Friends of the Heart

In Friends of the Heart: Communication between long-term friends we have Sophie and Jay who are best friends and have been best friends for 13 years of their life. Just recently Sophie had to make a road trip to gather all of her father’s belongings because he had passed away. She took the trip with Jay since he was available and also because Sophie’s girlfriend Melissa couldn’t go and they were not going to let her drive across country by herself to get her Dad’s things. This shows emotional closeness that Jay and Melissa both have for Sophie. As she was at her father’s house, she began to think of the conversations she had with him before he died and how she wished she would have paid more attention to what he was saying. This shows that Sophie missed that closeness she had with her father. When Jay and Sophie were leaving the house she seemed bothered and Jay could tell. She told him not to smoke his cigarettes in the rental truck. Jay couldn’t believe after all he was doing for her that she wouldn’t let him just smoke in the truck. This shows paradox of affection towards Sophie by Jay. They joked around how they called each other Thelma and Louise the whole trip. This shows relational closeness because they both share the same thought. They also had a disagreement about playing Lady Gaga on the trip because Jay didn’t want to listen to her. Even though Jay didn’t like the song he began to sing along which turned Sophie’s mood around from almost crying over her father to instant smiling. This shows support behavior because he sang along even though he didn’t want to but it put a smile on his friends face. She now felt light-hearted and excited. Sophie also was complaining about Jay not keeping track off the mileage and how much gas they had used because she wanted to be reimbursed by her bothers for the expenses of the trip. Jay reacted by ignoring her and changing the subject and by avoiding her stares. This shows avoidance within the relationship. Jay also told Sophie years earlier that his partner had died of AIDS and that he had no interest of finding love again. This shows self-disclosure on Jays part. As Sophie tried to encourage Jay to date again, he stormed out of his birthday party. Sophie went to his house to try and make things better but Jay wouldn’t answer. Soon after, Jay came to visit Sophie and they mended the relationship. He would call her every night to say goodnight because Sophie had told him that she missed someone saying goodnight to her like her Dad used to do. Sophie also didn’t have a good relationship with her older brother Mike because she felt like he was all about money and didn’t think she was doing enough with herself. While on the trip Jay realized that he had real insight to Sophie’s life and asked her personal questions that Sophie responded to with detail and shared stories that she had not done before. This shows how their relationship got stronger in closeness and also self-disclosure on Sophie’s part. As Sophie and Jay pulled into a hotel for the night, Sophie told Jay that he had been such a huge help to her and that she had been acting like a jerk. She told him that she loved him on a friend level of course and Jay told her he loved her too. This shows verbal immediacy.

We'll Never Be That Kind of Couple

Emma and Jason are in a relationship together. They live next to a couple that fights all the time. They can here their neighbors fighting while their watching Grey's Anatomy which comes on on Thursday nights. This is also the night that Emma and Jason usaully eat mac and cheese. As the months went on they always heard the couple fighting next door and calling each other horrible names and fighting over things like looking at other guys while out and also having a fight about going out with the "he neighbors boss from work". He said that she made him feel stupid in front of his boss and she said that he would never get the promotion anyway. Emma and Jason never called the cops or broke up the fight because they thought it was none of their business, but they always said that thay would never fight like the couple next door. Emma even talked to a friend that helps domestic violence victims and suggested that Emma give the neighbor her card for a victims hotline service. Emma and Jason would have their arguements about when Jason was watching the Baseball game instead of Emma's favorite show which they always watched on Thursdays. After a while, Emma and Jason's fights started to become more and more like the neighbors fights. Emma was feeling like Jason was just cooking the fastest thing he could on his nights to cook instead of cooking what Emma liked and thought would take time and effort to show he really cared about Emma and thought she was special. To try and work on their relatonship, Emma and Jason decided to have a date night every week to spend time with each other. Jason got asked by his buddies to go to a game on the night that he has date night with Emma. Emma got mad and thought he was going with his friends instead of her but when Jasdon showed up with a dozen roses Emma just shattered them on the floor and said she was going out with her friends to the club since she thought he was going with his friends too. Emma went out and the next morning they talked about what had happened and both agreed that their fights were becoming like the neighbors which both didnt want to happen. they promised to talk to each other before it got to that point again.
       Some of the key terms for this case are abuse, aggression, domestic abuse. intimate terrorism, relational violence, and violence. Devaluation involves feeling unappreciated and unimportant. We can relate devaluation to this case when Emma thinks that Jason is just cooking whatever he thinks is fastest and not what what he thinks Emma will like to eat and take time doing to make sure Emma feels special. Emma feels unimportant and unappreciated when he cooks the same thing everytime its his turn to cook. We can also see invulnerable responses in this case. This occurs when people avoid talking about the hurtful message and involve acting unaffected by the hurtful remark. Emma is doing this by withdrawling and still going out to the club with her friends and by also shattering the roses Jason gave her on the floor. Forgeviness is also seen when they talk about what happened the night before and came to an agreement that they would never let their fights get out of hand like they thought their neighbors did on a regular basis and they forgave each other for what they said to each other in the arguement. I enjoyed reading this and relating it to my situation at home. We have neighbors who fight constantly.