2017). In a few cases, such differences may cause total break-up that may lead to separation forever. Generally, romantic relationships may have sexual feelings accompanied by deep feelings of love and jealousy
Observation
During my study, I chose to observe my interpersonal relationship with Jane. I initially met Jane at the mall as an acquaintance. Jane helped me get up when I slid over a staircase and fell. Her hand of help touched me. It also happened that we met on several occasions that we became familiar with each other. She became an excellent friend, who even later helped me move to a better house near her place of residence. Jane was twenty years old at that time. We pushed as friends for two months, and each time I interacted with her, a strange feeling of deep love built up in my heart. Finally, we both fell in love with each other and started dating. In that instance, we were in a romantic relationship. When I was doing my observation, Jane was my girlfriend with whom I had dated for more than six months. Jane was a beautiful light-skinned girl, whom I had genuinely fallen in love with. I trusted her, and I believed she loved me so much. We were living together at the time. She was not aware of the observation, as I had seen no need to tell her, thinking she might fake her behavior.
The week the observation took place was from December 24th, 2019 to 31st December evening, when the Christmas festive season was approaching. We had to plan on how to spend it well, being our first Christmas together. I had suggested that we could visit Jane’s parents and she was in full agreement. The anxiety and joy of being together were in abundance. We did almost everything together during that time. I did not leave the house alone, and it was joy all the time. Jane’s responses were tender. I had set aside enough money for holiday expenditure. I had never seen Jane’s parents at any instance before, but Jane described them as the best. I was eager to see them.
The day came, and as planned, we were to visit them at their rural home. We carried out enough shopping, buying gifts, and other necessary stuff for their use. It was all-joy during those moments that even the idea that I was doing an observation for my study was not at first hand. Jane told me sweet jokes and other good stories. We drove and finally came to the home. From a glance, I liked the place. It was neat and clean. Jane’s parents were welcoming, and for sure, I felt at home. However, during the visit, an exception occurred. It happened that the parents were proud of the current situation of their daughter. However, it emerged that initially, Jane’s father hated her so much. During a normal conversation, Jane’s father, while giving advice, quoted saying, “My girl, I love you, and I want you to be a good person. Learn to respect people and show love to all people. Don’t be like your mom, who…” Before he could finish, a hot quarrel began. It was intimidating watching the shameful argument.
Jane tried to shut up her mother for interrupting her father’s statement, but the approach was weak and went in vain. Things worsened when the mother revealed that Jane’s father was not biological. The argument heated up, almost leading to the exchange of blows. I made a mistake when I tried to separate them apart. Even Jane turned against me, making me odd. I had no blood relationship with them. It was shameful and so went out of the house but did not leave the compound. The conflict lasted for about half an hour when the noise became minimal. John’s father had decided to accept defeat in the argument. He kept silent for a while, leaving them to argue about what they later realized was baseless. The father made them realize that the biological fact was not going to change. He insisted and promised to continue loving both of them. There was guilt and tension built up in the family despite having their conflict settled. Moments later, Jane joined me looking sad and angry but said to me gently, “Let’s go home, my love.” I was not expecting her to accompany me home again. The reason I had not left before was that I was waiting for my house keys. I had not carried a copy, and Jane had the original keys. Hesitating and confused, I gave in, and we unceremoniously left the place, leaving the parents sitting side-by-side mute. The holiday concept was out of mind. No one spoke to each other in the vehicle as we headed home.
We arrived home at seven o’clock in the evening. Life seemed useless to me, and beautiful Jane frowned all the time. I was even afraid of asking or telling her anything. Generally, there was no verbal communication. Even after cooking supper, she just brought it to the table, and my common sense told me it was time to eat. Not even a prayer happened before the meal. After supper on that night, we left to bed at our pleasure. We slightly overslept the following morning, but as hunger made my stomach rumble, I woke up and cooked breakfast, leaving her asleep. I turned on the radio to listen to some music. The soft music woke her up, and shortly she silently joined me at the table for breakfast. Before we could begin eating, there was a joke cracked on the radio. It turned us into breaking our ribs with laughter. That was the first instance we talked in the house, and slowly since that time, verbal communication came to regular use, which turned our lives healthy.
Self-concept
Self-concept is an image that an individual has of himself or herself. It is a person’s notion of their behavior, abilities, reflection, and distinctive characteristics, including how people brand themselves in various situations (Becht et al., 2017). The basis of self-concept is the perception and knowledge a person has gained through diverse experiences. Primarily, the three components of self-concept are self-image, self-ideal, and self-esteem. Self-image is how people label themselves, and sometimes it is not based on reality. Self-ideal is how a person envisions himself/herself to become in the future. Self-esteem entails an individual’s current emotional experiences that can be either positive or negative views of themselves (Parise et al., 2019). Jane affected my self-concept during the week under review. I experienced high self-esteem because she made me feel important and loved. However, my self-esteem was lowered when she had turned against me at the time of conflict. This changed my perception of self-concept; I understood that I was not important to her at all times.
Emotions
Emotions are the complicated feelings a person can experience in certain situations, which result in physical and psychological changes that influence thought, action, and behavior (Cherry 2019). Emotions can generally refer to either good or bad moments. The way a person reacts emotionally will depend upon the interpretation of physical reactions. During the week under review, I was emotionally influenced by Jane. Jane’s anger during the conflict that made her turn me away caused me emotional pain deep in my heart. The sadness that I experienced was a result of a change in my emotional reaction.
Listening Styles
Listening is an essential part of communication. It is the act of giving attention to someone and, more importantly, receiving a message. There are six types of listening styles, as described below. Active listening is a style where the listener hangs on the speaker following every word and sign, and in return, responding back either verbally or physically. Contrarily, an inactive listener is one who does not hear the message, despite keeping silent and showing attention. Inactive listeners will, in return, respond when their turn comes but may answer irrelevantly. Another listening style is selective listening. This style involves a listener who waits to hear what they expect to hear. Mostly, they will capture the information needed to start a counter-argument. Jane’s mother exhibited a selective listening style. She only caught the basic knowledge to begin an argument. Rushed listening is another style. A rushed listener does not take time to get the whole message but will grasp little the gist of what is being said and then evolve into an inactive listener. Scared listening is one in which a listener is afraid of criticism in a conversation. Such listeners defend themselves whenever they are verbally attacked (Staff, 2019). Jane’s father was a scared listener. That’s why she could not allow Jane’s mother to argue back, which caused chaotic information exchange.
Communication Climate
Communication climate refers to the general tone in a relationship as portrayed either verbally or nonverbally between people. It is created by how people feel about each other (Brian, 2011). Communication climate can either be positive or negative. Positive climate comes when people think of their self-worthiness to others, while negative climate results from people feeling rejected and unappreciated. People will feel uncomfortable and less willing to interact with.