Levinger's Barrier Model and My Personal Experience

Today I’m going to discuss breaking up on individual changes and relate it back to my previous relationship. This relates to Levinger’s Barrier Model. On the model, it says: if attraction is high, barriers are high, and alternatives are low, then the couple stays together. If attraction is low, barriers are low, and alternatives are high, then the couple will break up. Let me explain this a little bit more. Attraction are the reasons to stay in a relationship. For example, in my previous relationship the reasons where: I loved his family, and we had fun together. Alternatives are the reasons to leave. In my previous relationship, these would be: he never had time for me, we were sort of mean to each other, and all we did was fight. The barriers are the things that make it hard to leave the relationship. For example, we were together for 5 years, that’s a lot of time we were ‘wasting’ if we were to just break up. During the last year of our relationship, the model changed. The attraction lowered. Now, it changed to me only loving his family because our time together wasn’t all that fun anymore. The alternatives increased to: never having time together, less caring, less trying, mean comments back and forth, and the fighting increased. The barriers became less important. The only thing keeping us together was basically the time and effort we put into the relationship. When we both came to reality, the more we are unhappy together, the more time we are wasting. So in short, the attraction was low, the barriers were low, and the alternatives were high. The Leninger’s Barrier Model was accurate when it came to my previous relationship, as the result was we broke up.

Stages of Dissolution and My Personal Example

Today, I’m going to talk about the stages of dissolution, or the stages of my previous break up. The first stage is the personal phase. This is when one partner grows to be dissatisfied in the relationship. In my pervious relationship, I started to become unsatisfied around 4 years of dating. The second stage I went through is called the dyadic phase. This is when confrontation happens. I told my ex that I was unhappy. We did try to resolve our issues, but they were too far along to be fix. There really wasn’t any way for me to be completely happy with him again. The next stage I hit was the social phase. This is when the partner seeks support from friends or family. For me, I went right to my friends. I would vent about my relationship problems, and soon they became sick of it. I was sick of how many problems our relationship had and how many negative things I had to say about it. The next stage I hit was the grave-dressing phase. This is when mourning decreases, and you ‘get over your loss.’ This stage basically becomes a ‘story’ of the relationship. At this stage I would tell my friends, ‘yeah we used to do that…’ etc. The final stage I went through was the resurrection phase. This is where I re-enters my social life as a single person. This was a major change for me because I just came out of 5 year relationship with my ex. However, I learned how to make myself happy again and I moved forward with my life.

Long Distance Relationship and My Experience

There are 14 million couples involved with long distance relationships. My last relationship did not start out as being long distance, but when my boyfriend got deployed to Afghanistan, it become a long-distance relationship. A long-distance relationship is self-defined for all couples, but in my case, I’m sure most people would agree half way around the world is long distance. The statistics show that 32.5% college students are in long distance relationships’, and I was a part of that statistic. There were a lot of stressors when my ex-boyfriend was deployed. He experienced loneliness, as we didn’t have the physically and intimate touch as we used to. I experience guilt, as I emotionally missed him. There were times that I felt like I “lost” him, like he was no longer on this earth. In a way, I thought the long distance was harder for me. I thought this because everywhere I looked, and the things I did, reminded me of him. I would drive by his house, see his friends and family, listen to music we used to listen to, it was the little things that reminded me of him. He had a completely different view in Afghanistan. I’m sure there wasn’t much that reminded him of me there. Research shows that more infidelity happens in geographically close relationships, and less in long distance. I can completely agree with this. I felt totally committed to him when he was overseas, and I know he wasn’t texting or talking to other girls either. We obviously had a loss in day to day intimacy, for a solid 12 months that he was developed, so that put a stressor on the relationship as well. The first 6 months we wrote letters to each other, and the last 5 months we skyped here and there. It wasn’t as great as in person, but it did the trick. It was a very difficult time, but when he came home we did stay together for a long while afterwards. The long-distance part didn’t break us up, it was other things that happened in a geographically close relationship.

Intimcy Posions: Infidelity and My Personal Example

Previously I made a post on intimacy poisons. I’m going to talk about one more that ruined my relationship. Infidelity is the betrayal of relationship expectations. This can vary from relationship to relationship. It can be something ‘small’ to texting/flirting with someone else, hanging out, or something ‘large’ to intercourse or having relations. Notice how I italicized ‘small’ and ‘larger’ because they could be different things to different couples.

I’m my previous relationship of 5 years, there was infidelity. It was more sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity. Both my previous partner and I have done things that would not agree with our relationship, so we are both at blame. There would be times where my partner wouldn’t have enough time for me or wouldn’t give me enough attention, and I would start messaging other guys. At first as friends, but as the conversation grow, there were flirting texts involved. My partner rebelled on this and did ‘yoga’ in another girl’s single room dorm without telling me. Infidelity happened back and forth in this relationship, and it was unfair to both of us.

There are statistics saying that 66-77% of Americans state that infidelity is always wrong, but 40% men and 25% of women conduct in it anyways. I agree with this statistic because I think it’s absolutely wrong, but I was involved with it anyways. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it happened.

Some of the factors that could lead to infidelity is the quality of the relationship, boredom and lack of emotional support, the love styles, and attachment styles. For our past relationship, I would have to say that boredom and lack of emotional support were the reasons infidelity happened. I would say in a way my partner was bored of me, and I would say he didn’t give me enough attention and emotional support. The quality of the relationship also plays a huge role because of the revenge affair, which my ex was involved with (yoga).

I think the type of infidelity that we both were involved with would be “philandering.” This could be anything from causal meet ups, being active on Tinder, or a sex addiction. For our relationship, I think it was causal meetups, or causal texting. When it was all said and done, we broke the relationship up because again, it wasn’t fair to be giving other people more attention that we were giving our relationship. Infidelity is another intimacy poison that ruined my relationship.

Intimacy Posions: Addictions and My Personal Experience

Intimacy poisons have a huge impact on relationships. They can destroy trust and with it, hope. They can create secrets and they can lock couples into short term strain reduction rather than long term growth. The intimacy poison that I’m going to focus on is addiction; the addiction to alcohol.

I met a guy about 5 months ago, in a bar (which should tell you something right away), and we started talking. We had fun times when he was sober and we shared secrets. However, he would constantly put ‘going out,’ and drinking before our quality time together. We would make plans to see each other over the weekend, but when the weekend came he insisted that he wanted to go to the bar with the guys instead. So usually, our weekends consisted of hanging out at the bar together/see each other from a distance. It was not a good relationship at all. I would consider him to have alcohol dependence, which means that he needs an extreme amount of alcohol to get the drunk feeling.

He would tell me that his drinking issues give him problems with his family; as his parents lecture him about it being unhealthy, and a complete waste of money. Unfortunately, drinking was a daily routine for this guy, and nothing I said would change it. He would sometimes tell me, “I’m so unhappy in my life, I don’t know what to do so all I do is drink. I know I drink too much but I can’t help it.” The drinking became too much for him one night, as he went to bed with another girl. He was passed out in bed with her when I found them. Neither of them knew I seen them, and the next morning he pretended he didn’t do anything wrong. This is where the secrets came into play. It completely destroyed trust, and the relationship went to potentially long term, to short term just like that.

In a way, we were doing an “intoxication dance.” I would over function and try to fix the relationship, and he would under function and be irresponsible with the choices he made. That is how an intimacy poison ruined my ‘relationship.’