Painful secrets, funny stories, the latest office gossip… you tell your partner almost everything. This desire to share your emotions, experiences, and private thoughts is a normal part of a thriving and healthy relationship. It defines openness, a willingness and interest in engaging in self-disclosure.
If you’re open, shouldn’t your partner be open too? Openness is an attractive quality (Sprecher & Regan, 2002), and the process of sharing and listening to each other promotes intimacy (Laurenceau, Barrett, & Pietromonaco, 1998) Maybe we don’t want to know absolutely every single possible confession, but some degree of openness is important. We want our partners to want to talk to us, to feel comfortable divulging feelings, fears, and hopes. Mutual disclosure is an essential thread in the fabric of a relationship, and we all bring expectations for a certain amount of disclosure to a partnership.
People hold different implicit standards for openness in relationships, and for many, these are met. For some, however, openness expectations aren’t fulfilled by their partners.
Do you struggle with frustration and disappointment when your partner isn’t as open as you want him or her to be? Do you feel like you generously disclose, but your partner withholds?
Unmet openness standards can be problematic, and a new study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, explores the fallout (Thompson & Vangelisti, 2016). The researchers examined data from 205 college-aged individuals, currently in romantic relationships, on how they view their partner’s ability to meet their openness expectations.
As you might expect, people differ in their openness standards and how well those standards are satisfied. Any discrepancy may induce stress, a kind of stress that individuals can respond to constructively (e.g., clarifying, reframing, seeking social support, or using humor) or destructively (e.g., punishing, exiting the relationship, self-disparagement, or distancing).
The good news, revealed by this study, is that usually, when people are dissatisfied with their partner’s openness, they talk about it with their partner (Thompson & Vangelisti, 2016). This clarifying technique is a pro-relationship maneuver that manages stress while showing continued investment in the relationship. Seeking social support and using humor with a partner are the next two most common ways to cope with unmet openness standards. Self-disparagement and punishment are rarely used, but they do happen.
Interestingly, which coping technique people use when they are frustrated with unfilled openness expectations may play a role in relationship quality (Thompson & Vangelisti, 2016). Certain coping strategies, like punishing, exiting, even reframing, predict worse relationship quality. These approaches seem less productive than others, such as using humor, which predicts relationship satisfaction. In general, the more stress people feel in regards to unmet opennesss expectations, the more they have to cope, and no coping strategy appears to fully alleviate the problem of unmet openness expectations.
A few important questions remain. For example, where do openness expectations come from? How do we know what is a reasonable expectation for a partner’s openness? Are we demanding too much?
Openness standards operate within a broader context of relationship expectations, which are intimately tied to our attachment orientations (i.e., whether we feel secure and safe in relationships, or whether we feel uncertain about our own worth and our partner’s trustworthiness). Reasonable expectations likely preserve a partner’s right (and our own right) to keep some things private, striking a balance between sharing and discretion. A balance between independence and interdependence is often viewed as healthy, and reasonable openness expectations reflect that balance.
Keep in mind, however, sometimes openness expectations are reasonable, but they go unfulfilled. Individuals whose default attachment orientation is avoidance may be less inclined towards openness. Uncertainty may also boost the need for a partner to share; if your partner is craving openness from you, you might try to understand any possible underlying concerns.
Also, be aware of changes in how well your openness standards are being met. An intense desire for a partner to be more open by a usually trusting person may reflect a concern over deception or a seedling of doubt about a partner’s commitment. Because openness can facilitate intimacy, a fundamental component of relationships, it’s worth your time to invest in the development of a stable, satisfying disclosure exchange.
References
Laurenceau, J. P., Barrett, L. F., & Pietromonaco, P. R. (1998). Intimacy as an interpersonal process: the importance of self-disclosure, partner disclosure, and perceived partner responsiveness in interpersonal exchanges. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1238-1251.
Sprecher, S., & Regan, P. C. (2002). Liking some things (in some people) more than others: Partner preferences in romantic relationships and friendships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 19, 463-481.
Thompson, C. M., & Vangelisti, A. L. (2016). What happens when the standard for openness goes unmet in romantic relationships? Analyses of stress, coping, and relational consequences. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 33, 320-343.
from Psychology Today - Relationships http://ift.tt/290KYHC
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