Family Communication Research Paper

How we communicate constantly differs depending on who we are communicating with. The relationships we hold with others play surprisingly large roles when it comes to what we will or will not say and how we express our ideas and feelings. From my careful observations of friend communication and family communication, I can safely say that these two relationship types affect communication in very different ways. The first type of communication I observed was between friends, specifically between my friend Eric and me. In a nutshell, Eric was late to meet up with me at a coffee shop one day. In turn, I become frustrated after I made the assumption that Eric didn’t prioritize our meetup. When Eric did arrive at the coffee shop, I made a passive-aggressive comment about his tardiness. However, Eric then relayed to me his reason for being late, which was actually a fair excuse. I felt bad for making assumptions and being passive aggressive, but ultimately Eric laughed the comment off and we continued about our day, as normal. Eric and I are close friends who’ve known each other for many years. Through years of shared experiences with Eric, before the encounter at the coffee shop I was well aware that Eric had a bad habit of being tardy. Eric was often late for …show more content…
We both chose to become friends with each other. This means that we are not tied together as strongly as if we were in a family relationship. At any time, for whatever reason one of us in the relationship could choose to leave the relationship altogether. This causes a much different dynamic within the relationship. Since both parties are choosing to put forth time and energy into the growth and continuation of the relationship, an argument could be pushed aside in order to preserve the relationship, but I believe in my relationship with Eric we would let the argument push the relationship and test our commitment to