Of all the relationships you experience, four usually stand out as the most impactful: lovers, family members, friends, and coworkers. But as important as these involvements are, they are also widely different from one another. Knowing the unique characteristics of each relationship type can improve your communication within them.

In Kaui Hart Hemmings’s novel The Descendants (2011), attorney Matt King faces daunting challenges in the relationships that fill his life. On the professional front, he must make a business decision involving billions of dollars and affecting thousands of people. As the descendant of native Hawaiian royalty and the controlling heir to a massive land holding, Matt must decide whether to sell the land to developers or preserve it. But the decision isn’t purely professional; it has family implications as well. The other heirs to the property—Matt’s cousins and their families—want him to sell, so they can share in the profits. What’s more, they make it clear that if he doesn’t sell, there could be a permanent rift in the family. Meanwhile, on the home front, Matt’s wife, Joanie, has suffered a devastating brain injury while boat racing and is in an irreversible coma. Suddenly a single parent, Matt must try to reconnect emotionally with two daughters from whom he has long been detached. He must also let friends and family members know that Joanie is dying. Complicating matters further, he discovers that Joanie—whom he had considered his best friend, sparring partner, and closest confidante—was cheating on him before the accident and had planned to divorce him. In the climactic scene of the book, he puts the pain of her betrayal to rest:

I bow my head and speak to Joanie softly. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you everything you wanted. I wasn’t everything you wanted. You were everything I wanted. Every day. Home. There you are. Dinner, dishes, TV. Weekends at the beach. You go here. I go there. Parties. Home to complain about the party.” I can’t think of anything else. Just our routine together. “I forgive you,” I say. Why is it so hard to articulate love, yet so easy to express disappointment? (Hemmings, 2011, pp. 235–236)

Throughout The Descendants, Matt King juggles the love and pain he feels toward his dying wife, the demands of being a single parent, his encounters with friends and family members, and his dealings with business partners. Similarly, all our lives are filled with these same relationship types: romantic, family, friendship, and workplace.

These relationships differ in many respects, but they share one critical point of commonality: interpersonal communication. It may sound cliché, but interpersonal communication is the lifeblood of all your relationships, no matter the type. It’s how you initiate relationships, build and sustain them, and end those that have run their course. No matter the variety of channels used to interact within them—online, over the phone, and face-to-face—the focus is always interpersonal.

Given the central role of interpersonal communication in your relationships, let’s explore each type of involvement and its defining characteristics.