Instructor Wrap Up - Wood Chapter 11

Committed Romantic Relationships

Key Concepts:

Agape

Commitment 

Dyadic breakdown

Dyadic phase

Environmental spoiling 

Equity

Eros

Explorational communication

Grave dressing

Intensifying communication 

Intimacy

Intrapsychic phase

Invitational communication 

Ludus

Mania

Navigating

Passion

Placemaking

Pragma

Psychological responsibililty

Relational culture

Revising communication 

Social phase

Social support

Storge 

This instructor wrap-up is going to be a bit different this week.  In the spirit of self-disclosure, I'm going to give you a little information about my husband and I.  I should note here, that I do not generally talk much about my husband in my online classes.  However, he does come up quite often in my lectures when I teach face-to-face classes due to the nature of his personality.  My husband is an incredibly unique individual with some interesting communication patterns, interests and hobbies.  Having said that, here's a brief story about how we met.

Shawn and I have been together for over 10 years, but we've known each other for almost 15 years.  It was a Sunday afternoon immediately following a church service one of my best friends and I had attended.  We were getting established in a new church in San Jose after having been away at college, and we were getting to know the folks in the college group.  The college group, as a whole, were going out to In-N-Out Burger on Blossom Hill and Santa Teresa for lunch, and we were invited to go.  As two 21 year old women, we decided it would be great to get to know some people our age, and decided to stop by to say hi.  We were a little late showing up because we had some other business to attend to prior to lunch.  We walked over from the church to In-N-Out Burger, and while walking up we spotted a few new people we hadn't previously met sitting at the table with some folks from the college group.  Everyone introduced themselves, and when Shawn turned around to say hi, my friend Vanessa and I gave each other a look.  Nothing notable happened until we were walking away.  Being two ladies in our early 20's, of course we sized up everyone we had met that day.  Vanessa mentioned that Shawn was cute, and 'just my type'.  At that time my response was, "yeah, he's cute but I would never date him because he's too young for me".  I was 21 and he was 18 at the time.

Fast forward a week or two later.  Shawn was having a college group get-together at his grandparents house complete with a BBQ, pool and hot tub party.  To make a long story short, we spent quite a few hours getting to know people at the party, socializing and having a great time.  My friend Vanessa and I ended up spending a number of hours getting to know Shawn while he was hanging out in the hot tub (of course we were far too cool to have brought our bathing suits, so we sat at the edge).  To this day Shawn will tell you that "we tried to kill him by keeping him in the hot tub for so long".  But this was the beginning of a long friendship.  

Shawn and I stayed friends for about 3 years before we started dating.  In fact, we had absolutely no interest in one another as anything other than friends.  Well, that is until one day we started to see each other in a different light.  It happened at exactly the same time for both of us, where we were no longer interested in just a friendship, but something more.  We officially started dating in early 2002, and have been together ever since.  I won't bore you with all of the details about dating, engagement, and our wedding, but I will say that we've had an amazing relationship so far.  From the start, our relationship has fit like a glove.  I would venture to guess, because we had been friends for so long before we ever started dating, is the reason why our relationship felt so natural. Shawn and I are truly best friends, and can't imagine living our lives apart from one another.  

If you want to read about other relationships that exemplify some of the concepts in this chapter, go HERE.

Thanks for letting me do the instructor wrap-up a little differently this week.  I figured since you have the ability to read the chapter, this might be more of an interesting way to wrap-up this week's reading.