By nature, social behavior is linear in fashion. That is, behavior occurs in a time sequence with one set of actions preceding the next. For purposes of discussion, it is important to mention that all relationships proceed through three distinct stages, which are easily recognizable by the types of interaction that takes place within each of them.
We need to consider this temporal order: the order in which a relationship is established, maintained, and ultimately terminated.
This conceptualization offers some promise in helping us understand how relationships function and also guides this website.
In order to help facilitate our discussion, analysis of each of the three stages is done separately. First, the emergence and establishment of a relationship occurs. Acquiring someone’s attention is a clear-cut activity. This acquisition period may be short, or it may occur over a period of time. In any event, specific social factors affect and govern this stage of development. In this initial establishing stage, a certain set of social skills is required to successfully establish a relationship.
Getting someone else’s attention or affection is one thing. However, acquiring it is a completely separate activity than is keeping it. Keeping someone’s interest or attention is governed by a qualitatively different set of social forces than acquiring such attention. Thus, keeping someone’s attention requires a different set of social skills.
Most of us can think of a friend or family member who is able to easily attract others; but they aren’t so skilled at keeping said others interested in maintaining a relationship. Thus, in order to better understand how these social forces govern behavior in each stage, we must make a distinction between the two types of activities.
Second, once you “have” someone’s affection, it is no longer possible to “want” it. (If you’re thinking this means that you don’t care about that person, keep on reading.) For, by definition, in order to “want” something, you must be without it. To want is to desire, to wish for or to long for something.
Once you have someone’s attention or affection, it is no longer possible to long for it. You can, however, care about what happens to the attention you do get from someone. You may be concerned for example, with whether or not your love was slipping away or perhaps it may be growing in its intensity. However, managing or maintaining an interest or love in someone is an activity distinct from its acquisition.
The third temporal component that affects all social relationships is its end point. But as was the case with the two preceding stages, ESTABLISHING and MAINTAINING, the successful negotiation through a breakup, and its eventual resolution, requires its own set of social skills.
How many of us ever really bother to think about this depressing aspect of a relationship before it actually occurs? Not many. So most people remain somewhat ignorant about what a breakup involves until it is staring them in the face. Or, is staring them in the face AGAIN!
Those of you who have endured a breakup of any sort can attest to the fact that the breakup stage can be very unpleasant. On the other hand, breaking up with someone can also feel entirely liberating! But to complicate things, a breakup can also feel both good and bad simultaneously. One day the experience may feel personally liberating, and the next it may feel like a complete disaster. In some instances, such feelings of joy and sorrow can vary moment-to-moment.
Ordinarily, the experience associated with a breakup depends on whether the person is the one who initiates the breakup or the one who gets dumped. The person who gets dumped by someone normally endures a more negative experience. However, enduring a loss of any sort may be a painful experience, no matter which one of the partners initiated it.
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onlinerelationshiphandbook.com
pete padilla