Learning Through Observation

Learning Through Observation: Adulthood 30 to 50 years of age

It was a Saturday evening around 7 o’clock July 20, 2013. I went to Kingfish the restaurant with my boyfriend. We ended up sitting next to a couple who looked to be in their thirties. The couple looked to me to be a happy one. They were married; you could see the rings on their hands. I had also noticed that the woman was pregnant.
At first they seemed to be talking about each other’s work. She was talking about a customer she had to deal with in the office and the husband started talking about a difficult, yet interesting case he was working on. He was talking about running tests, so I’m guessing he works some sort of job in a hospital like setting or maybe a lab. After they talked about their work for a minute she started to talk about the baby they were expecting and how excited they were. She seemed nervous and wanted everything to be planned out and in order for when the baby came. He reassured her that she had been doing a great job and he did not want her to work too hard or stress out. He even offered to take on more responsibilities around the house because he did not want her on her feet too much. The woman had a smile on her face. The couple seemed to have a very healthy relationship. What the husband was saying to his wife was very helpful. He wanted to relieve any stress that she had and reassured her that she is not alone going through these amazing life changes and that he was there for her. This observation was a good example of our two basic needs, affiliation and achievement. They are affectionate towards one another and the wife even congratulated him on his milestones at work. This was also a good example of how each person demonstrated generaltivity. The husband is doing great with work and the woman is expecting a baby. If the couple was not so supportive the relationship dynamic could be completely different. There could be a lot more stress on both of them and less intimacy, therefore more isolation according to Erikson’s intimacy verse isolation and the human need for intimacy. This couple also fit the standards of our society’s social clock. The couple seemed financially stable, they were married, in their early thirties and expecting what is probably their first child. These are the appropriate endeavors one might expect from someone in their thirties in America.