The Communal-Agentic Relationship
The Communal-Agentic Relationship
Author: Kimberly Shelton Jolie
Let’s be real – we all put our best foot forward when initially meeting someone we are interested in dating. We want to lure this person toward us or, in the alternative, they want to lure us towards them in an effort to get attention and time. This “luring” is natural for humans and most animals alike. In my most recent 14-month relationship, I found, as I began to replay the pattern in my mind, that my partner was no longer the “same” person I once knew – the one I knew for the first three months of our relationship or our two-month friendship prior to that. Her façade was short-lived, but most facades are – it is hard to play “actor” full-time; at some point, when a goal has been achieved or not, one must revert back to one’s “true self.” It is only then when one can really know such a person. There are three phases to the entire process one should consider before making a determination as to the true nature of a given individual. For logical understanding and lack of a better term or a more humanistic way of describing the process, a rational determination can be thought of like a “scientific experiment.” These three phases are the “façade phase,” “evaluation phase,” and “validation phase,” respectively. The “façade phase” was just described.
The difficulty in interpersonal relationships lie in the inaccurate evaluation and judgment of an individual before the “façade phase” has passed. They are given a stamp of approval before the “evaluation phase” has been completed; and for that matter, before the “validation phase” even began. Attaching yourself to an individual before you “truly” know them causes one to look past many of the “red flags” in an attempt to savor what never was to begin with; and many wind up with a broken heart, wondering “what went wrong.” I’m here to tell you “nothing went wrong, there is nothing wrong with you; they were just not the right person for you.”
Author: Kimberly Shelton Jolie
Let’s be real – we all put our best foot forward when initially meeting someone we are interested in dating. We want to lure this person toward us or, in the alternative, they want to lure us towards them in an effort to get attention and time. This “luring” is natural for humans and most animals alike. In my most recent 14-month relationship, I found, as I began to replay the pattern in my mind, that my partner was no longer the “same” person I once knew – the one I knew for the first three months of our relationship or our two-month friendship prior to that. Her façade was short-lived, but most facades are – it is hard to play “actor” full-time; at some point, when a goal has been achieved or not, one must revert back to one’s “true self.” It is only then when one can really know such a person. There are three phases to the entire process one should consider before making a determination as to the true nature of a given individual. For logical understanding and lack of a better term or a more humanistic way of describing the process, a rational determination can be thought of like a “scientific experiment.” These three phases are the “façade phase,” “evaluation phase,” and “validation phase,” respectively. The “façade phase” was just described.
The difficulty in interpersonal relationships lie in the inaccurate evaluation and judgment of an individual before the “façade phase” has passed. They are given a stamp of approval before the “evaluation phase” has been completed; and for that matter, before the “validation phase” even began. Attaching yourself to an individual before you “truly” know them causes one to look past many of the “red flags” in an attempt to savor what never was to begin with; and many wind up with a broken heart, wondering “what went wrong.” I’m here to tell you “nothing went wrong, there is nothing wrong with you; they were just not the right person for you.”