End of a Relationship

This paper reviews the literature on the interaction between couples at the end of a serious relationship, focusing particularly on the type, amount and quality of communication that mark the end of days for human relationships.

In some ways, it is useful to compare the voluntary end of a relationship (at least voluntary on one side) with the involuntary ending of a relationship caused by death. Elizabeth Kubler-RossÆs 1970 model û which she developed to account for the experience of dying patients and their families û is a useful place to begin when trying to create an explanatory and descriptive model of the dynamics of a relationship in its last stages.

Her model predicts that people undergoing a loss (and especially one that they cannot control, such as that brought on by death or by the dissolution of a relationship by the other person) will experience first denial, then anger and blame, then a period of bargaining. These will be follow

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to each other that they wish to control the areas of discussion û keeping all conversations and other forms of communication within safely circumscribed areas. This phase is followed by a phase of stagnation, in which people in a relationship tend to conduct covert dialogues rather than open communication because so many areas of communication and conversation have now been placed off limits. This applies to not only sensitive areas but even seemingly innocuous ones that have become so infected by previous bouts of bad communication that the people concerned no longer try them. Extended stagnating, according to Knapp and Vangelisti (1996) can occur in many long-term relationships, and especially between children and parents just prior to divorce. This phase is followed by a phase in which the people concerned avoid each other, practicing a rhetoric of avoidance that is the antithesis of the rhetoric of initiation. During this phase the style of communication is designed to avoid the possibility of intimate (face-to-face or even voice-to-voice) interaction. This style of leave-taking suggests a much more permanent break than the kinds of separation markers that people use in leave-taking in a more casual setting or leave-taking tha
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Knapp Vangelisti, DE Bochner, Miller Parks, Elizabeth Kubler-RossÆs, Masheter Harris, Robert FrostÆs, , Sarnoff Sarnoff, Development Duck, Regulation Berkowitz, human relationships, personal relationships, vangelisti 1996, people relationship, style communication, communication stage, miller parks 1982, knapp vangelisti, social psychology, knapp al, 1989a october, york academic press, sarnoff 1989a october, knapp vangelisti 1996, de bochner 1990,
Approximate Word count = 1635
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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