Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

talk on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis for them to be effective. Many people establish long-term
friendships with individuals they don’t get to see more than once a year or even once a decade. For
example, my father has a group of friends from high school whom he meets up with once a year. His
friends and their spouses pick a location, and they all meet up once a year for a week together. For the
rest of the year, there are occasional emails and Facebook posts, but they don’t interact much outside of
that. However, that once a year get together is enough to keep these long-term (70+ years at this point)
friendships healthy and thriving.
The concept of “mutual involvement” can differ from one friendship pair to another. Different
friendship pairs collaborate to create their sense of what it means to be a friend, their shared social
reality of friendship. Rawlins states, “This interpersonal reality evolves out of and furthers mutual
acceptance and support, trust and confidence, dependability and assistance, and discussion of thoughts
and feelings.” 15 One of the reasons why defining the term “friendship” is so difficult is because there are
as many friendship realities as there are pairs of friends. Although we see common characteristics among
them, it’s important to understand that these characteristics have many ways of being exhibited.
The final characteristic of friendships is the notion of affect. refers to “any experience of feeling or
emotion, ranging from suffering to elation, from the simplest to the most complex sensations of feeling,
and from the most normal to the most pathological emotional reactions. Often described in terms of
positive affect or negative affect, both mood and emotion are considered affective states.” 16 Built into
the voluntariness, personal, equal, and mutually involved nature of friendships is the inherent caring and
concern that we establish within those friendships, the affective aspects. Some friends will go so far as to
say that they love each other. Not in the eros or romantic sense of the term, but instead in the philia or
affectionate sense of the term. People often use the term “platonic” love to describe the love that exists
without physical attraction based on the writings of Plato. However, Aristotle, Plato’s student, believed
that philia was an even more profound form of dispassionate, virtuous love that existed in the loyalty of
friends void of any sexual connotations.
All friendships are going to have affective components, but not all friendships will exhibit or express
affect in the same ways. Some friendships may exhibit no physical interaction at all, but this doesn’t mean
they are not intimate emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually. Other friendships could be very physically
affective, but have little depth to them in other ways. Every pair of friends determines what the affect will
be like within that friendship pairing. However, both parties within the relationship must have their affect
needs met. Hence, people often need to have conversations with friends about their needs for affection.
Now that we’ve explored the five basic characteristics of friendships, let’s switch gears and focus on
communication and friendships. This entire chapter is about communication and friendships, but we’re
going to explore two communication variables that impact the formation of friendships.
Previously in this book, we talked about the notion of . For our purposes,
we used the definition from John Wiemann, “the ability of an interactant to choose among available
communicative behaviors in order that he [she/they] may successfully accomplish his [her/their] own
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