Relationship with My Wife and the Stages We Have Been Through - Essay Example

?Paper # 2- Relationship Paper- doc Who Am I Full Mt. San Jacinto College, Menefee, CA Communication 103 Mrs. Berokoff This paper discusses my relationship with my wife and the stages we have been through according to the theories discussed in class. Being aware that there are different forms of relationships, I have always sought to look for a lasting one, filled with love. I have always been a Filipino in skin, heart and all, including my perceptions of relationships which the modern world might say back-numbered, old fashioned or ancient. I am a believer of strong family relationships as I have been raised with my parents holding on to each other as they go through the daily trials life brought along. In effect, I have been looking forward to building my own family the way I have been raised. Demureness was one virtue I always appreciated in my mother, one that in my own opinion, a real woman should possess so that this was the first thing I looked for in a woman. I guess in part, this is because of the fully accepted impression that men are expected to be strong as the head of the family, able to bring in the needs of the family by working difficult jobs while women are delicate, from their actions to their works. Armed with such a conviction, this has served as my guidance in finding the right woman for my self. I met my wife in _________ whose very refined movement caught my attention and whose cultured speech strengthened my desire to know her better. I soon learned she was looking for a man who wanted a lasting relationship and not just one that would melt after a few years. Seeing it through the exchange theory (Adler & Proctor, 2007 p. 280), I now see how my wants were gratified as much as hers in the relationship we were trying to build. I was looking for the traits that would be to my advantage, having a woman who can submit to me as her male partner while she on the other hand, was looking for a man who could stick to just one woman for a lifetime. A man of simple words and direct to the point, there have been miscommunications in our relationship as we learned to express our thoughts and ideas which proved to be a great task to both of us because my wife usually spoke on a seemingly different level, saying something different from the way I hear her. So many times, we tried to understand each other but letting things pass just made it work during our experimenting and intensifying stages. When we decided to commit to each other through marriage, getting to the final stage of a relationship called bonding (Knapp & Vangelisti), we sealed our relationship in giving our vows to love each other until death. Marriage does not end trials and troubles in a relationship but it sure forces a person to indulge one’s self in making it work. Our communication problems did not end when we got married rather we seem to have thought that each of us should be able to read one’s mind by this time because at this period, we should have known each other pretty well. This made the problem even worse which usually led to a cold war between us, my wife usually keeping quiet, not answering simple questions. The arrival of our children did not even help resolve our problems instead, they were involved in a tug of war where my wife and I tried to get their attention to one of us alone and let the other feel how it could be to be alone, abandoned. These days, there are still some misunderstandings but we have grown, being wiser in our actions and speech and reminded that if we truly want our relationship to last, we have to make things work. This includes learning to be articulate in communicating our thoughts, putting one’s self to the shoes of the other for us to understand further what one is saying. The subject matter we have been discussing in class gave me a clearer view of my relationship with my wife and is helping me a lot in the improvement of how I deal with her these days. I have learned that in a relationship, it sure takes two to tango and the resolution we tried to employ in our relationship was not a resolution at all but an avoidance of resolving the problem. This was the very reason why the problem kept coming back, making us fight over the same trivial thing over and over again. Having understood that now, I am looking forward not to do this again but to find ways of trying to understand my wife even more and at the same time learning to communicate my thoughts in a way that I will not be misconstrued. This course made me see the stages we have been through in developing our relationship which makes me strongly agree with the theories as I have seen how I acted in the initiating stage, learning my wife’s interests and making them my own in order for me to be with her most of the time. In the experimenting stage, I learned that getting to know her better was actually a part of the test I used, observing how she perceived marriage with her stories about her family. Knowing that we somehow shared the same perceptions especially on the most important things, I decided to enter the intensifying stage, expressing my feelings to her. I now understand that this moved us to the integrating stage when we both talked much about each other to our friends, and relatives and thought of ourselves good as engaged to be married and inclined to the thinking that what is hers is mine and what is mine is hers. Bonding, as discussed earlier gave us trials that made our relationship stronger and made us more resolved to make our relationship work, thinking that there is no turning back at this stage of our relationship. Wanting to achieve our initial goals, I will continue to work further on my communication skills and not avoid verbal fights by just keeping quiet instead, try to make myself clear. References Adler, Ronald B. and Russell F. Proctor II. 2007. Looking Out, Looking In (12th Edition). Boston, MA: Thomas/Wadsworth. Knapp, Mark L. and Anita L. Vangelisti. 2008. Interpersonal Communication and Human Relationships (6ht Edition). MA, USA: Allyn and Bacon. Read More