Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

Exercises
• Find video clips online that illustrate each of the coming together/coming apart
stages. Show them to your class. Do you agree/disagree?
• Do a self-analysis of a relationship that you have been involved with or have
witnessed. How did the two people come together and come apart? Did they go
through all the stages? Why/why not?
• Write down an example of each the relationship maintenance strategies. Then,
rank order in terms of importance to you. Why did you rank them the way that
you did? Find a peer and compare your answers.
8.4 Communication in Relationships
Learning
Outcomes
1. Learn how communication varies.
2. Analyze relationship dialectics.
We know that all relationships go through change. The changes in a relationship are usually dependent
on communication. When a relationship starts, there is a lot of positive and ample communication
between the parties. However, sometimes couples go through a redundant problem, and it is important
to learn how to deal with this problem. Partners can’t always know what their significant other desires or
needs from them.
Dialectics had been a concept known well to many scholars for many years. They are simply the
pushes and pulls that can be found every day in relationships of all types. Conversation involves people
who must learn to adapt to each other while still maintaining their individuality. 19 The theory emphasizes
interactions allowing for more flexibility to explain how couples maintain a satisfactory, cohesive union.
This perspective views relationships as simply managing the tensions that arise because they cannot be
fully resolved. The management of the tensions is usually based on past experiences; what worked for
a person in the past will be what they decide to use in the future. These tensions are both contradictory
and interdependent because without one, the other is not understood. Leslie A. Baxter, the scholar
who developed this theory, pulled from as many outside sources as she could to better understand the
phenomenon of dialectical tensions within relationships. The development began by closely studying the
works of Mikhail Bakhtin, who was a Russian scholar of culture, literature, philosophy, and language.
Baxter was interested in his life’s work; the theory often was referred to as dialogism. Bakhtin argued that
life is a social process of dialogue that is characterized by the concurrent coming together and separating
of individual perspectives.
Early in Baxter’s career, she noticed that while she was interested in the termination of relationships,
her colleagues were interested in the beginnings. Although her colleagues were interested in disclosure,
she was interested in non-disclosure. At this point, it still had not occurred to her that these opposing
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Interpersonal Communication