“We’ll Never Be That Kind of Couple”

In the case # 19 “We’ll Never Be That Kind of Couple” Emma and Jason had just moved into a new apartment and both started new jobs. They were excited about living together and living in a new place. However their neighbors were unpredictable, abusive, and violent.  This created lots of uncertainty and it their violated relational expectations.  These neighbors could not manage their high disclosure boundaries of privacy within their own relationships and acted unpredictable in a negative and destructive relationship.  They were engaged in a relational violence pattern of responses that expressed their hard emotions of anger, jealously, hurt, and guilt publicly. Their lives were full of chaos and no calmness.

Emma and Jason would hear their neighbors arguing through the dark side of the night displaying their dominance over each other, and let their hard emotions play into a relational violation.   They discussed how they would never be that kind of couple because they had a co-orientation of being happy together. However, they chose to be non-confrontational by avoiding to setting boundaries with their abusive neighbors and within their own relationships.  They dealt with their neighbors passively by avoiding their neighbors.

I picked this case to do my analysis on because I think that Emma and Jason display all the hard emotions throughout the story. They are governed by their serpentine model of , interaction, act  control patterns,. It's strange how neighbor’s invisible verbal power and dominance behaviors would affect Emma and Jason behavior toward each other with similar hard emotions that also played into their own relational violation expectation. 

Although Emma and Jason agreed to never argue,  like their neighbors they started to have violations of their own relational expectations. They experienced the four hard emotions anger, jealousy, hurt, and guilt at various stages in their relationship. One night when Emma came home from work she saw that Jason was making pizza for dinner. Emma felt that Jason violated her expectations that he would take the time to cook something special for his special lady. He acted, she re-acted, and interpreted that his relational characteristics and actions were a symbol that she wasn’t valued. Then, Emma’s defensive control strategy was to get angry because when it’s Jason’s turn to cook he would always make pizza. She felt a stoic type of bold hurt because she couldn’t understand why Jason never put a little more effort into making dinner and cooking something special for her. 

At the dinner table jealous Jason confronted Emma about her befriending her ex boyfriend on face book.  Since Emma was already irritated with Jason she interpreted this as him being jealous and reacted aggressively and angrily snapping back at him with lack of empathy as a defense strategy.

They continued to violate relational expectations and their argument escalated with Jason and Emma verbally attacking each other because of their inability to stop and re-interpert to understand what is really going on.  As a result of Emma pouring all of her food on Jason’s lap, he leaves and doesn’t come back till the morning.  The violation of relational expectation patterns continue when Emma feels guilty and is worried for what she had done and apologizes to Jason when he came home in the morning. 

This display of their hard emotions changes from the  co-orientation common interest of  being a happy couple to, spending more times apart with their friends.  Then Jason violated another relational expectation and wanted to reschedule their date night and go to a football game with a friend.  Emma reacted and got mad and Jason realized it was wrong of him to want to reschedule their date night.

Jason felt guilty and tried to justify his betrayal and rejection and bought flowers for Emma on their date night in attempt to make amends.  Emma reacted and retaliated with a one up control pattern and explained that since he thought going to a football game was more important than their relationship then she is going out with her friends. 

Even though Jason had already decided to not go to the game and that spending time with Emma was more important she still decided to go out with her friends to extort her power.  Jason asked her to stay because he wanted to repair their relationship by saying he was sorry and had gotten her flowers.  But at this point power and dominance of hard emotions  played  into relational violence pattern of control because she was still angry,  hurt, and jealous that he had thought about going to the game with his friend instead of being with her and she reacted angrily and took the vase and flowers and threw them on the floor. When Emma came home later that night, Jason was waiting on the couch for her. She rejected him, gave him the sulking silent treatment, and went upstairs to bed.     

                                     

Good thing that Emma and Jason’s conflict management between each other was renegotiated. In the morning both of them felt guilty and regretful.  They apologized to each other and discussed how they thought they were turning into the couple next door and how they will never be that kind of couple. They wanted to restore their impression of their integrity and regain what they lost so they apologized.  They began to repair their self-esteem and relationship as a couple. Emma and Jason’s apology let them  repair their transgressions by renegotiating their rules and boundaries of their relationships with their apology to each other. They found an explanation for their actions that was influenced by their abusive neighbors, or was it? Is it possible that Jason and Emma’s hard emotions’ were a result of their own power perceptions that they granted to each other as they established their own boundaries within their own relationships.  Both Emma and Jason were willing to work together toward a common interest to breaking the abuse behavior patterns within their couple relationship. They are attuned to one another, so their facework will be easier to renegotiate. They will manage conflict.