COM221: Ch. 10 Key Terms (unfinished)

Love and communication

-You exaggerate you beloved's virtues and minimize his or her faults. You share emotions and experiences

Agape: Compassionate and self

Agape is a compassionate, egoless, self-giving love. The agapic lover loves even people with whom he or she has no close ties. This lover loves the stranger on the road even though the two of them probably will never meet again. Agape is a spiritual love, offered without concern for personal reward or gain. This lover loves without expecting that the love will be reciprocated. Jesus, Buddha, and Gandhi preached this unqualified love, agape (Lee, 1976). In one sense, agape is more a philosophical kind of love than a love that most people have the strength to achieve. People who believe in yuan, a Chinese concept that comes from the Buddhist belief in predestiny, are more likely to favor agapic (and pragmatic) love and less likely to favor erotic love.

Friends with benefits

As noted earlier, a friends-with-benefits relationship—which varies greatly from one couple to another—engage in sexual relationships but without any romantic involvement, dating, or the thought of a shared future together (Mongeau, Knight, Williams, Eden, & Shaw, 2013). Although most often portrayed as a cross-sex relationship, it can apply to same-sex as well as opposite sex pairings. This type of relationship has been around probably throughout time, but it has only recently been given a name and today is largely associated with college students. In one study, over 60 percent of college students surveyed reported having had at least one such relationship (Bisson & Levine, 2009). A friends-with-benefits relationship is somewhere between regular friendship and intimacy and encompasses friendship as well as sex. There is some level of emotional attachment but not to the degree that each member of the couple sees their relationship as a permanent or exclusive one. In fact, most friends-with-benefits relationships are nonexclusive; each person may also be dating others or simply "hooking up" with others. Among the advantages of such relationships are easy access to sex in a safe and comfortable environment with a trusted friend, freedom from commitment or intense involvement, gaining experience, closeness, and companionship. Among the disadvantages are the possibilities that the friendship will suffer and getting hurt (Weaver, MacKeigan, and MacDonald, 2013). Open, sincere, and direct communication were key factors in ensuring that the relationship has more advantages than disadvantages.

Contact stage of friendship

At the contact stage, the characteristics of effective interpersonal communication are usually present to only a small degree. You're guarded rather than open or expressive. Because you don't yet know the other person, your ability to empathize with the other is limited. At this stage, there is little genuine immediacy; you see yourselves as separate and distinct rather than as a unit. Because the relationship is so new and because the people don't know each other very well, the interaction is often characterized by awkwardness—for example, by overlong pauses, uncertainty about topics to be discussed, and ineffective exchanges of sender and receiver roles.

Close and intimate friendship

At this stage, you and your friend see yourselves more as an exclusive unit, and each of you derives great benefits (for example, emotional support) from the friendship (Hays, 1989). Because you know each other well (for example, you know each other's values, opinions, and attitudes), your uncertainty about each other has been significantly reduced—you're able to predict each other's behaviors with considerable accuracy. This knowledge makes significant interaction management possible, as well as greater positivity, supportiveness, and openness (Oswald, Clark, & Kelly, 2004). You become more other-oriented and more willing to make significant sacrifices for the other person. You empathize and exchange perspectives a great deal more, and you expect in return that your friend will also empathize with you. With a genuinely positive feeling for this individual, your supportiveness and positive stroking become spontaneous. Because you see yourselves as an exclusive unit, equality and immediacy are in clear evidence. You're willing to respond openly, confidently, and expressively to this person and to own your feelings and thoughts. Your supportiveness and positivity are genuine expressions of the closeness you feel for this person. Each person in an intimate friendship is truly equal; each can initiate and each can respond; each can be active and each can be passive; each speaks and each listens.

Eros: Beauty and sexuality

Eros love focuses on beauty and physical attractiveness—sometimes to the exclusion of qualities you might consider more important and more lasting. Also like Narcissus, the erotic lover has an idealized image of beauty that is unattainable in reality. Consequently, the erotic lover often feels unfulfilled. Erotic lovers are particularly sensitive to physical imperfections in the ones they love.

First stage of love:

Eros, mania, and ludus (initial attraction)

Friendship

Friendship is an interpersonal relationship, must be mutually productive, characterized by mutual positive regard.

Gender and friendships

Gender also influences your friendships—who becomes your friend and the way you look at friendships. Perhaps the best-documented finding—already noted in our discussion of self-disclosure—is that women selfdisclose more than men (e.g., Dolgin, Meyer, & Schwartz, 1991). This difference holds throughout male and female friendships. Male friends self-disclose less often and with less intimate details than female friends do. Men generally don't view intimacy as a necessary quality of their friendships (Hart, 1990). Women engage in significantly more affectional behaviors with their friends than do males; this difference may account for the greater difficulty men experience in beginning and maintaining close friendships (Hays, 1989). Women engage in more casual communication; they also share greater intimacy and more confidences with their friends than do men. Communication, in all its forms and functions, seems a much more important dimension of women's friendships. When women and men were asked to evaluate their friendships, women rated their same-sex friendships higher in general quality, intimacy, enjoyment, and nurturance than did men (Sapadin, 1988). Men, in contrast, rated their opposite-sex friendships higher in quality, enjoyment, and nurturance than did women. Both men and women rated their opposite-sex friendships similarly in intimacy. These differences may be due, in part, to our society's suspicion of male friendships; as a result, a man may be reluctant to admit to having close relationship bonds with another man. Men's friendships are often built around shared activities—attending a ballgame, playing cards, working on a project at the office. Women's friendships, on the other hand, are built more around a sharing of feelings, support, and "personalism." An important element is similarity in status, in willingness to protect a friend in uncomfortable situations, and in academic major.

Culture and friendships

Generally friendships are closer in collectivist cultures than in individualist cultures. In their emphasis on the group and on cooperating, collectivist cultures foster the development of close friendship bonds. Members of a collectivist culture are expected to help others in the group. When you help or do things for someone else, you increase your own attractiveness to this person, and this is certainly a good start for a friendship. Of course, the culture continues to reward these close associations. Members of individualist cultures, on the other hand, are expected to look out for number one—themselves. Consequently, they're more likely to compete and to try to do better than each other—conditions that don't support, generally at least, the development of friendships. Most people, of course, have both collectivist and individualist values, but they have them in different degrees, and that is what we are talking about here—differences in degree of the collectivist versus the individualist orientation.

Friendship of receptivity

In the friendship of receptivity, there is an imbalance in giving and receiving; one person is the primary giver and one is the primary receiver. This is a positive imbalance, however, because each person gains something from the relationship. The different needs of both the person who receives and the person who gives affection are satisfied. This is the friendship that may develop between a teacher and a student, a doctor and a patient, or mentor and protégé. In fact, a difference in status is essential for the friendship of receptivity to develop.

Involvement stage of friendship

In this second stage, there is a dyadic consciousness, a clear sense of "we-ness," of togetherness; communication demonstrates a sense of immediacy. At this stage, you participate in activities as a unit rather than as separate individuals. In the involvement period, the other person can be called "friend"—someone you would go with to the movies, sit with in the cafeteria or in class, ride home with from school, or follow (really follow) on social media. At this friendship stage, you begin to see the qualities of effective interpersonal interaction more clearly. You start to express yourself openly and become interested in the other person's disclosures. Because you're beginning to understand this person, you empathize and demonstrate significant otherorientation. You also demonstrate supportiveness and develop a genuinely positive attitude, both toward the other person and toward mutual communication situations. There is an ease at this stage, a coordination in the interaction between the two persons. You communicate with confidence, maintain appropriate eye contact and flexibility in body posture and gesturing, and use few of the adaptors that signal discomfort. As friendships develop, whether face-to-face or online, network convergence occurs; that is, as a relationship between two people develops, they begin to share their network of other communicators with each other (Parks, 1995; Parks & Floyd, 1996). And this, at least in online friendships, accounts in great part for the enormous number of friends some people have

Love

Love is a feeling characterized by closeness and caring by intimacy, passion, and commitment. It's also an interpersonal relationship developed, maintained, and sometimes destroyed through communication and at the same time a relationship that can be greatly enhanced with communication skills.

Third stage:

Pragma (as relationship bonds develop)

Affirmation

Someone who affirms your personal value and helps you to recognize your attributes, for example, someone who communicates appreciation for your leadership abilities, athletic prowess, or sense of humor. The friend on Facebook who always comments on your photos and posts would also be serving this affirming function.

Ego support

Someone who behaves in a supportive, encouraging, and helpful manner, for example, a person who helps you view yourself as worthy and competent.

Security

Someone who does nothing to hurt you or to call attention to your weakness, for example, a person who is supportive and nonjudgemental.

Stimulation

Someone who introduces you to new ideas and new ways of seeing the world, for exampl, a person who might bring you into contact with previously unfamiliar people, issues, and experiences. Online friendships with those from other parts of the world or of different religions or cultural traditions regularly serve this function, sometimes without being aware of it.

Utility

Someone who may have special talents, skills, or resources that provide useful to you, for ex, a person who is especially bright who might assist you in getting a better job or in introducing you to a possible romantic partner.

Storge: Peaceful and slow

Storge (a word that comes from the Greek for "familial love") love lacks passion and intensity. Storgic lovers set out not to find lovers but to establish a companionable relationship with someone they know and with whom they can share interests and activities. Storgic love is a gradual process of unfolding thoughts and feelings; the changes seem to come so slowly and so gradually that it's often difficult to define exactly where the relationship is at any point in time. Sex in storgic relationships comes late, and when it comes, it assumes no great importance.

Seconds stage:

Storge (as the relationship develops)

Friendship of association

The friendship of association is a transitory one. It might be described as a friendly relationship rather than a true friendship. Associative friendships are the kind we often have with classmates, neighbors, or coworkers. This is also the type of friendship you have with many people on your social media sites who you friended but without really knowing them or planning on getting to know them. There is no great loyalty, no great trust, no great giving or receiving, no mutual obligations. The association is cordial but not intense.

Friendship of reciprocity

The friendship of reciprocity is the ideal type, characterized by loyalty, selfsacrifice, mutual affection, and generosity. A friendship of reciprocity is based on equality: each individual shares equally in giving and receiving the benefits and rewards of the relationship. "Friends with benefits"—friends who are not romantically committed to each other but who enjoy a sexual relationship—would be an example of friendship of reciprocity—each person derives equal benefits.

Pragma: Practical and traditional

The pragma lover is practical and seeks a relationship that will work. Pragma lovers want compatibility and a relationship in which their important needs and desires will be satisfied. They're concerned with the social qualifications of a potential mate even more than with personal qualities; family and background are extremely important to the pragma lover, who relies not so much on feelings as on logic. The pragma lover views love as a useful relationship that makes the rest of life easier. So the pragma lover asks questions about a potential mate such as "Will this person earn a good living?" "Can this person cook?" "Will this person help me advance in my career?" Pragma lovers' relationships rarely deteriorate. This is partly because pragma lovers choose their mates carefully and emphasize similarities. Another reason is that they have realistic romantic expectations.

Ludus: Entertainment and Excitement

ludus love is experienced as a game, as fun. The better you can play the game, the greater the enjoyment. Love is not to be taken too seriously; emotions are to be held in check lest they get out of hand and make trouble; passions never rise to the point where they get out of control. A ludic lover is self-controlled, always aware of the need to manage love rather than allow it to be in control. Perhaps because of this need to control love, some researchers have proposed that ludic love tendencies may reveal tendencies to sexual aggression (Sarwer, Kalichman, Johnson, Early, et al., 1993). The ludic lover retains a partner only as long as the partner is interesting and amusing. When interest fades, it's time to change partners. Perhaps because love is a game, sexual fidelity is of little importance. In fact, research shows that people who score high on ludic love are more likely to engage in "extradyadic" dating and sex than those who score low on ludus (Wiederman & Hurd, 1999). Ludic lovers also score high on narcissism.

Mania: Elation and depression

mania is characterized by extreme highs and extreme lows. The manic lover loves intensely and at the same time intensely worries about the loss of the love. This fear often prevents the manic lover from deriving as much pleasure as possible from the relationship. With little provocation, the manic lover may experience extreme jealousy. Manic love is obsessive; the manic lover must possess the beloved completely. In return, the manic lover wishes to be possessed—to be loved intensely. The manic lover's poor self-image seems capable of being improved only by love; self-worth comes from being loved rather than from any sense of inner satisfaction. Because love is so important, danger signs in a relationship are often ignored; the manic lover believes that if there is love, then nothing else matters.

Friendship needs

utility, affirmation, ego support, stimulation, security