Relationship Analysis Paper

Sophia Muhindura

11680432

Oklahoma State University

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A friendship of five years is nothing to shake a stick at, especially if the aforementioned

friendship survived the turbulent years of secondary school. That friendship was shared

between myself and girl by the name of Sydney Thompson. We shared many a laugh and (oddly

enough) not many tears in the years we were friends. It could be described as one of those

token friendships that evolve into people mentioning you in pairs, asking how one is doing to

the other, or getting called the others name- which happened more than wed like to admit.

When we were younger we barely had a quarrel, mostly because we were busy gossiping about

which boy kissed what girl. As time went on, however, what started out as minor personality

differences clashing turned into unresolved conflicts and a rather stiff and stale friendship . In

this analysis of our relationship, I will discuss the six stages of a relationship: contact,

involvement, intimacy, deterioration, and in our case dissolution .

Middle school was a time of many trials and tribulations, mostly in regards to awful

preteen trends and unrecognized body odor. Many of the tribulations I experienced, however,

related to the complexities of middle school social interactions. I didnt really have a best

friend like most of the other girls in my grade. Most of the people that went to school in

Keller, Texas had known each other since the second grade and I had the misfortune of being

thrown into the middle of the mildly exclusive Trinity Springs Middle School social web. I had

friends that came and went for the first two years of living in Keller, but in seventh grade my

luck seemed to be changing. I noticed there was a girl I didnt recognize as having gone to the
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feeder school that a heaping majority of Trinity Springs went to, and we had almost all of the

same classes. Our friendship forming can be credited to the relationship theory of attraction,

specifically the theory of proximity, because we were in the same classes and had the same

interests- which arguably wasnt difficult since most thirteen year old girls have similar

interests. Its safe to assume that our first interactional contact was in Ms. Vanwinkles

introductory theater class and probably involved some sort of awkward ice breaker game. From

then on the friendship grew, hanging out before the bell rang turned to eating lunch together

and gossiping which turned to spending weekends together swimming in her pool. Its funny to

think that these little things are what defined such a close relationship and in hindsight its easy

to see how relationships that are not built on substance are not made to last. The involvement

stage continued through this friendship during our middle school years, and at this point and

time the friendship did have a positive sense of mutuality. We played doubles on the schools

tennis team, we joined the same clubs, and we gushed about loving the classic middle school

crushes and hating the classic middle school enemies. She got me to try out for the diving team

because she was a swimmer, which is something Im still grateful for to this day. We stayed up

late talking on the phone when our parents thought we were long asleep and we were

wholeheartedly each others best friends.

As we entered high school together the friendship of reciprocity continued, although

we saw each other less we made up for it on the weekends and at Tuesday night swim meets.

Our self-disclosures intensified as we experienced the new and exciting world of high school

and the drama that came with it. We had a group of mutual friends that all banded together
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and gave us excuses to play sand volleyball or go out to eat. We started dating boys which gave

us more to gush about to each other which was in a sense our symbol of trust to one another.

Our interpersonal commitment to each other, at age 16, was trusting one another with our

most vulnerable information at the time. It seems trivial now, but at that time Sydney was the

only person I could say these things to, we understood and supported each other. The social

bonding aspect of the intimacy stage had already been established, we were a pair, and one

name could barely be mentioned without the other. As high school continued, however, our

relationship began to falter.

Its difficult to pin point an exact time we noticed a rift between us, but our relationship

dynamic began to change during our junior year of high school. We started having more and

more disagreements and grievances that started small and festered until one of us was ignoring

the other. One of the undoubtable causes of our disagreements stemmed from poor

communication and stubbornness that kept us from fixing small issues until they were past the

point of compromise. It was also at this point in our friendship that mutuality was lost almost

completely. Sydney grew into a rather arrogant person so as we aged our friendship lost equity,

and became a somewhat of a game to her. If I was having a rough week- her week was worse. If

I got a good grade on that AP BIO test I studied forever for- she got a higher grade on the AP

CHEM test she barely looked over. What once was an easy and positive relationship turned to a

friendship of receptivity, in which I did my best to be there for her but when I needed

something in return- nothing. Even the simplest of favors, like a five minute ride to work when

my car was in the shop, were too much to ask of her. As we entered our senior year, I still

regarded her as a close friend but it was almost as if we receded in the stages of relationship
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out of the intimacy stage back to involvement. We underwent interpersonal separations,

gradually disclosing less and less to each other, and suddenly we lost the dyadic consciousness

that once defined our relationship. We still talked often through swim practices and meets for

most of the first semester of senior year and if we saw each other outside of school it was

because we were still a part of the same social groups. As the competitive swim season ended,

so did the last of our casual encounters. From January of 2014 to April of 2014, I could probably

count the number of times we communicated on one hand. There was no defining moment

that severed communication, mostly just a buildup of frustrations caused by behavior and

attitude (relationship) changes that proved to be too much to repair. When prom season came

we didnt have any grievances, probably because we hadnt talked in months, and decided to

mend things and experience prom with our group of mutual friends. This struck up our

friendship again which carried onto graduation. At this point I had decided I was coming to OSU

but she was waiting to see if she had made it past the impossibly long Texas A&Ms admissions

waitlist, so our relationship at this point centered around school and was mostly positive and

casual. After graduation she decided to come to Oklahoma State and as a last attempt to save

our five year long friendship I asked her to be my roommate. We picked out our room, ordered

loft beds, bought decorations, divvied up the costs of appliances, and we were set to go. Fast

forward to two weeks before I moved in for sorority recruitment, I received a long drawn out

text detailing how her mom found her a better dorm that housed students in the same

engineering program as her and it was a great opportunity and she was no longer going to live

with me. This was the exact time our friendship entered the dissolution stage.
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It was from that moment on that I realized a friendship should not be one-sided and

that an important element of a relationship is that it is mutually productive. The more equal the

input is of both parties in a relationship, the better the experience. I learned a lot from my

friendship from Sydney the most valuable lesson being that treating others the way you want to

be treated shouldnt just be a clich we spout to children in primary school, those are the words

we should live by and base our relationships off of. A relationship without reciprocity of respect

and care is not a one that will last or flourish. So in hindsight I am grateful that Sydney was in

my life for those five years, we had our good times and in the end I hope learned what it meant

to be a good friend.