External Pressures on Friendship: Geographic Distance

Like any other relation, friendships are exposed to external pressures from outside sources. In chapter 10 (p.266), Julia Wood sums up these external pressures into three categories: competing demands, personal changes and geographic distance.

Studying abroad is an experience acting as external pressure on my relations with my friends. In this case, it is mostly connected with geographic distance. As Julia Wood recalls, most people have faced distance in some of their relationships. But it’s the level of commitment that will set if the relation will survive or not. But it may also depend on socioeconomic factors (it takes time and money to visit a friend that is away!). To keep in touch with my best friend (see the picture of us beside) and not loose all the time and memories invest in our friendship, we try to chat everyday or two. Sometimes it’s really quick, almost just the ‘’headlines’’ of our respective life. However, even though we’re thousands miles away, I feel like she’s just next door. This is really important to me, because I can still feel close to her and know what’s going on in her life. At the meantime this helped me to enjoy fully my trip, since I know she’s doing fine. She’s also a doing the bridge between me and my other friends. She keeps them aware of my abroad experience as well as she feeds me with important things going on in my other friends’ life (love, school, work, etc.). Sometimes I feel far away, but I make an effort to share my experiences and thoughts because I know investment is the best way to feel close again. I’ve been here for almost 3 months and I believe things didn’t change between us.

One of the things my friends studying here with me and I are doing to keep in touch with people back in Quebec, is writing a blog on our Californian Exchange. On this blog, we share thoughts, facts and pictures of our lives in here. People seem to appreciate it because they often give us feedback on how they feel about our posts and also comment our beautiful pictures. Some people told me they almost feel like they’re part of the trip when looking at our blog and pictures.
Here’s the link of Eat.Pray.Surf (blog) if you want to take a sneak peak of it!

Plus, I found this video of Gossip – Love Long Distance, in which the girl is complaining about her boyfriend lack of investment and commitment since they’re apart. She’s feeling like the relation is falling apart because of the geographic distance: ''love long distance is testing me, trying my patience, I need more of your assistance now''.

Responses to conflict: The Exit Response

In chapter 9, Julia Wood is broaching the management of conflicts. At some point, she discussed of the various types of responses to a conflict: the exit response, the neglect response, the loyalty response and the voice response. It was really interesting reading this part of the chapter, because I can identify people in my entourage who relate to the different kinds of response. This was particularly true with the Exit Response: ‘’The exit response involves physically walking out or psychologically withdrawing’’ (chapter 9, p.234). As Julia Wood explains, exit conflict is engaging negative effects since the problem isn’t address. People aren’t always doing it with bad intentions, for them, it often refers as a way of avoiding conflict as they don’t believe in engaging in it.

This is the case of Kate, one of my good friends, who can’t stand getting into an argument. Since she doesn’t feel comfortable into that kind of situation, she prefers not saying a word and she just sneaks out. When something’s wrong between us, I know we won’t be able to discuss about it and express our feelings to figure out how to manage the disagreement. For me, this ends up being very frustrating. As we learnt earlier in chapter 9, conflict is natural and can even be good for the individuals. I feel like we can never get completely over the difference, as we don’t talk about it: it makes it almost unfeasible to understand each other’s point of view. The ‘’ real problem ‘’ is kept under silence and tensions between us are rising. This is really draining energy from me and our relationship always turns out being weakened every time.

Now I understand that it’s not because she doesn’t care about it, it just because she doesn’t see the point in arguing. I think I’ll try to let her know that exit isn’t a good solution. I found an interesting quote of Maggie Kuhn, which clearly illustrate the message I’d like to tell my friend Kate: ‘’Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes’’. I think this sentence expresses the importance of talking, saying your opinion and emotions. This might be hard, but nothing’s worst than saying nothing. It’s important to give a voice to your thoughts and feelings. (Like it is represented in the image at the top of the text)

Reasons We May Not Express Emotions

Communicating emotions effectively is not something very natural and easy for some people. Considering myself not very skilful at expressing my inner emotions, I completely understand the reasons we may not express emotions described by Julia Wood in chapter 7 (p.180). According to researchers, there are 4 majors reasons why people hesitate to communicate emotions:

(1) Social Expectations
‘’[…] what we feel and how we express it are influenced by the culture and social groups to which we belong. Gender socialization seems particularly important in shaping feelings and the expression of them.’’ (Wood, p.180) For example, our culture tends to portray women as caring and supportive people, talking overtly of their feelings. As a woman, not always being able to deal well with my feelings makes me feels out of place, in some situations. I can really tell that social expectations play a major role in my perception of myself when it comes to expressing emotions.

The character of Bree Hodge (Marcia Cross) in Desperate Housewives is the perfect looking woman: she’s always dressed very nice, wearing pearls and acting very nicely, like a real lady (see picture). She looks like the higher expectations we have on how a western woman should behave. In fact, this is very ironic because she actually struggles with expressing her true feelings and consequently, her relationships are very affected by that problem.

(2) Vulnerability
In others words, vulnerability is the fear of self-disclosing to others that could affect their view of us.

(3) Protecting Others
Not expressing emotions can be a choice. The fear to hurt or upset someone’s feelings can overpass the need to express one’s own emotions. However, you must take the time to consider and analyze the situation, because restraining from expressing feelings can cause personal distress.

(4) Social and Professional Roles
‘’A final reason we may not express some feelings is that our roles make it inappropriate’’, argues Julia Wood on page 183.

Nonlistening: Defensive listening

When I think of communication, first thing that comes to my mind is the speaking part; like the words you are using to create your message. However, taking a look closer to chapter 6 made me realize that the listening part is as much as important in the communication process, or even more!

One of the most interesting part of the chapter discusses the forms of nonlistening. It can’t take many forms, just like pseudolistening, monopolizing, selective listening, defensive listening, ambushing and literal listening. For the purpose of this blog, I will only concentrate on defensive listening (p.158).

Julia T. Wood’s definition of defensive listening is: ‘perceiving personal attacks, criticism, or hostility in communication that is not critical or mean-spirited’ (p.158). Responding defensively happens when you have a bad perception of the person’s message; you perceived the person doesn’t like/respect/trust you and expresses it in their communication.

But the defensive listening may be caused by other factors, for example, if you had a pretty hard day at work, you may tend to perceive attacking message where there’s none. This also happens about certain topics you feel ashamed of, or you don’t feel comfortable talking of. As an example, you may respond rudely to someone’s speaking of his particular other if you just broke up with yours, because you may doubt you are lovable.

I used to be very good friend with Annie, who was very frequently using defensive listening. Now, after all of our misunderstandings and little fights because of that communication issue, our friendship isn’t the same, it actually decreased. For example, I would say: ‘I wish I didn’t wake you up this morning. I was up early and I tried to be careful not to make noise, but I accidentally dropped a glass on the floor!’ and she would answer something like: ‘Well, I should have get up earlier but I had so much work last night that I felt I deserved to stay in bed this morning…’. In this situation, I was just trying to be polite and apologize for the noise, but she would take it like an attack. She would think I was saying she was a lazy person for not waking up as early as I did! This was the kind of responds I got from her… Sometimes, I would tell her that her perception wasn’t good and explain what I really meant. In this context, metacommunication is essential for the communication to be effective between both people.

You know this humorist, Jeff Dunham? Well, one of his character, ‘Peanut’, is so hilarious! There’s actually a scene where Peanut is arguing with Jeff on basically everything. When watching it, at some point, you can feel Peanut is very aggressive and sarcastic and uses defensive listening whenever Jeff would talk. Enjoy! :)

Self-disclosure... and me!

One of the other concepts that really attracts me is self-disclosure (chapter 2, p.57). According to the author, self-disclosure is ‘revealing information about ourselves that others are unlikely to discover on their own’. Most of the time, this information includes particular feelings, dreams that are important to us, fears we’ve been hiding, secret hopes and much more. Sharing your proper feelings to others helps you to add another perception of who you are and how you feel about it.

There are certainly pros (benefits) and cons (risks) coming with the self-disclosure process. Fortunately, self-disclosure involves more benefits to your self than negative issues.

On p. 58, Julia T. Wood presented a list of benefits which goes like this:
Self-disclosure communication may:
- increase trust (i.e.: You feel your friend is a good person you can put trust in him/her)
- increase closeness (i.e.: Sharing experiences with your friend tend to diminish tensions and create a valuable context for true communication and real friendship)
- enhance self-esteem (i.e.: When communicating your feeling and having feedback from the other you may feel less pressure on your shoulders and change your perception about your problems, etc.)
- increase security (i.e.: Sharing your feelings, especially your doubts and fears helps you stay down-to-earth, realistic and secure)
- enhance self-growth (i.e.: Taking advices and perspectives from others helps you feel better with yourself and it gives you tools to overcome what’s coming up next!)

On the other hand, self-disclosure might imply some risks:
- Others may reject you (i.e.: If someone doesn’t connect with your values or perception, he/she may not understand how you feel and may react in the wrong way. It is important to choose the good person when you reveal yourself)
- Others may think less of you (i.e.: When you reveal yourself, you may change the other’s perception of you and influences it in a bad way, unhappily.)
- Others may violate our confidences (i.e.: Be careful to whom you expose your feelings, there’s a chance they might not be trustworthy people. Choose them carefully.)

But step-by-step communication and with the good people will decrease the risks encounter with self-disclosure. In my personal life, I used to keep all of my feelings (mostly the bad ones and the anxious thoughts) inside. I also had communication issues with some of my particular others because I wouldn’t reveal anything about me. All I was thinking were the risks associated with self-disclosure. It took me time and huge efforts to start sharing some of my feelings with my mom and my best friend. Since then, I know myself a lot better; increase my relationships’ closeness; and I have improved my self-esteem. To help me express my feelings, I even started a blog, few months ago. Even thought some texts are fictive, it helps me to put words on my feelings.

If you feel like doing so, you may take a look at it by clicking on the link below:
http://etvdmaussiparfois.blogspot.com/

Particular Others through Attachment Styles

To better understand the meaning of my first juicy concept (attachment styles chapter 2, p.47), it is important to be aware of the particular others conception. In fact, the particular others referred to the people who are significant or really important to us, such as the members of our family. In her book Interpersonal Communication, Everyday Encounters, Julia T. Wood claims: ''Parents and other individuals who matter to us communicate who we are and what we are worth through [...] and attachment styles'' (p.43). I think that consciously or not, we develop our self through the interactions and communication we have with the important people of our life.

Knowing that, it is now easier to rely this conception to the attachment styles, which are ''patterns of caregiving that teach us who we and others are, and how to approach relationships'' (p.47). This is learn at a very early stage of our development. Since a child's first interactions - very first human bond - are usually with his parents, he will shape how he feels and expects future relationships depending on his past experiences and learnings. For parents, it is essentiel not to neglected communication with their children, because it will reflect on how comfortable, confident and secure their children will feel around others.

Julia T. Wood presents four kinds of attachment styles: secure, fearful, dismissive and anxious/ambivalent attachment styles which are all based on the perception of self and the view of others.

1) Secure attachment style: People with a secure attachment style grown up with an attentive caregiver. This positive communication between the parent and the child formed a confident and affectionate person, with social abilities and a good self-esteem. They don't need to rely on others' thought or feelings to feel safe and secure.

2) Fearful attachment style: happens when the caregiver act in a negative or even an abusing way toward the child. The unsuccessful communication – or the lack of – leads children to think they are unloved. This way, ''they may avoid others or feel insecure in relationships'' (p.48).

3) Dimissive attachment style: in this style, the parent acts mostly like in the fearful attachment style. The difference is that the child is rejecting the caregivers’ opinion or view of themselves as unworthy people. Consequently, they usually have a good opinion of themselves but have difficulties to value or feel secure in developing relationships with others.

4) Anxious/ambivalent attachment style: This style is mixing up the elements of the other three approaches of the caregiver. In fact, anxious style is the result of inconsistent and unpredictable treatments of the parent. Positive and negative responses of the caregiver cause anxiety and fear of the child who’s trying to figure out the good from the bad. As Julia T. Wood is saying, parents are figure of authority and models to children, so they tend to assume that they are the source of the problem. They usually think they are unlovable, just like the fearful attachment style.

When I think about it, I can connect some of my own friends with each of the attachment styles. I think my good friend Chloe is one of those person who grew up with attentive and loving parents. She’s self-confident and really comfortable with meeting new people and makes new friends. It seems so easy and natural for her to go toward people and lead her own relationships with others. She probably lies on secure attachment style. By observing Marie-Pierre, I can tell she’s falling into fearful attachment style. She often says negative comments about herself that make me think she has very low self-esteem and views herself as someone who’s not attractive or no good. She’s always questioning herself about the true feelings of her boyfriend toward her, etc. I can’t tell if anyone has a dismissive attachment style, it’s harder to tell for sure… But I can rely myself to the anxious/ambivalent attachment style. The thing is I don’t really remember how communication with my parents in my youth was, but the way this attachment style is described makes me think I am just like that. I am a very anxious person and I do not give confidence in others quite easily because I’m afraid hurt my feelings. I am continually questioning myself about details and feel insecure about a lot of my relationships. I always rely on the same people who I know are trustable and who love me. I’m working on it…

In an exaggerate way, we can relate the anxious/ambivalent attachment style to the movie Runaway Bride (see trailer below), or most specially Julia Robert’s character, Maggie. In the story, Maggie is renowned for ''escaping from her marriages''. As she is able to maintain (short) relationships with men, every time she walks down the aisle, she just can’t make it: she turned around and runaway. This highlights her ambivalent behavior: one second she’s about to get married and the other, she gets afraid, changes her mind deny wanting closeness (p.48).