Free Thesis About Managing Personal Relationships

Basic Relationship Facts

The relationship that will be discussed in this particular instance will be a discussion about me and my best friend. I have known my best friend since 2006, which means that we have been friends for nine years. For all of those years, she has been one of my closest friends, and she continues to be my confidant and best friend to this day. My best friend and I met through mutual friends; one of the people who she played hockey with was one of my good friends at the time. As I hung out with my friends who played hockey more and more frequently, I began seeing more of Chee over time. I thought that Chee was very fun to be around, and this was one of the reasons that I found her to be so interesting and so enticing as a person.
Eventually, Chee and I were forced together as friends through more than just the circumstance of having mutual friends. We began to have shared classes, which meant that because we knew each other already, we often hung out before or after classes. We started seeing more of each other around those classes as well, because we had shared work that needed to be done, and we enjoyed each other’s company. Eventually, we even went traveling together, doing some sightseeing and some exploring that just helped us bond further. It is strange how some people come into one’s life and just immediately feel as though they have been there forever; that is how things were with Chee once we became friends. There has never been a moment of awkwardness between us, which is very relieving considering my general introversion and her extreme extroversion in most situations.

Short and Long Term Relationships

The relationship between Chee and I should be considered to be a best friend type relationship. We do not have any secrets from each other in any real sense; we have been friends for so long and with such closeness that secrets seem more or less pointless between us. Although we were not always as close as we are today, we began our friendship on good terms, with mutual acquaintances and shared experiences, which are important for building a good, long-term friendship. We went through the exploration phase of our friendship through the shared experience of classes that we shared, which helped give us a way to bond before we developed true emotional intimacy over time. As we began to eat together regularly, the bond we shared over our academics intensified into something more than just an in-class friendship; by the time we decided to go traveling together, we were already close friends, and we became best friends with the shared experience of our common travels throughout many different places.
Chee and I almost certainly have a parallel relationship. She is an extrovert, while I am an introvert; I need alone time that she certainly does not to be able to thrive in a given environment. However, we also have significant similarities, which means that our relationship cannot be purely complementary. We both love to travel, for instance, which is something that we have always shared. When we travel, she handles many of the things that require a lot of personal communication, while I handle logistical issues and planning. This utilizes both of our skill sets and ensures that we get everything done that needs to get done for a successful trip or experience.
In some ways, both Chee and I wield expert power in our friendship. I have skill sets and knowledge that she does not have, and vice versa; these differences allow us to have the parallel relationship that makes our friendship so strong, however. I suppose, in theory, both she and I have reward and coercive power as well; however, our friendship is strong and healthy and I do not believe I have ever witnessed either of us utilizing coercive or reward power in the context of our friendship. If it has ever been used, then it is more likely that reward power was used than coercive power; neither she nor I is the type to try to wield coercive power over friends. We certainly do not have legitimate or referent power over each other, because we do not share a workspace in any way. Indeed, today, we do not even live in the same city, which makes it difficult to wield any power within the relationship.

Importance of Attraction and Power

At this stage in our friendship, I do not see attraction and power as important-- at least not as important as they were when we began having this particular friendship. Chee and I have been friends for long enough that, barring some huge life event or mistake on our parts, we will always be friends. We do not need to talk constantly to maintain the friendship. One of the things I enjoy the most about our friendship is that no matter how long we have been apart, we always pick our friendship up right where it left off, without any real interruption.

Improvement and Strategy

Chee and I have horrendous communication when we are not in the same physical space. Although it does not matter too much in the context of the relationship overall, I would like to be a better communicator; with the new forms of communication available today, it is incredibly easy to stay in contact with someone even when they live far away. The communication issue is not a huge one, but it is one that I personally believe that I can make better choices with.
I believe that using the strategies of expressing emotions and providing support will allow me to maintain this particular relationship in the most effective manner. I certainly do not want to decrease intimacy in this particular relationship, but I also do not want to make a conscious choice to maintain or increase intimacy; if increasing intimacy happens, I will be happy, but if we maintain our current level of intimacy, I will also be happy about the levels of intimacy provided. If I wanted to increase our level of intimacy, I would have to make concerted efforts to communicate more fully; we would have to spend much more time together as well. However, I am completely satisfied with the relationship that we have developed over the years. She is one of the best friends that I could ask for, and I cannot imagine changing our relationship intentionally to fit a certain paradigm of intimacy.