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Introducing Interpersonal Communication

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She is home with the kids, who are alternating between angry and clingy.¹ She’s trying to cook dinner, but the smoke detector keeps blaring, causing the dog to bark. Sure enough, it’s at this moment that the phone rings. Glancing at the caller ID, she sees it is the caller she’d hoped for. She answers, because despite the chaos around her, this could be their last conversation. He says, “I’ve been waiting in line for two hours to talk, and I only have ten minutes. I’ve had a really bad day and miss you all.” What should she say? Choice #1: Lie. Tell him everything’s fine, and mask her frustration with coolness. But he’ll sense her aloofness and leave the conversation worrying about why she is distracted. Is she angry with him? Having an affair? Choice #2: Be honest. Tell him that things are chaotic, and ask whether he can talk to the kids for a minute while she clears her head.

Military wife, author, and New York Times columnist Melissa Seligman has lived this scene many times during her husband’s combat deployments. She has learned to choose the second path because of the inescapable connection between communication choices and relationship outcomes. As she describes, “When a family member is gone for a year at a time, how can you sustain closeness? How do you maintain a three-dimensional marriage in a two-dimensional state? The only way is through open, honest, and loving communication.”

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The Seligmans use multiple media to maintain intimacy, including webcams and exchanging videos, e-mails, phone calls, and letters. Melissa notes, “This way, we have a rounded communication relationship. We even send care packages of leaves, sand, pine needles, or pieces of fabric with cologne or perfume, to awaken the senses and cement the memories we have of each other.” They also journal, then read each other’s writings when they are reunited. The journals “have the dates, circumstances, and what went unsaid in the day-to-day minutiae of our lives. They are our way of staying connected when ripped apart.”

Melissa Seligman uses similarly diverse communication in her professional work with military support groups. “In my working life, I am on Facebook, Skype, and Web conference calls all the time. Texting. Instant-messaging. All of these are essential.” But she also is mindful of the limits of technology, recognizing the importance of tailoring the medium to the task. “Technology cannot sustain a relationship, and relying on it to do so will create chaos. Rather, choosing the technology that best suits an individual’s relationship is the key.”

Through years of experience, Melissa Seligman and her family have learned to cope with intense versions of the challenges we all face in our relationships. How can I better manage my anger and frustration? What can I do to maintain closeness with those I love? How can I communicate in a way that’s both honest and kind? In 2010, she and coauthor Christina Piper released a children’s book, A Heart Apart, which helps young children cope with the absence of military parents. When she is asked to reflect on the importance of communication, Melissa thinks of the next generation: “Children need to know and understand that anger and sadness go along with missing someone. They must be taught the importance of communication, and how to communicate well. This sets them up for success when their emotions begin to flow. Feelings are not right or wrong—it’s what you choose to do with them that counts. Teaching our children to communicate well is the best gift we can give them.”

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My wife and I are out to dinner with our three grown sons—Kyle, Colin, and Conor—and our best friends, Tim and Hee Sun, whom we haven’t seen since they moved to Korea. The conversation between us flows freely as we drift through discussions of personal events, past stories, politics, world affairs, and even online gaming—a passion Tim shares with my boys. The intimacy of the interaction is enhanced by us going “unplugged”; we’ve all placed our phones off the table. Nevertheless, the boys succumb to technological temptation when their entrées arrive, snapping photos of their food, which they post to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook so that their friends and girlfriends can share in the festivities. As the evening ends, phones are retrieved from handbags and pockets, selfies are taken to lock down the memory, and texts are sent to absent family and friends to spread our happiness outward. All in all, it’s one of those life events during which you count the minutes as precious yet bittersweet because they pass too quickly.

As I’m driving home, it flashes into my mind that regardless of the particulars, the peak moments of relationship joy that punctuate our lives are created through interpersonal communication. It’s not the dinners, the fireworks, the sunsets, or the concerts that connect us to others. Those things are just, well, things. Instead, it’s our communication. We use interpersonal communication to build, maintain, and even end relationships with romantic partners, family members, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances. We do this through tweeting, texting, instant-messaging, social networking site posts and chats, e-mail, face-to-face interactions, and phone calls. And we switch back and forth between these various forms fluidly, effortlessly.

But regardless of how we’re communicating, where, or with whom, one fact inescapably binds us: the communication choices we make determine the personal, interpersonal, and relationship outcomes that follow. When we communicate well, we create desirable outcomes, such as positive emotions, satisfying relationships, and encounters that linger as happy memories. When we communicate poorly, we generate negative outcomes, such as interpersonal conflict, dissatisfaction with a relationship, and bitter lament over things that shouldn’t have been said. By studying interpersonal communication, you can acquire knowledge and skills to boost your interpersonal competence. This will help you build and maintain satisfying relationships and, ultimately, improve your quality of life.

In this chapter, we begin our study of interpersonal communication. You’ll learn: