Page 73 - Effective Communication Skills by Dalton Kehoe

P. 73

The autonomy/connection
tension comes in because
we want to maintain
togetherness with our
partner, but at certain points
in the relationship we also
may want to make our own
needs or interests a priority.
For instance, our need to
get a better job may require
moving to a new location
and forcing our partner to
give up a job he or she is © Stockbyte/Thinkstock.
happy with. What do we do?

The third hurdle is novelty/ Sustaining a loving relationship requires hard
predictability tension. We work but has great bene¿ ts.
have contradictory desires
for newness and adventure on one hand and predictability and comfort on
the other. After the exciting period of newness in relationship building, we
create habitual patterns of behavior. The newness and discovery become
balanced by predictability, but too much predictability can lead to boredom.
The challenge for the couple is how to inject just enough newness into the
ongoing life of the relationship to maintain interest without undermining
their stable interaction patterns and pushing each other into feelings of
uncertainty and fear.

The maintenance of a long-term personal relationship requires work on our
part—a persistent commitment to connect talk to create a positive balance
in your emotional bank account and dialogue talk for relationship repair. Ŷ