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Dialectics in relationships

Extensive research has been done regarding the role dialectical tensions play in relationships. Through studies of romantic relationships, long distance relationships, friendships, and familial relationships, researchers have observed the existence and frequency of certain dialectical tensions within various types of relationships.

Romantic relationships

A study of 25 heterosexual married couples was designed to determine what types of dialectical tensions were most prevalent in antagonistic conflicts between spouses. Larry Erbert found that the Openness v. Closedness dialectic was most commonly referenced through examples by participants Research conducted by Baxter and Montgomery confirmed this finding, and broke the dialectic down into four subcategories to further analyze its existence in romantic relationships.

• Openness with: Refers to an individual's self-disclosure of information to another. In this idea, three types of information are shared: information deemed to be personal, the individuals feelings or personal opinions, and information regarding one individual's relationship with the other.

• Openness To: Often this form of openness is labeled as being attentive or responsive. People respond in cognitive, affective, and behavioral ways.

• Closedness with: Describes the type of nondisclosive talk that occurs between individuals. It is most often identified as "small talk", being primarily superficial. The talk is oriented around conversation that requires little or no self-disclosure, allowing for a controlled level informational privacy.

• Closedness to: Some people experience stress and discomfort when listening to others' problems. In response to this, some individuals attempt to distance themselves in order to discourage others from confiding in them.

'Autonomy–connection'

This refers to the independence one needs or wants from the romantic other, on the contrary also, how dependent the romantic partners are to one another. For example; a couple has been together for an extended period of time and one partner feels the need to distance themselves for a while, the other partner experiences need or dependency, therefore creating tension. There needs to be a clear decision on the amount of connection within a romantic relationship for it to work. Time and activity segmentation are both connected to autonomy–connection by different uses of balanced tension. Exclusive selection and reframing are also important to a healthy romantic relationship. All the following aspects are critical to ensure the needed attention to both individuals.

• Comfort - This occurs when autonomy and connection are in balance and both individuals operate with an understanding of the boundaries of the other. Both are comfortable with the space the other is giving or taking and not only agree with each other but are happy and find the status of the relationship enjoyable. This also allows for change within the relationship, giving up something to benefit the other spouse or partner.

• Time segmentation - This is the balance of time during everyday life in accordance with your romantic partner. How much time is spent together and how much alone. It also deals with setting aside time for each other to keep the balance of the relationship positive. Time segmentation can vary depending on schedules of the partners. This is based on the time that is spent away from one another or together, not the activities performed.

• Activity segmentation - This is when activities are used to separate the partners to fulfill their independent needs or allow them to do what they want for a short period of time. An example would be a guys/girls night out. It can also be activities that are performed together when time allows. These activities are meant to keep the tension in a positive state. This could possibly mean an activity that one spouse enjoys but the other does not. The next activity will be one of the opposite's preference, turning around the role of who is comfortable, causing positive relational tension.

• Exclusive selection - This refers to the selection of either being connected with a spouse and acting as one or being dependent and acting on one's own terms. When this concept is misunderstood, relational tension becomes unbalanced and the relationship tends to fall apart on a personal level, whether visible or not. Couples are more stable where both agree on the degree of closeness in the relationship and are less stable when they cannot agree.

• Reframing - This is the idea that parts of the relationship need to be evaluated and looked at in a different way. When parts of a relationship are reframed, it can make the relationship stronger, causing issues to be looked at in a new light. It can go the other way too, positive aspects of a relationship might not be as beneficial as perceived. This concept allows for flaws to be addressed.

Research has also been conducted to examine the autonomy-connection dialectic when dealing with termination of romantic relationships. In Erin Sahlestein and Tim Dun's study they found that, "participants' joint conversations and their breakup accounts reflect the two basic forms of contradiction. Both antagonistic and non-antagonistic struggles were evident in these data". Furthermore, the study discovered that while normally break-ups are retroactively studied, the autonomy-connection dialectic is actually in full swing throughout the termination process as opposed to previous thought of as a move from connection to autonomy.

Re-marriage

In a study that focused on dialectics in second marriages, six tensions unique to remarriages emerged.

Three tensions related to the remarried dyad:

• Old-new - Many participants found that within their new marriage, the brought with them ideas and expectations based on their previous, or "old," marriages. However, participants recognized that they had since entered a "new" marriage, which would not necessarily carry over the previous old expectations or experiences.

• Emotional closeness-distance - Participants expressed feelings of both emotional closeness and emotional distance with their new partners. While participants found that they experienced emotional closeness with their second spouse, they also found that either they or their new spouse had other close friends or family with whom they were close to.

• Past-present - Many participants found that they do not discuss prior relationships, or other things that relate to the past, with their new partners. Yet, the new couples remained open about issues and topics related to their present life.

Three tensions also emerged from the remarried dyad and their social networks:

• Their time frame-our time frame - Many participants expressed feeling tensions between adhering to a time frame that felt right to the individual, while acknowledging the expectations that they sensed from their friends and family members in regards to what an appropriate relationship and re-marriage time frame would be.

• Dyadic revelation-network revelation - Participants found that they desired to share information with their social network, however, sometimes their partner did not desire them to share such information with that particular network, resulting in tensions among participants to decide between revealing to their partner and revealing information to their social network.

• Old-new - Participants identified the tension that was created through interactions with friends and family from the "old" marriage while being in the "new" marriage. Participants managed this tension primarily through recalibration and reaffirmation, where participants recognized that both sides had to be present in order for the relationship to exist.

Long distance relationships

Based on research by Sahlstein, the uncertainty v. certainty dialectic is the most prevailing dialectic found in long-distance relationships. Her work exposed uncertainty v. certainty as a competing yet complementary need. In interviews conducted with couples engaged in long distance relationships, contradictions emerged. For example, couples were found to plan interactions in order to obtain a level of spontaneity. Within this, three different forms of the praxis of relational dialectics emerged: segmentation, balance, and denial. Segmentation refers to the partners' ability to live separate, independent lives when they were not together. Balance involved the couple's ability to plan conversations about the future of their relationship. Denial is the couple's refusal to admit the role distance is having on the relationship.

Friendships

William Rawlins has examined the role of relational dialectics in regard to friendships. The tension of instrumentality v. affection was found to be the most central to this type of relationship. Within friendships, importance is placed on the ability to discern the level of affection for "real" friendships opposed to instrumentality for "fake" friendships. Aristotle's "friendship of virtue" notion of caring for friends without instrumental purposes exemplifies this point. The dichotomy of instrumentality v. affection cannot be ignored within friendships, as affection may be offered in order to receive instrumental aid from friends. This interweaving of concepts is what distinguishes different types of friendships. While this remains true, the subjectivity of the friends in question ultimately determines the outcome of how heavily instrumentality v. affection is applied.

In the workplace

Blended Relationships are close friends that are a part of the same work environment. Dialectical tensions occur in organizations as individuals attempt to balance their roles as employees while maintaining established friendships within their occupations. It is not necessary, however, to have a friend in organizations to experience dialectical contradictions. Stress occurs frequently on the individual level as human needs and desires oppose. Impartiality vs. Favoritism: Friends within organizations desire to provide each other with special support and assistance but organizations strive for equitable treatment and discourage bias. Openness vs. Closedness: It is a tendency of close friends to be open and honest with one another, but organizations often expect a level of confidentiality that places strain on friendships that value the sharing of information. Novelty and Predictability: Feeling excited about a restructuring of your organization but anxious since it may interrupt your routine and put stress on your current relationships. Instrumentality and Affection: Inviting a coworker to lunch with the intention of asking for support on a project at work.

Family relationships

Sibling relationships

Relational dialectics can be applied when considering the significant change in family life that siblings experience when one sibling moves out of the family home for the first time as part of the transition into adulthood. As one sibling begins a new phase of life, this change is often accompanied by new friendships or romantic relationships that occur in his/her new lifestyle, along with a new geographic separation, both of which result in a change in communication. As the newly absent sibling begins a new lifestyle beyond his/her home, the pre-existing sibling relationship goes through various changes and transitions.

In a study conducted on discursive struggles among siblings experiencing transition, all participants acknowledged that moving away from their sibling(s) resulted in a discursive struggle between the old and new meanings in the sibling relationship. Two specific discursive struggles were identified:

• Old relationship-new relationship - For many siblings, family rituals were not continued upon moving out, resulting in a change in relationship and a feeling of missing out, emphasizing the changes that occur during the transition from an old relationship into new ones.
• Certainty-uncertainty - Participants found that the change from seeing a sibling regularly to not seeing him/her often resulted in feelings of uncertainty, resulting in an identity shift in the relationship and supporting the discursive struggle of certainty-uncertainty.

While participants addressed the varying tensions involved with lifestyle transitions, 8 of the 19 participants in the study expressed that moving away from their sibling strengthened their connection and appreciation for their brother(s) and/or sister(s).

Children and stepparents

In a study focusing on the adult stepchild perceptions of communication in the stepchild-stepparent relationship, three contradictions were found to be experienced by the stepchildren participants:

• Dialectics of emotional distance-closeness - While many stepchildren expressed feelings of emotional distance, the participants had varying reasons for keeping the distance. Some participants who still had a positive relationship with their nonresidential parent kept an emotional distance from their stepparent as an act of loyalty that they felt toward their nonresidential parent. Other participants equated emotional distance to the fact that they had little in common with their stepparent. However, many participants expressed feeling some closeness with a stepparent while maintaining an amount of emotional distance. Participants reported that they upheld a relationship with the stepparent that contained honesty, respect, and trust, yet they kept an emotional distance by continuing to address the stepparent by his/her first name, or simply claiming that each individual was very different from the other, causing tension in an effort to promote emotional closeness.
• Stepparent status - Many of the stepchildren in the study also experienced a dialectical tension between desiring for the family authority position to be designated to their one residential parent along with a desire for both the residential parent and the stepparent to share parenting authority. Many participants felt that legitimating their stepparent as a parent would result in the formation of closeness.
• Expression - The participants expressed a desire for open communication with their stepparent, while at the same time, expressing resistance to openness and instead favoring a more careful form of communication due to the fact that the participants often sensed a lack of familiarity with their stepparent.

In another study, researchers aimed to identify the contradictions that were perceived by stepchildren when characterizing the ways that familial interactions caused them to feel caught in the middle between parents. The participants expressed that they wanted to be centered in the family while, at the same time, they hoped to avoid being caught in the middle of two opposing parents. The main contradiction identified in the study was similar to the autonomy-connection dialectic; stepchildren desired the freedom to communicate and enact the desired relationship with their parents. However, these stepchildren also felt the need to manage the constraints that resulted from parental communication, particularly when both parents did not cooperate with one another. While the stepchildren wanted to know what was happening, at the same time, they also wanted to be protected, resulting in a second dialectic of control-restraint. Participants indicated that in order to put the child's needs first, both parents would need to be mature and open in their communication with one another. Through this study, the researchers believe that openness-closeness dialectic between parents and their children is important to building functional stepfamily relationships.

One study, focused on the relationship and communication between college-aged stepchildren and their nonresidential parents, found two underlying contradictions: parenting and not parenting, and openness and closeness. Many participants expressed that they wanted their nonresidential parent to be actively involved in parenting them. However, they also expressed that when the nonresidential parent attempted to parent the child, the children did not desire it. Participants also expressed that while they wanted open and intimate communication with their nonresidential parents, they felt that they could not closely communicate because of the nonresidential parent's lack of familiarity with the child's everyday life.