My Dating Experiences In Relationships

My dating experiences have helped shape the person that I am today and can be analyzed through many of the theories studied in class. One of the most interesting theories discussed has been Emotions- In Relationships Theory. This theory has been relevant to my life and played out in my relationship with a past boyfriend. We had a particularly nasty breakup and I have struggled to understand the reasons behind my actions. It was not until discussing Emotion- In- Relationships Theory that I realized my true intentions. “You’re a cold hearted bitch.” Tears and name-calling were not how I pictured the end of my relationship. “I’m just tired,” seemed to be the only reason that I could provide for ending the courtship. I realized that I must have …show more content…
His OAS were being interrupted positively, while mine seemed to stay he same. He was not part of my eventual life plan and my OAS involved him less and less. However, around the middle of the semester, my OAS was very negatively affected. He let me know that his mother did not believe that he should continue visiting me out of fear that he might drink on campus. I was very frustrated and reacted negatively. I had gotten accustomed to his visits once or twice a month and looked forward to them very much. I felt that they were one of the few things holding us together because they would remind me of the reasons that I had fallen for him in the first place. He knew that it was not feasible for me to come back to visit him because I did not have a car and would have to miss many of my commitments on the weekends. I reacted emotionally to this disruption and was very distraught at first but eventually got used to the change. Once his lack of presence on campus became the norm, my OAS changed even more and I became used to him not being in my …show more content…
While he was very enmeshed in the relationship, I was not. According to the theory, this is why he had a very emotional reaction while I felt little emotion at the end of the relationship. The theory predicts that the amount of emotion at the end of the relationship is dependent on how much coordination there is between the couple’s organized action sequences. We had organized action sequences that I felt no longer had many positive interruptions and were not very coordinated. At the end of the relationship, I was able to leave much easier than he was because I no longer felt that my OAS involved him. I moved on from the relationship much more quickly because I did not feel as though we were intermeshed. Our OAS seemed very different and my emotional investment in the relationship had decreased. In accordance to the theory, because I no longer felt that our organized action sequences were coordinated, I did not feel much emotion. In this way, the breakup from both of our perspectives followed the theory very