question 3

The concept that caught my attention was the idea of interpersonal communication and not being able to hide from it. According to Trenholm, "We can hide in the back of a classroom or make ourselves unobtrusive in a committee meeting, but when we communicate in a meeting face to face with one other person, we cannot hide" (p. 141). This caught my attention because I am big on meeting someone face to face. I judge everything from their shoes, to their hair and their body language and facial expressions. I have learned that I do this to protect myself. Because I have encountered some bad people, I tend to be on the defense when I meet new people. But I don't show it at all. I know that if I show it, people will in turn judge me. So I make sure that I keep a smile on my face and I make sure to ask a lot of questions. I don't want the people that I meet to know I am judging them because then they will act differently and then I can't get a good reading on who they truly are. I am a very good judge of character because I went to a boarding school in Ensenada, Mexico. This school did not educate me very well intellectually but it did educate me emotionally on all kinds of things. We would have to give people feedback every single day. Feedback is when you see something in someone else that they can improve on. So we became trained to read people to be able to give feedback.

Question 2

This is a very interesting question for me to answer. I know exactly what want when I put someone in the dating category or the friend category. This is going to sound very funny; but I like skater boys. That means if a guy doesn't skateboard, he probably won't ever be someone I would date. It isn't just the clothes of a skater boy, but it is the attitude. Many skater like guys tend to have laid back personalities. I also have a lot of common interests with them because I like to watch skateboarding I also like that they are passionate about something and they look pretty hot while doing it. One of the funny things I do when I meet a boy is look at if hes wearing skater shoes when we meet. If he isn't I am immediately uninterested. They could be my friends but not someone I find attractive.
Ducks theory makes complete sense to me! I do it all of the time and the funny thing is I know I do it, but I still do it anyways. I have actually maintained friendships with people that are all over the world. I went to a boarding school in Mexico, Ensenada when I was 15-years-old and ended up becoming friends with everyone there. I still talk to about half of them so I have learned to master some of the filters and some of them I still follow.

Question 1

In my experience with relationships, the hardest concept to change would be the rigid complementary. According to Trenholm this is when "the submissive partner begins to resent always giving in or when the dominant partner begins to tire of being in charge, dissatisfaction can result"(p. 148). I have definitely experienced this kind of relationship and it became impossible to change. The person that is the submissive role does resent the person in the dominant role and it doesn't change because there is no trust that they truly want it to be different. For example, my ex boyfriend always assumed I liked wearing the pants in our relationship, and this assumption made it impossible for us to ever grow into something different. He didn't believe me that I wanted it to be equal and so we would try and make things different but it wouldn't really ever work. A lot of times people are so fed up with the way things are, that they make it up in their heads that it won't work. Rigid complementary also damages the self-esteem of both partners. The one who is dominant thinks everything is all good and then the other person will act out because they don't feel like everything is all good which causes the dominant one to lose trust in the submissive one. The submissive partner loses self-esteem as well because they feel less of a person if they don't "stand up" to the dominant one.