Individual & Contextual Factors

NOTE: As a communication course, some of the topics we discuss do enter "personal" territory.  We all have relational and communicative experiences that we can learn from, so these discussion posts are an important way to apply course concepts, learn from each other, and *hopefully* improve the quality of our lives and relationships in the process. However, please use proper judgement when choosing what to share in these discussion posts. While it's certainly OK (and necessary) to provide some information about yourself and your relationships, avoid "oversharing" or providing details that might make others uncomfortable. Additionally, please do not feel forced to talk about something that you'd rather keep to yourself; choose things to discuss that you're comfortable sharing!

RELATIONSHIP INITIATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Individual and Contextual Factors

Individual and contextual factors together influence ideas about romantic relationships and how to communicate in them. Individual factors include considerations such as a person’s romantic beliefs, age, and past relationship or family experiences. For example, teenagers tend to have more idealized views of romantic relationships (e.g., they are more likely to believe in love at first sight or that love can overcome all problems) as compared to adults over 20 (Knox, Schacht, & Zusman, 1999). As people get older, they also pay less attention to physical features in their choice of partners, such as whether the partner is “trendy” or “seductive,” and focus more on “communal characteristics” like sensitivity, intelligence, and conventionality (Wood & Brumbaugh, 2009). Further, the average age of people when they first marry has risen dramatically in the last several decades. In 1956, the average age at first marriage was 22.5 years for men and 20.1 years for women in the United States. Comparable averages in 2011 were 28.6 for men and 26.7 for women (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013). People are not delaying romantic relationships; they are just delaying getting married, with many opting instead to cohabit (i.e., live together) as a prelude to marriage or an alternative to marriage. Besides age, past relationship experiences influence readiness for a romantic relationship. When past romantic relationships have a sense of closure or people can see clear reasons why the relationship failed, they have an easier time entering a new relationship (Merolla, Weber, Myers, & Booth-Butterfield, 2004). Even past or present family relationships are influential because they often serve as a training school for how to interact in intimate relationships. For example, adolescents who have a “reliable alliance” with their parents are more likely to experience adult romantic relationships characterized by happiness, friendship, trust, and acceptance (Seiffge-Krenke, Shulman, & Klessinger, 2001).

Contextual factors refer to sociocultural forces that impact romantic relationships, for example: media and societal messages about romantic relationships as well as proximity to available partners. The media presents both explicit and implicit messages about how to conduct romantic relationships. For instance, nearly every issue of Cosmopolitan, and other magazines of the same genre, provides explicit advice on topics such as how to communicate better or how to have better sex. Films and television shows also present messages about romantic relationships, sometimes portraying romantic relationships with realism, but often depicting such relationships as “trivialized, sexualized, oversimplified, and stereotyped in order to offer audiences tantalizing, humorous, satirical, or short-term glimpses of dating life” (Segrin & Flora, 2005, p. 104). Although many people interpret dating reality shows as fictional comedies or fairytales, others, and in particular children, can be seduced by the implicit messages in such shows that emphasize superficial and sex-related qualities over important social-psychological qualities (Hestroni, 2000). Media messages, along with other family and societal messages and models, shape people’s views about romantic relationships. Relationship scholar Steven Duck argues that “we do not think about such cultural underpinnings of our own relationships . . . because they are hidden parts of the cultural ideology to which we all unwittingly subscribe” (1998, p. 5). What prompts us to consider our own relational ideology, besides taking a course like this, is meeting someone who has a different ideology than our own. For example, relational ideologies may differ regarding whether marriages should be arranged or initiated by individual choice, whether men and women have fluid or set gender roles, how to deal with conflict, whether having children is an expectation or not, or whether a good relationship rests on passion and emotional fulfillment and/ or the ability to support dependents and uphold religious and family tradition. Even dating partners who think they come from similar backgrounds often realize that they have critically different ideas about how to run a relationship, in part because no two people come from the same family system.

Arguably the number one contextual factor that affects one’s ability to find a partner is proximity. In other words, if one is to develop a romantic relationship with a person, he or she must have the opportunity to come into contact with that person. In addition, the opportunity for repeated interactions (e.g., seeing a person regularly at work or in a class) allows one to size up a person over time. Through repeated exposure and interaction, one may even grow to view a person as a potential partner, even if one only viewed the person as a friend or colleague at first. My own grandparents grew up on farms in a small community in Ohio. My grandmother lived a few farms away from my grandfather growing up, which allowed them the physical proximity to meet each other and come into repeated contact. Today, people can access travel and technological advances that allow them to come into contact with many more people and even to maintain long-distance relationships. Indeed, a quarter to half of all university students’ dating relationships are estimated to be long-distance relationships (Cameron & Ross, 2007; Maguire, 2007). In addition, online dating sites make it possible for people to meet many more potential partners than in prior times. Around 25% of single people in the United States report using an online dating service (Miley, 2009). Online dating appears to be just as common if not more so among single people approaching middle age and old age. Traditional-age university students are already in close physical proximity to a lot of other single adults, but some middle and older adults, who have other life factors that limit their exposure to potential mates, might find appeal in an online service that can increase their proximity to others—even if it is only online proximity. Thus, it seems as if people have so many more choices of potential partners now as compared to past times. Yet, as we will explore in the next section, people often have very specific preferences that they desire in a partner, and they must be able to communicate with that partner in such a way as to develop a successful relationship. In other words, just being around a lot of people does not necessarily lead to a relationship. Sometimes the loneliest people are those who are around a lot of people but are not able to develop an emotional connection with any of them.