Find Your Partner and Do-Si-Do: The Formation of Personal Relationships between Social Beings

Abstract

Personal relationships have generally been studied from the perspective that the persons involved are psychological beings who are drawn together as they come to know, value, and share their respective inner qualities and experiences. However, it is also possible to examine relationships from the perspective that the persons involved are social beings who are drawn together as they each come to find the other's ways of participating in communal life to be attractive and compatible. From the latter perspective, an established, committed relationship between two social beings would consist of an effective partnership in a variety of arenas of communal life because their respective ways of participating are mutually facilitative. Comparison of the two perspectives on empirical grounds indicates that they are surprisingly congruent, and that integrating them is more productive than trying to promote one over the other. This comparison also indicates that communication plays multiple roles in the process of engaging in a personal relationship, and is suggestive about how much we still need to find out about the lived experience of persons in relationships, and how research might proceed in that regard.