Final Blog

Starting and ending relationships can be a tricky experience. Letting someone know that you don't want a relationship to go any further than then "experimenting" stage can also be a sensitive topic. I think there are a couple ways to communicate to someone that you don't want to further a relationship. I think the most obvious and simple way would be to tell the other person that you just aren't interested in anything deeper. Communicating this way would make it clear to the other person where you stand on the relationship. A less obvious way of doing this would be to attempt to avoid communicating with the other person. The book talks about using avoidance as a method of handling conflict, so this method could be used in this communication situation as well. Another way you could communicate that you are not interested in going beyond experimenting would be to stop sharing information about yourself. Often, relationships are built on a type of "you give I give" mentality.Therefore, if one party stops giving then the other party will, perhaps, stop giving information also. 

On the other hand, if you are trying to communicate that you do want to take the relationship to the next level, continuing to share about yourself and your life is a good tell that you are maintaining interest. Showing an interest in the topics that you learned about the other person during the "experimenting stage" can let the other person know that you are interested in learning more about them. The greatest telltale communication sign that a relationship is "intesifying" is when they decide together to be exclusive to one another. When two people communicate to each other and to others that they have committed to be in a monogamous relationship, this is a sign that their relationship has gone to the next level.

Assignment 4 - Internet Self-Presentation

I have definitely distorted my self-presentation online to make myself appear differently than I am in real life. However, I haven't done this in a very long time. I probably did it the most during my freshman through junior years of high school.

Every time I would go someplace fun or new I would post pictures (back then it was on myspace and xanga) to show the internet world how well-off I was when I wasn't well off at all. I would post pictures and blogs that would show how much fun it was whenever I would 'break the rules' (ex: skipping class, drinking, smoking ... ) so that I could make sure I looked like a bad ass. I also tried to make myself look more attractive physically. I would only post pictures that I thought I looked the best in, and just being honest, I would take pictures at an angle that I knew would make my chest look bigger. 

I really don't think I do these things anymore. I think I did them in high school because of a lack of self esteem, I wasn't proud of who I really was, so I distorted things about me to make myself appear differently. Nowadays I  have a much higher self esteem and I am proud of who I am. I consciously try to make sure that the person I am portraying myself as online is the person that I really am. 

The consequences  of distorting my self presentation meant that I now had to live up to the image of the person that I created online. And when I was through with this phase, I had to go back to all my websites and either delete them or give them a major makeover, and try to change my image back to what it really should be.

The book talks about self-esteem and how it plays a role in our relationships and I truly do believe that one of the reasons people distort their image online is because their self-esteem isn't very high. This is not a very ethical thing to do, but I don't think most people even realize they are doing it. It's easy to slip into the attitude of 'make myself look better/different than what I am' because there are so many people online that will buy into your new 'self'.

Assignment 3 - Passion

Passion is something that I think both men and women strive for. The text book states that the media's portrayal of passion is what society's idea of passion is. What we see in the movies is what we want. In the beginning of my husband and I's relationship everything could have been considered passionate. We had only known each other a short time so everything was new and exciting. We were able to do spontaneous things  and experience our first date, our first kiss, our first Christmas, our first apartment and so on.

All of those things created passion in our relationship. Over time though these things have stopped creating passion. Christmas no longer brings passion, but frustration. Moving into a new apartment is not fun and exciting, but hard work and annoying. Things that once brought great amounts of passion to our relationship no longer do. However, I do not think that this means that the passion in our relationship is gone. I think it means that we, as a couple, need to find new things to introduce into our relationship to bring in passion. A surprise date, gift, hairstyle, or act of kindness can inspire passion.

The change in passion in our relationship can effect the way we communicate together. Because I do know him so well now, things that once excited me and made me excited to communicate with him no longer do.  I used to think his tendency to switch topics quickly in a conversation  was cute, whereas now I sometimes find it annoying that he can't stay focused. In these types of ways, our communication has changed with the passion levels.

I do think that some level of passion is necessary throughout most of our relationships. I think it is possible to have a happy relationship without passion, but I think maintaining a level of passion makes relationships flow easier. Passion in a long term relationship brings two people together. Although my husband and I don't have the amount of passion we had while we were dating, passion is still something we chase after. As our relationship grows we will find passion in new ways. The book implies that once passion is gone, it is gone forever. I don't agree with this at all. I have seen couples that have been married for 20+ years and have more passion that newlyweds. I think passion is something every relationship can have if they are willing to work for it. And I think it is a worthy thing to work towards.

Assignment 2- Listening Styles

I took a short quiz in my text book and discovered what type of listening style I have. I found out that I am a people-oriented listener. This really does not surprise me at all. The other options for listening styles were action-oriented, content-oriented, and time-oriented.

Being a people-oriented listener means that during a conversation my main focus is on the person that I am listening to. More specifically, I am interested in my conversation partners feelings and emotions while they are taking to me. When my husband tells me about his bad day, I'm more interested in the emotions that the bad events caused rather than what the actual events of his day are. It is easy and natural for me to 'put myself in someone elses shoes'. I am doing this almost subconsciously  every time I listen to someone else speak. The benefits of this listening style are that it makes it very easy for me to become emotionally close with someone. Because I focus on a very personal aspect of the conversation, it is easy for me to find things to relate to with most people. A downside of this type f listening style is that it is very easy to become too emotionally involved. If someone is telling me something bad or sad that happened to them, it is hard for me to not continue thinking about it when I leave the conversation. This can effect my mood greatly if I let it. I'm not sure I've ever noticed when I'm conversing with someone with a different listening style. If I did pay attention to that, I would probably notice that the other person would seem to be interested in different areas of the conversation than I would be.

According to the book, most women tend to be people-oriented listeners. Once again, this is no surprise. Women tend to be more people-oriented in many scenarios. Men are more action and content oriented. I've seen this is my husbands listening style. If i tell him I had a great time doing something, he wants to know all the details behind what it was that I did.  Our American culture is thought to be less people-oriented than other cultures.  Although I do not fit this, I do see how Americans can tend to be more time, action and content oriented listeners. Us Americans are always in a hurry, so while someone is in  a conversation, they have the mentality of 'hurry up and tell me what you wanna tell me so that I can go do something else'.

Space Invasion - Assignment 1

For my Interpersonal Communications class we had an assignment that we had to complete, and then make a blog post describing what happened.
For our first assignment, I had to invade somebody's personal space. I chose to use my mother-in-law as my test experiment in this assignment. I chose her because she is not a "touchy feeling" type of person. She does not get physically close with very many people, so I thought if I invaded her space she would notice.



My husband and I spent the evening with her and on 3 occasions during the evening I got abnormally close to her. Her response was a little tough to read. She never verbally recognized the fact that I was invading her space, which was a surprise to me. On all three occasions I would kind of creep closer to her, and it seemed like on all three occasions as soon as i got too close, she would walk away.
She didn't just step back, she would stop what it was that she was doing and leave and go do something else. I think this is because she didn't want to verbally or non verbally recognize the fact that I was invading her space. So her idea of fixing the fact that I was too close was to just leave the situation all together.  Her verbal communication did lessen with the closer that I stood to her, as if she was afraid to talk with me being so close.


It was kind of awkward for me to be that close to her, since we do not communicate physically too often. I was kind of nervous to stand that close to her because I didn't know how she was going to react. It was kind of fun to invade her space and make her feel awkward, I may do this experiment with other people later on to see what kind of other reactions I can get.

First Post

Well, first things first I suppose. My name is Gabrielle and I have never had a blog before.
I've also never posted a video on Youtube, My Kindle was the first thing I ever purchased on Amazon, I've never bought anything off of Ebay, I do not have a smart phone, I've never had an Ipod, I don't have cable television or TiVo (sp?), and the last game system I owned was a PS2. Needless to say, my technology skills are atrocious.
Having said this, if I ever ask to borrow your phone because mine is dead, be prepared to just type in the number and hit the call key for me because I will have no idea what to do with a phone that doesn't even have buttons. It's not on purpose that I'm stuck in the stone age, my pocketbook just can't seem to keep up.

Here are a quick couple of things about me that I like people to know:

1)I am a Christian. I love Jesus and, try as you may, nothing you can say will change that part of me, so please do not try.

2)I am married to my best friend, my soul mate,  and the greatest man God could have ever blessed me with. His name is Jonathan and we have been married for about a year and a half now. I'm sure you'll hear plenty of interesting stories about him and I.

3)I have two pet hermit crabs that I absolutely adore. At my old apartment I wasn't aloud to have cats or dogs, so my husband (accidentally) won me a hermit crab at the county fair last summer, we named him Storm and we bought him a friend, named Mert. They might not look too cute, but they do grow on you. Hermit Crabs are kind of like beer, its an acquired taste.

4)I will not "rite lyk dis in muh blogggg. i think dis lookz stupid n i prefer 2 not look stoopid"  I may not have the best English skills, but I do try to be somewhat grammatically correct.


I don't really know what type of stuff I'm going to write in my blog, my hope is just that maybe somebody, at some point, will enjoy something that I have wrote.

-Gabrielle