Dialectical Theory: Autonomy Vs. Connectedness And Personal Information
1178 Words5 Pages
Interpersonal Paper
Jadia Lampton
University of North Texas
We learned that all relationships experience tension at some point in time, no matter if the relationship is a girlfriend/boyfriend, a sibling, or a parent through something called Dialectical Theory. Dialectical Theory is the analysis of relationships that pertains to the patterns of communication between partners. There are three main tensions that are involved with Dialectical Theory, which are Autonomy versus Connectedness, Novelty versus Predictability, and Openness versus Closedness. The relationship I would have to choose for this paper would be my “boyfriend” because we experience each of these topics throughout our relationship together. Autonomy versus Connectedness…show more content… It pretty much speaks for itself, if you really think about it. When it comes to openness and personal information, it means that you are open with your personal information amongst others. While being closed, you don’t really like to disclose personal information with people unless you know them better. In fact, “One’s self–esteem is likely to be enhanced as a result of receiving disclosures from another” (Sprecher & Hendrick, 2004, p.859). Like when you are just meeting someone for the first time, some people might tell you some personal stuff that you yourself probably wouldn’t disclose unless you knew them…show more content… On our first date I was really shy. I didn’t really talk, I just had my head down while he would talk and ask me questions. We had known each other since 2nd grade but we really just didn’t talk to each other till our 11th grade year. So for him it was a piece of cake talking to me on a friends type of level, but as for me I had never really just opened up before so it took a while. I fixed this problem by making a selection between the two. I chose to be more open with him, like he was being with me because I really liked him. Of course it took me about 3 more dates until I finally realized that he was a cool person. As I got to know him better, I started to open up more about personal information. Interpersonal communication plays a special role in our lives. Interpersonal communication has to do with the patterns of communication in our relationships. Throughout our lifetime we will make multiple relationships with others and most likely for more than half of these we will run into one of the dialectical theory problems or tensions. We learn that most of those tensions or problems can be solved with either selection, reframing, separation, or neutralization. Depending on how you feel about the situation and how you intend on solving the