The interpersonal communication

Interpersonal communication

Interpersonal communication is usually defined by communication scholars in numerous ways, usually describing participants who are dependent upon one another. It...

 that occurs during a relationship

Interpersonal relationship

An interpersonal relationship is an association between two or more people that may range from fleeting to enduring. This association may be based on limerence, love, solidarity, regular business interactions, or some other type of social commitment. Interpersonal relationships are formed in the...

 deterioration/dissolution looks to explain the possible "why" behind the relationship breakup

Relationship breakup

A relationship breakup, often referred to simply as a breakup, is the termination of a usually intimate relationship by any means other than death. The act is commonly termed "dumping [someone]" in slang when it is initiated by one partner...

 and the communication steps that a breakup seems to follow. Studies have looked at the predictors of breakups, the breakup process, the strategies employed, the impact of the breakups, and finally the process to move on emotionally from the broken relationship.

Definition

When the activity of one member of a couple causes a breakup it is referred to as "relationship dissolution." This article examines two types of relationship dissolution, the nonmarital breakup and the marital breakup

Marital breakdown

Marital breakdown refers to the common process whereby a marriageinterpersonal relationship between a man and woman erodes, such that they cannot ordinarily restore their relationship. There are many stages to the process, and each individual goes through the stages at different rates...

. The differences are how they are experienced, how they must be studied and how they might survive. Nonmarital breakups help us understand the nature of the issues involved and the patterns of grief

Grief

Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions...

 experienced, they are meaningful to both persons, creating crisis in intimacy, personal

Personal development

Personal development includes activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and facilitates employability, enhance quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations...

 and social development and future commitment

Promise

A promise is a commitment by someone to do or not do something.In the law of contract, an exchange of promises is usually held to be legally enforceable, according to the Latin maxim pacta sunt servanda.- Types :...

 expectations. Surviving a nonmarital breakup provides the opportunity to self discovery, generosity

Generosity

Generosity is the habit of giving freely without expecting anything in return. It can involve offering time, assets or talents to aid someone in need...

, dignity

Dignity

Dignity is a term used in moral, ethical, and political discussions to signify that a being has an innate right to respect and ethical treatment. It is an extension of the Enlightenment-era concepts of inherent, inalienable rights...

 and nobility of grief, and the promise of recovery (Weber, 1992). In marital breakups, more negotiation and delayed dissolution may occur because of the presence of children (Johnson, 1982) called a barrier force. Not all breakups should be considered a "failure" because they didn't last long enough or hit yearly marks as dictated by society. Some breakups may serve a distinct, positive change for one of the partners if there is abuse

Abuse

Abuse is the improper usage or treatment for a bad purpose, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, sexual assault, violation, rape, unjust practices; wrongful practice or custom; offense; crime, or otherwise...

 or other negative factors in the relationship.

Breakup factors

Almost no relationship is established with the thought that it will end with heartache

Love sickness

Being lovestruck is a non-medical term used to describe mental and physical symptoms associated with falling in love: 'love-struck. It means to be hit by love...you are hit in your heart by the emotion of love'....

 and grief, at least experienced by one of the couple. Why do we bother if the common belief is that at least 50% or more marriages end in divorce

Divorce

Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...

? Jones & Burdette, 1994, state in their work that we face two daunting risks when we pursue an intimate relationship

Intimate relationship

An intimate relationship is a particularly close interpersonal relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy. Physical intimacy is characterized by romantic or passionate love and attachment, or sexual activity. The term is also sometimes used euphemistically for a sexual...

 with another: rejection

Rejection

The word "rejection" was first used in 1415. The original meaning was "to throw" or "to throw back".Rejection may mean:* Social rejection, in psychology, an interpersonal situation that occurs when a person or group of people exclude an individual from a social relationship* Transplant rejection,...

 and betrayal

Betrayal

Betrayal is the breaking or violation of a presumptive contract, trust, or confidence that produces moral and psychological conflict within a relationship amongst individuals, between organizations or between individuals and organizations...

. This is countered with our social need to belong which usually trumps the risks. Hill, Rubin, and Peplau conducted a study in 1976 where 231 heterosexual couples agreed to complete a questionnaire

Questionnaire

A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. Although they are often designed for statistical analysis of the responses, this is not always the case...

 about their relationship for two years. Only 128 couples survived the two years together, but it was the information gathered from the 103 couples that provided substantial information on breakup factors.

Predictors

• Dissimilarity among the couples in age, education
  Education
  Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
  
  , and physical attraction
• Those who said they "loved" each other stayed together compared to those who simply "liked" each other

Process

Hill et al. (1976) found that the peak season for a breakup is when there are changes in one's life, which may force the relationship to be examined as to whether it can be sustained over time, distance, or other change in lifestyle. Women were more likely to be the initiators of change.

Impact

• Men were hit harder by the breakup than the women in the Hill et al. study (1976), they felt more depressed, lonely, unhappy, less free—but less guilty
• Women were less clingy and sentimental, and more pragmatic about the future of the relationship and how it would impact their lives—they had more at stake in finding the right partner

Duck's topographical model

Steve Duck (1981) developed a topographical model of relationship disengagement

Disengagement

The term disengagement can refer to:*Disengagement by director Amos Gitai*Israel's unilateral disengagement plan*Disengagement *Religious disengagement*Apathy...

 and dissolution, whether married or not, in which he outlined four models of dissolution: pre-existing doom, mechanical failure, process loss and sudden death.

Pre-existing doom

• Couples who are badly matched from the start, no matter what the initiation
  Initiation
  Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components...
  
   action involved, it could not overcome personal differences

Mechanical failure

• When things break, where communication
  Communication
  Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
  
   may be poor or interactions go badly

Process loss

• Relationships that die because they do not reach their potential, albeit a slow death, because of poor productivity
  Productivity
  Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. Productivity is a ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it. Usually this ratio is in the form of an average, expressing the total output divided by the total input...
  
   or communication on one or both of the members of the dyad

Sudden death

New information on a partner can produce sudden death of the new relationship with a trust violation. Davis (1973) described three conditions that produce "sudden death" in a relationship: two-sided subsidence

Subsidence

Subsidence is the motion of a surface as it shifts downward relative to a datum such as sea-level. The opposite of subsidence is uplift, which results in an increase in elevation...

, in which both members of the couple maintain a formal relationship with no intimacy; one-sided subsidence, where one partner is dependent and hangs on, while the other actively seeks to end the relationship; and zero-sided subsidence which is an abrupt ending primarily brought on by outside factors that makes retreat or repair impossible.

Breakup strategies

There are at least fifteen strategies used to terminate relationships and are set apart by whether they are unilateral or bilateral and indirect or direct (Baxter, 1982, 1984).

• Avoidance
  Avoidance
  Avoidance is a 2002 novel by Michael Lowenthal. It was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in 2003.Avoidance explores the topics of child sexual abuse, hebephilia and pederasty...
  
   – from complete evasion
  Evasion
  Evasion may refer to:*Évasion, a Canadian French-language travel and adventure television channel*Evasion , a deceptive act*Evasion , to avoid government mandate through specious means...
  
   to decreased contact
• Relational ruses – leaking an impending breakup to a friend or third party

Unilateral and indirect

• Withdrawal of supportiveness
  Moral support
  Moral support is a way of giving support to a person or cause, or to one side in a conflict, without making any contribution beyond the emotional or psychological value of the encouragement....
  
   and affection
  Affection
  Affection or fondness is a "disposition or rare state of mind or body" that is often associated with a feeling or type of love. It has given rise to a number of branches of philosophy and psychology concerning: emotion ; disease; influence; state of being ; and state of mind...
  
  
• Pseudo de-escalation – purports that the relationship will benefit by separation
  Separation
  Separation may refer to:* Separation , the process by which a service member leaves active duty* Separation , rules to minimise the risk of collision between aircraft in flight...
  
  
• Cost escalation – attempts to make the relationship unattractive to the partner

Unilateral and direct

• The direct dump – simple statement that the relationship is over
• Dates with other people
• Justification
  Justification
  Justification may refer to:*Theory of justification, a part of epistemology that attempts to understand the justification of propositions and beliefs*Justification , defence in a prosecution for a criminal offense...
  
   – explanation why the relationship is ending
• The relationship talk trick – talking about "problems"
• Threats and bullying
• Positive tone – painting the picture that "it's nobody's fault, it's just over"
• De-escalation – breaking up to see if the relationship endures
• The fadeaway – both partners drift apart

Bilateral and direct

• The blame game – both partners dissatisfied and blaming each other
• Negotiated farewell – realize problems cannot be solved and negotiate breakup

Phases of dissolution

Duck's (1982) four phases of relationship dissolution, each very distinctive with specific components, are moved through once one or both of the partners have crossed a cognitive threshold.

Intrapsychic phase

Intrapsychic

Intrapsychic

Intrapsychic is a psychological term referring to internal psychological processes of the individual. These processes can be positive , negative or neutral....

 phase begins with one partner who is dissatisfied and secretively searches for a way to "fix" the relationship. Vaughan (1986) states that uncoupling begins with a secret, and Duck asserts that the secret of unhappiness is kept that way through the intrapsychic phase.

Dyadic phase

Dyadic

Dyadic

Dyadic may refer to:*Adicity of a mathematical relation or function *Dyadic communication* Dyadic counterpoint, the voice-against-voice conception of polyphony...

 phase where the dissatisfied partner decides to fix the problem by confronting the other partner, thus entering into uncharted territory. This may not fix what is wrong and just continue to draw out the relationship until the unhappy partner becomes determined to depart, which will move the relationship into the next phase.

Social phase

Social phase is when the partners devise their accounts of how the breakup happened and how they will present it to their social circle

Social circle

Social circles are groups of socially interconnected people. A Social circle is distinguished from a social pyramid in that there are two perspectives that can be used to describe a social circle: the perspective of an individual who is the locus of a particular group of socially interconnected...

s. If it is in fact the end, they will cross over into the final phase of relationship dissolution.

Grave-dressing phase

Grave-dressing phase is simply the "attempt to finally get it over with and put behind me" phase. Partners now create an acceptable story about their love and loss, do whatever cognitive work, including introspection

Introspection

Introspection is the self-observation and reporting of conscious inner thoughts, desires and sensations. It is a conscious and purposive process relying on thinking, reasoning, and examining one's own thoughts, feelings, and, in more spiritual cases, one's soul...

, attribution

Attribution

Attribution may refer to:Something, such as a quality or characteristic, that is related to a particular possessor; an attribute.*Attribution , concept in copyright law requiring an author to be credited...

, rationalization, and reassessment of self and other, which is necessary in order to get over the deceased relationship.

Experience

Harvey (1996) explains that when you experience a loss

Grief

Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions...

 or a depletion of resources, you may need some time to sort out what you had in the first place, what was given up in the breakup, and what remains for you to rely on, cherish or use. Grief is not a passive experience but a series of active choices for the grieving person to confront and resolve in either the direction of healing

Healing

Physiological healing is the restoration of damaged living tissue, organs and biological system to normal function. It is the process by which the cells in the body regenerate and repair to reduce the size of a damaged or necrotic area....

 or prolonged suffering (Neeld, 1990).

Four central tasks of grief

Weber (1998) outlines the following central tasks for dealing with grief.

1. Express your emotions. Expressing sorrow
   Sorrow (emotion)
   Sorrow is an emotion, feeling, or sentiment. Sorrow 'is more "intense" than sadness...it implies a long term state'. At the same time 'sorrow - but not unhappiness - suggests a degree of resignation...which lends sorrow its peculiar air of dignity'....
   
    and rage
   Rage (emotion)
   Rage is a feeling of intense anger. It is associated with the Fight-or-flight response and oftentimes activated in response to an external cue, such as the murder of a loved one. The phrase, 'thrown into a fit of rage,' expresses the immediate nature of rage that occurs before deliberation. If left...
   
    is one of the central tasks of grief (Leick & Davidsen-Nielsen, 1990). Whether you express it to a sympathetic friend or write down your feelings and thoughts in a journal (Pennebaker, 1990) which can bring long-term benefits, such as greater well-being and emotional recovery.
2. What happened? Figuring out what happened by doing the cognitive work to review the relationship but also accept the reasons for the failure. Survivors of a broken relationship should write their own story on what happened (Kingma, 1987) which will provide some emotional release and a way to cope with the situation. All this is done to provide some closure to the experience.
3. Realize, don't idealize. Use various strategies to lessen the pain of the breakup. One strategy is the silent ridicule
   Ridicule
   Ridicule is a 1996 French film set in the 18th century at the decadent court of Versailles, where social status can rise and fall based on one's ability to mete out witty insults and avoid ridicule oneself...
   
    where the one left behind imagines a flaw in the other partner and mentally exaggerates it to the point of humor (Phillips & Judd, 1978). Once the person is seen as human with flaws, it's easier to leave him or her behind.
4. Prepare to feel better. If there was a sense that something was wrong for a period of time, it can create a sense of relief when the other shoe finally drops. If the person left can get to the point of laughter over the situation, the healing process
   Healing Process
   Healing Process is Nell's third major album and fifth studio album. After their last album Walk Through Me, they left Seotaiji Company and released this album in WOOLLIM Entertainment where Epik High is accociated...
   
    will break the bonds of misery since it's incompatible with self-imposed mourning
   Mourning
   Mourning is, in the simplest sense, synonymous with grief over the death of someone. The word is also used to describe a cultural complex of behaviours in which the bereaved participate or are expected to participate...
   
    (Frankel & Tien, 1993). Look for what was actually funny about the relationship which in turn can accelerate the process of healing.

Conclusion

All relationships ultimately end whether through a breakup or death

Death

Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....

. Knowing this, humans continue to establish relationships and endure the inevitable highs and lows. By refusing to participate in a relationship, thus avoiding the joys

Happiness

Happiness is a mental state of well-being characterized by positive emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. A variety of biological, psychological, religious, and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources....

and sorrow, those people will miss an important secret to life: Not feeling anything at all may be worse than feeling bad (Guerrero, Andersen & Afifi, 2007).

"Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"

_{~ Lord Alfred Tennyson's poem In Memoriam:27, 1850}