Letter of Advice: Donna and Mike - Case Study Example

Letter of Advice: Donna and Mike The Secret to Successful Relationship Management Dear Donna and Mike, Stress and disagreement are not uncommon in newly-engaged relationships. Conflict and emotional sensitivity when trying to establish a cooperative relationship should not be a cause for immediate alarm, nor should it bring about complex emotions regarding the viability of the romance. You both need to recognize that each maintains unique personality constructs and each of you maintain differing principles and ethics that are very common among unique individuals. My advice to securing a more positive relationship is first identifying your own emotional intelligence and then linking this to developing more negotiated compromises. You must come to recognize the barriers to your interpersonal relationships that are causing communications failures and leading to the aforementioned conflicts. Perceptions, emotions and non-verbal expression seem to be contributing highly to your recent problems which simply requires making cognitive and emotional modifications to facilitate more effective discussion and relationship improvement. Though these problems and required adjustments may seem to be very complicated, the truth of the matter is that they are small concessions which will dramatically improve reduction of conflict and establish a more rewarding connection between the both of you. The Importance of Emotional Intelligence Mike and Donna, you are both diverse individuals with very different ethical principles that strongly contribute to your worldview and acceptability of certain dimensions of relationship development. Despite these differences, it is necessary for both of you to identify your own emotional capacity in order to facilitate more effective discussion. Emotional intelligence is best defined as the ability to assess one’s own emotional states, learn to regulate these emotions, and also recognize certain cues or signs from your partner that give clues to their own emotional state. Oftentimes, for women, this is much easier to accomplish due to tangible differences between genders related to emotional sensitivity and rationalization constructs. Remember, this is normal when considering the role of men and women in relationships. Once the gender dynamics have been removed from the relationship equation, it will become easier for both of you to establish a more competent level of emotional intelligence. Mayer, Salovey & Caruso (2002) affirm that all individuals have varying abilities in how they regulate their emotions and apply emotions to social situations. However, these researchers also establish that certain emotions are universal, meaning that both men and women alike maintain certain commonalities associated with emotional expression (Mayer, et al., 2002). Once the two of you have conducted self-analysis to determine your emotional capacity and provide genuine self-evaluations of the degree by which emotions play a role in your relationship, you can better recognize similarities between you both and then use these commonalities as a foundation for more effective discussion. Mike, this will rely on you being very honest about the impact of your emotional programming to provide Donna with a better window into your feelings, something not always simple for men to accomplish due to many long-standing social rules about masculine versus feminine behavior. It would be prudent advice for you to ascribe to the acknowledgement by Mayer, et al. about the universalism of certain emotions (e.g. sadness, depression and joy) to facilitate more meaningful conversations with Donna. Though this will likely take some work on your part, you will find that the quality of discussion and the growth in positive negotiated outcomes between you and Donna will be much increased. Ogilvie & Carsky (2002) assert that individuals with high emotional intelligence are the most successful negotiators. The ability to recognize your own emotional states through honest self-evaluations will provide you with the foundation to influence emotions in others. You should both consider emotional intelligence factors to be tactical strategies in the negotiation process (Ogilvie & Carsky, 2002). Open and honest discussion of your emotional states will provide the catalyst for genuinely understanding one another, which is required if this relationship is to proceed into a marital agreement. Without such candid presentations of legitimate emotional capacity and emotional needs, the relationship will not succeed in the long-term. Reduction of Conflict One of the barriers to successful negotiation in your relationship is an inability to separate your long-standing principles and values to find common ground and seek win-win scenarios. Donna and Mike, you must both realize the concept of ethical relativism, a respected notion in many domains of study that there is no singular, universal construct of right versus wrong (Hall, 1997). Because everyone in society carries different ethical beliefs, there is no legitimate and rational method by which a person can judge right versus wrong (Fleischacker, 1994). Donna and Mike, our discussions about the conflict in your relationship has indicated that both of you hold strongly to your foundational principles and are unable to find agreement. Donna, you have a tendency to rely on your lack of emotional regulation, allowing very strong emotions to be brought into simple discussions. Mike, you are somewhat stubborn in relenting on your ethics-based imperatives which finds the both of you often, proverbially, butting heads. Neither of you can stand justified by standing firm on your own concepts of right versus wrong by any reputable relationship standard, so you must provide for flexibility in order to remove these barriers. The sources of conflict that continue to create barriers to more effective negotiation and communications must be reduced. Focusing on ethical relativism and the notion that there actually is a margin for considering the principles of the other partner will assist in creating a more effective relationship, remove barriers to discussion, and assist (especially with Donna) in removing some elements of explosive emotional response. Reducing conflict by remembering these simple principles of ethical flexibility will be a worthwhile strategy in conflict management in many aspects of your relationship. Perceptions, Emotions and Nonverbal Expression After our many visits together, it has come to my attention that perceptive barriers continue to plague more effective communications. Nieponski & Duba-Onedera (2007) highlight a phenomenon that is highly relevant in your particular relationship. These researchers suggest that both partners in a romantic relationship create pre-existing evaluation criteria for their partner, a series of expectations regarding behavior, attitude, principles or performance that are used when addressing or evaluating the partner. According to the authors, “We tend to make the assumption that such expectations are the correct ones, and when the partner does not effectively live up to these perceived standards, we instantly feel partners are acting out of line” (Nieponski & Duba-Onedera, 2007, p.422). Maintaining these pre-existing templates for partner evaluation is very damaging to successful relationship development. Earlier in this letter it was reinforced that both of you should be more flexible in your ethical principles and this flexibility should also expand into your judgment criteria used to assess the appropriateness or lack thereof when evaluating your partner. It is unfair to both of you to use your unique principles and emotions to construct unrealistic and impractical guidelines by which you expect your partner to adhere. During our sessions together, it became clear that both of you are guilty of this action which continues to create more barriers to successful discussion. See, when you create these pre-existing criteria for judgment, you are only perceiving partner failures or inappropriateness (Nieponski & Duba-Onedera, 2007). It is a perception of mistreatment that does not have rational foundation. It is at this point when both of you begin sending nonverbal cues, such as angry body language, which is a form of passive-aggressive conflict management. Mike, having a slightly higher capacity for emotional intelligence, quickly picks up on these cues and begins questioning himself and the level of anger or frustration you are feeling, Donna, which further conflicts the situation. It is necessary to recognize that these pre-existing templates for partner evaluation are unjustified and very unrealistic for use among two diverse individuals like yourselves. It is my recommendation that you take an assessment of not only your emotional needs, but also examine the depth by which these existing templates exist and begin deconstructing them for a more realistic evaluation system. Perceptions can be highly dangerous to effective, romantic relationship development and these unrealistic evaluations and nonverbal cues brought forward as a product of them are damaging your relationship. Part of managing emotions in emotional intelligence is identifying their cause and, in your case, many are just illogical perceptions. Self-Concept and Defensive/Supportive Behaviors Mike and Donna, you both have differing levels of self-concept in terms of how you view your own esteem and your place in society. Both of you have high levels of self-esteem, but seem to lack more fundamental aspects of positive self-concept. Mike, you often measure your value and worth as it is justified by Donna’s opinion, thus you are viewing her as a behavior-guiding reference group. Donna, you tend to have a low locus of control, which means that you see your life situations being highly affected by others in your workplace and social environment, which also include Mike. Both of you need to work on establishing a better and more productive self-concept that is much more than just self-esteem development. Mike, you should work on more independent strategies where your emotional responses are not as reliant on Donna’s opinion and evaluations. The depth to which Donna’s evaluations and opinion seems to guide your behavior is very unhealthy and reduces your humor and openness, which can lead to long-term problems while your subconscious struggles with a need for adult independence and your long-standing reliance on Donna to justify your place in the relationship. Martin, et al. (2003) highlights a phenomenon that is relevant in your relationship as it relates to humor types. Donna’s critiques that guide your behavior, Mike, leads to two types of humor that are detrimental to helping you gain control over your self-concept. These are self-defeating humor styles and aggressive humor. Self-defeating humor occurs when you try to amuse Donna through self-disparaging joviality, something unproductive in relationships (Martin, et al., 2003). The conflicts occurring in your subconscious as you seek more liberation from Donna’s evaluations also leads to aggressive humor, where various sarcastic remarks are made and you will tease Donna using aggressive humor styles. This conflict between sudden changes to self- and then partner-directed humor variations leaves Donna confused and unsure about your emotional capacity. It was necessary to point out the causes of these types of humor since more productive humor is so very valuable to relationship growth and development. Mike, you are using these humor styles as a form of self-defense and with an ineffective coping style for the emotional struggles for dominance in self-concept. These are causing barriers in your relationship. The use of defense mechanisms, whatever their form, is common, but also self-defeating in the long-term. Using aggressive or self-denigrating humor is a form of defense mechanism that helps to detach you from difficult relationship scenarios and I hope that my advice has helped you to recognize its usage. More Barriers to Effective Communications The style of conflict management that the two of you have chosen is ineffective, which creates barriers to establishing more effective discussions and negotiations. Mike, you tend to use avoiding tactics, which is essentially ignoring a problem with the idea that it will go away (Rahim, 2002). It is a form of adaptation in psychology referred to as dissociation, detaching yourself from a disturbing emotional experience (Bowins, 2004). Because you rely so heavily on Donna’s evaluations, when conflict begins it creates complicated and sometimes aggressive emotions and thus you tend to run from the negotiations. At the same time, Donna maintains a more dominating negotiation style, who attempts to force their own way (Rahim, 2002). The resulting conflict that ensues when Mike attempts to hide and avoid negotiation only further promotes more aggressive behavior by Donna, which is why she will often follow you through the house attempting to continue the discussion with more aggression and emotion becoming an outcome of these strategies. You must work to create a more obliging negotiation style by which you seek win-win scenarios rather than attempting to gain victory at all costs or simply dismissing the issues. Over time, these disagreements in negotiation style will build so many barriers to effective discussion that you will begin resenting one another that will have serious implications in other areas of romance and social lifestyle. Once you have come to an understanding of over-reliance on Donna’s critiques, sought your independent self-concept development, and tackle difficult emotional negotiations head-on, Mike, you will find many breakdowns in the barriers that continue to plague the relationship. In similar respect, Donna, you must cease passive-aggressive body language and behavior and learn self-regulation of emotional responses if you want Mike to respond effectively. Your very different personality constructs, in this case, continue to complicate effective discussions and changing these patterns of behavior are, as you can see, actually very simple and require just some honest self-evaluation and honest expression of genuine feelings. Simply maintaining your own coping strategies will not enhance adjustment in this relationship (Bouchard & Teriault, 2003). You must seek avenues for finding common ground and understanding the emotional capacity of one another if you want to find more balance and mutual gain in your relationship. Conclusion Donna and Mike, you are both very mature and intelligent adults that have only small details in your relationship that need adjustment and reconsideration. The level of barriers in your relationship, though many, are affected by such a small number of illogical perceptions and emotional intelligence problems that will solve the majority of your communications problems. It was not, in this letter, my intention to suggest that any of your characteristics or styles of negotiation were disturbing or otherwise maladjusted, remember that they are common problems in relationship and the research continues to support that they can be combated if you are both willing to be flexible and conduct honest self-evaluations. Both of you have the capacity to be supportive members of this relationship, especially if you focus on removing the impractical pre-existing partner judgment evaluations that exist in your relationship. You need to start anew and recognize the diversity of your different emotional capacities, behaviors, and ethical principles that have a great deal to contribute to your relationship. It was my hope to simply identify the specific defense mechanisms and improper negotiation strategies you were currently using which, in the long-term, leads to more harm than good by raising negative emotional responses and building more barriers between the two of you. If you ascribe flexibility to building more effective and honest emotional intelligence, seek win-win scenarios in discussion, learn self-regulation of emotional responses, and avoid dissonance in difficult emotional scenarios, your relationship will endure well into marriage. I wish you both the best of luck in changing your current impractical methods of partnered communications and work toward building a more supportive and mutually-minded relationship. References Bouchard, G. & Teriault, V. (2003). Defense Mechanisms and Coping Strategies in Conjugal Relationships, International Journal of Psychology, 38(2), pp.79-90, Retrieved September 7, 2012 from ProQuest Database. Bowins, B. (2004). Psychological Defense Mechanisms: A new perspective, American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 64(1), pp.1-26, Retrieved September 8, 2012 from ProQuest Database. Fleischacker, S. (1994). The Ethics of Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hall, B.J. (1997). Culture, Ethics and Communication, in F.L. Casmir (ed.), Ethics in Intercultural and International Communication, pp.11-41. Mahwah: NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Martin, R.A., Puhlik-Doris, P., Larsen, G., Gray, J. & Weir, K. (2003). Individual Differences in Usage of Humor and their Relation to Psychological Well-Being: Development of the humor styles questionnaire, Journal of Research in Personality, 37(1), pp.48-74. Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P. & Caruso, D. (2000). Models of Emotional Intelligence, in J.R. Sternburg (ed.) Handbook of Intelligence, pp.396-420. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nieponski, M.K. & Duba-Onedera, J. (2007). Emotional Intelligence in Couples Therapy: An interview with Brent J. Atkinson, The Family Journal, 15(1), pp.420-427. Ogilvie, J.R. & Carsky, M.L. (2002). Building Emotional Intelligence in Negotiations, The International Journal of Conflict Management, 13(4), pp.381-400. Rahim, M.A. (2002). Toward a theory of managing organizational conflict, The International Journal of Conflict Management, 13(2), pp.206-234. Read More