Love cannot even conquer coordination problems.

    I have no idea how it came to pass that we believe that we can just think a relationship into existence.  Look, a relationship, interpersonal-interdependence, has to involve at minimum linked behaviors.

     Here I want to be clear.  Although they are linked behaviors,

     Getting a phone number, does not make it a relationship…

     Being kissed does not make it a relationship…

     Having sex does not make it a relationship…

     Let’s think this through. Why do people exchange phone numbers?  Well, it turns out that before a relationship can be formed, there must be some coordination of behavior.

     Time coordination; when are you available?  And you?

    Behavioral coordination; Where, to do what?  What do you like to eat?

     When you want to develop a new relationship, you immediately run into the problem-of-coordination. Why; because people do not just spring into existence, just because you get interested.  That person, who is now making your heart beat faster, was already a well functioning social being, with his or her own schedule, not to mention already with friend and family obligations.

     So to develop or to maintain a relationship with a new person, somehow the two people have to find spaces where their two social realities allow for a new set of coordinated behaviors. That is essential, because as Thibaut and Kelley say in their theory of interdependence, “…the essence of any interpersonal relationship is interaction.” And, you see, it is coordination of behavior that will lead to linked emotion.  You can think about the other person all you want, but that does not help the relationship to begin or develop. Actual coordination of behavior is what influences the texture of the relationship. 

   Social psychological researchers (Berscheid, Snyder & Omoto, 1989) have now shown that being close in a relationship is determined by four factors of coordinated of behavior.  They have shown that:

   “…a high degree of interdependence (or psychological closeness) between two people is revealed in four properties of their interconnected activities:

 (1)    The individuals have frequent impact on each other;

 (2)    The impact involves diverse kinds of activities for each person;

 (3)    The degree of impact per each occurrence is strong;

 (4)    All of these properties characterize the interconnected activity series for a relatively long duration of time.”

 Frequency of impact; number of hours spent alone with one’s partner (morning, afternoon and evening) on a typical day. 

        Just thinking about this dimension may raise some red flags. Given the amount of time you spend with a person, how much time does that mean they are spending with other people?  That may be natural and appropriate, but it should also tell you that you cannot expect to have as much influence on your friend or lover as you would like. No wonder that long distance relationships are always at risk of failing. 

 Diversity of impact; this has to do with the number of different activity types in which relationship partners engage together.  Examples include: eating a meal together; doing the laundry together; went hiking together).

    This could be another “oh, oh.”  If all you do is go to bars together, or sit in each others’ apartments together, you are really not having different opportunities to have impact on each other.  Even if you are having lots of sex, if that’s mostly what you do, you don’t have much of a relationship. Again, no wonder that long distance relationships are always at risk of failing.

 Strength of impact; the degree to which members of the dyad believe they are influenced by their partner (when it comes to their joint activities). To feel close, both people should feel that they can have some influence on their partner. Influences on small things, what one watches on TV; what one eats for dinner; what activities one engages in; and influences on larger matters, career plans.

    You have heard people who are having trouble with strength of impact.  “We never do the things I’m interested in; we always do what you want to do.”  That relationship is in trouble because there is no mutual strength of impact.  When that is the case, people feel that and don’t like it.

 Duration of impact; this has to do with more than just time in the relationship.  It’s the amount of time in the relationship when the two people have been having high frequency, diversity and strength of impact on each other. 

     Impact is not immediate; it takes time for each person to be willing to have the other person influence them. Is your relationship close by this definition; or is it that you just think it’s a close relationship?

     To be close, the two people, the dyad, has to engage in some real behaviors. People in a relationship must have real impact on each other before it is a real relationship.

     When you are wondering to yourself, love wherefore art thou?  Remember, love, the feeling is not all you need. 

     Carolyn Hax, the advice columnist, says it quite eloquently.  Responding to someone seeking advice about a long distance relationship, at one point in her response Ms. Hax says:

     “Love’s engine is love in the lowercase, the day-to-day companionship, the intimacy, sex and communal laundry-folding, the countless small rewards for countless small sacrifices.”

     So real love is more than a feeling; it is active interactions with each other; interactions that provide frequent impact, strong impact, diverse impact, over long duration of time.

    I see this tension in my students’ struggles to have relationships. When I ask “…why are interpersonal relationships so difficult to manage,” I get a lot of responses.

• Because we disappoint other people
• Because we place expectations on people and are disappointed
• Because we interpret things differently
• Because we are ego-centric (always believe we’re right)
• Poor communication skills
• Situations change (i.e. moving to a new location)
• People have different beliefs
• Because we try to please everyone
• Money
• Because we’re never satisfied
• Because we have difference experiences/backgrounds
• People are selfish (i.e. want instant gratification)
• Interpersonal relationships are too time-consuming
• People lie
• Imbalance in affection
• New/different social influences
• Because we’re scared to be vulnerable
• Because we have a tendency to be judgmental
• Because we have different desires and goals
• Because of the different investments placed towards the relationship
• Lack of respect for personal space
• Different styles of managing stuff
• Trying to fit in too much
• Immaturity/inexperience in relationships
• Different interests
• Sexual incompatibility
• Because your relationship with Person A can affect your relationship with Person B (i.e. your girlfriend doesn’t like your best friend)
• Jealousy
• Because we aren’t mindful of others
• People are stubborn
• Because the more we get to know people, the more flaws we observe
• People are sensitive
• Because we’re not the same and that might cause difficulty
• Because we attribute people’s behavior to who they are, not the influences which might have contributed to their development (i.e. blame others)
• Don’t let go (i.e. hold grudges)
• People have different orientations
• Alcohol
• Because we have images of perfection
• People aren’t faithful
• Stereotypes are placed until broken
• Power struggles
• Inability to empathize
• We all do wrong and we know it

    In the Fall of 2011, from a class of 207 students, those were the responses I got to my query, “Why are interpersonal relationships so difficult to manage?”  And when that last response came, “We all do wrong and we know it,” I stopped and looked up into the auditorium. 

     I wanted to look in to the eyes of the person who said that; who admitted that.  He was a young white man with floppy dirty-blonde hair, and a look about him of being separate from others. I looked up into his eyes, nodded to him, and again repeated it for the class…

     “We all do wrong and we know it.”

     Even listing all these facts that make interpersonal relationships difficult to develop and maintain, my students also seem to want to believe that relationships shouldn’t be this hard.  And therein lay the problem.

     Look, relationships are hard not just in our imaginations, but because all relationships involve two people with two different social histories; two reasonable sets of opinions; two reasonable sets of preferences.

     That’s why people say, “…relationships are hard.”  That’s why we find ourselves saying things like:

     “God he gets on my nerves.”

     “I don’t know why she just won’t do it the way I told her to do it.  Humph…”

      Langston Hughes, the poet, describes one part of the struggle of relationships, saying,

            “Late last night I

             Set on my steps and cried.

             Wasn’t nobody gone,

             Neither had nobody died.

             I was cryin’

            Cause you broke my heart in two.

            You looked at me cross-eyed

            And broke my heart in two—

            So I was cryin’

            On account of

            You!”

     Being in a relationship, being interdependent with another person is not easy.  It’s not just a matter of what we or they think. Interdependence is about concrete social connections, social ties, that influence our behavior and our friends’, co-workers, lovers’, teammates’, parents’, behaviors.

     When we take that for granted by assuming that the other person can just think their behavior into shape for us, we deceive ourselves and belittle those with whom we are interdependent. Yet, people sometimes fear the scientific truth.  They fear it not simply because they will find out they are wrong, but more because they fear that it will take away the magic.  But knowing the truth does not take away the power of the magical and inspirational. Fully understanding the real nature of relationships will not make our social lives more mechanical, but will give us an appreciation of the struggle and make what we achieve feel even more magical and inspirational. 

     When the research knowledge developed by social psychologists is brought together with a focus on interdependence, it can provide us with tools that will help us all in our relationship struggles.  Knowing the obstacles, barriers and challenges that relationships face can only help us appreciate the joy and pain of the struggle to create and maintain those relationships.  

     Being in relationships is what activates, heats up all of our human experiences.  That’s why when I teach about relationships, I always begin with the hard truth of interdependence between two people.  I do that so that we can explore and try to understand how human experience operates within and emerges from our interpersonal interactions, so we can know what we are up against, and what joy we can really achieve through the struggle.

     That is the question I kept asking myself as I read Lauren Redniss book, “Radioactive, Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout.”  Turns out, I had no idea who Marie Curie had been, how important she had been to the science of radioactivity, and how she and her husband Pierre had shared a radioactive love.

     But theirs’ was not the naïve idea of hot love that we live with today.  Pierre Curie was a physicist who studied crystals, and whose work was ground breaking, setting the foundation for the creation of mechanisms that power things we take for granted today; inkjet printers, medical ultrasounds.

     Marie Curie was never a nurse. She studied mathematics and physics, and when X-rays were first discovered became interested in minerals that gave off light; uranium being one. 

     Both Marie and Pierre were high level thinkers and researchers. 

    Can two geniuses find love and sustain a relationship?  For me, as I read, that became the central question about the life of Marie Curie.  A woman of her own mind, at a time when women usually were mere baubles on the arm of a man, Marie wanted a love life, a family, but she wanted equally to be able to do her independent work.  Pierre was a man who wanted Marie the woman, but who also wanted Marie the thinker.  So they became collaborators in all things; life and work.  Noting this about their relationship Redniss writes,

     “With the constant companionship that accompanied their research, the Curies’ love deepened.  They cosigned their published findings.  Their handwritings intermingle in their notebooks.  On the cover of one black canvas laboratory log, the initials “M” and “P” are scripted directly one atop the other.”

     Today we use the phrase “power-couple.” Well here was the ultimate power-couple who shared marriage, children and a Noble Prize in Physics for their work on radium and radioactivity. It was Marie who coined the word “radioactivity.”  Her work influenced everything we learned about and now know about radioactivity.

     Set up as a graphic novel, Redniss takes us through the many facets of the questions, quandaries and paradoxes that knowledge of radioactivity has brought to human history. That, in and of itself, makes this a book that all of us need to read. And the book, with its colorful, emotion laden art (by the author), is a captivating read that took me away for three hours. 

     For me, the most compelling part of the story is the human story. In her diary Marie wrote: “We [Pierre and I] lived in preoccupation as complete as that of a dream.”  Yet dreams can contain moments of disappointment and even terror. 

     Still learning about the properties and effects of radioactivity, handling radium every day, both Marie and Pierre were being poisoned by their work. Pierre dies in part because he was so weakened by that poisoning.  Four years later, Marie takes a lover, another physicist, who is married.  That caused a scandal so extreme that two men had a duel over her honor, and she was discouraged from going to Oslo to receive her second Nobel Prize, this one in Chemistry.  Marie ignored these requests. That should have surprised no one because Marie Curie had always been an independent thinker.  That is why her greatest joys came in her relationship with Pierre. 

     What is radioactive love?  It is having someone who gets and respects your passion… that’s radioactive love.  Such mutual respect lights things up; it heats things up.  It resists random change, even as it accepts its own natural change.

     To love is to respect.  Sadly and with imminent danger to self and others, too many people use the word “love” when they mean “want.”  That is dangerous because “I want you” is only a statement of passionate desire.  “I love you” should be a statement of the interaction of desire, respect and commitment to the relationship that lights up everything. Love, you see, is a decision to bring and keep desire, respect and commitment together, in order to have an authentic, luminous, relationship.

    Marie Curie’s relationship with Pierre was such because they respected each other.  Losing such a rare, radiant, element would be the most difficult thing ever in life. No wonder that when he died, a day after the funeral, in her diary Marie wrote,

     “My Pierre, I got up after having slept very well, relatively calm.  That was barely a quarter of an hour ago, and now I want to howl again—like a savage beast.”

    You want to know what radioactive love looks like.  Read this book.

  What bullshit!

     It is that kind of naïve, romantic belief about relationships that I confront and dismantle in my teaching about relationships.  Yes, a healthy, romantic relationship should have heat; hot-love, passionate sexual attraction; but not radioactive because we humans do not know how to control radioactivity.  Real love, healthy love, requires control because to love means to be able to fit our emotions into what the relationship requires.

     One of my favorite stand-alone lectures to give is the one I call, “What if the requirements of love are not the requirements of the relationship?”

     So let’s talk about the four requirements of the relationship.

     First requirement: the relationship must develop over time and circumstances; you cannot rush the evolution of the relationship.

     Getting a phone number, does not make it a relationship.

     Being kissed does not make it a relationship.

     Having sex does not make it a relationship.

     Here’s the problem.  Generally speaking, when people think they are in love, they immediately make this mistake.

     They say stuff like:

She’s great; I love everything about her.

He’s wonderful: I love everything about him.

     Problem:  They are still at the beginning of what might become a relationship; so they don’t know everything about him or her.

     That’s why we can end up so angry. At the beginning of the month we say, “I love everything about him or her.”  At the end of that same month we say:

 He’s a jerk.

She’s a … ok, she’s so selfish.

     It is as if the person has betrayed us by being who they really are. But the truth is we tried to rush things. 

     You see, relationships must evolve.  And the basis of the evolution of any interpersonal relationship is social interaction; interacting with that person, repeatedly, over time and different circumstances.  Until we have done that, we do not have a relationship.

     You cannot make a relationship grow by just being nice; you cannot make a relationship grow by partying together; you cannot make a relationship grow simply by spending all your time together; you cannot make a relationship grow by having lots of really good sex.

     Why not?; second requirement of relationships.

     Second requirement: the force that causes relationship development is conflict; relationships cannot develop without encountering and managing conflict.

     She wants to go the tractor pull and he wants to go the opera. 

     What do you do? 

     Interpersonal conflicts must occur for the relationship to grow.  Why?  Because without those kinds of conflicts, you never get to know who the other person really is, and you never get to know what they are or are not willing to adjust to for the relationship.

     So you must not hide your preferences.  You know the situation; you’ve lived it.  The question is asked, “…what do you want to do,” and the answer comes, “I don’t know what do you want to do.”

     Why is that so annoying?

     Because the person is hiding from you or you are hiding from them.

     And you are both lying.

     Always saying, “yes dear” is a sure relationship killer.  Why; because it’s hiding.

     Always saying, “…it doesn’t matter to me, I just want to be with you…” is a sure relationship killer.  Why; because it’s hiding and lying.

     Relationships cannot grow without honest self-disclosures.  Hiding your preferences stops the relationship from evolving.

     The third requirement of the relationship that we must understand is that the management of conflict will either cause the relationship to grow or will kill the relationship on the spot. 

     If any member of the couple decides to blow off a preference of their partner, the relationship is dead.  If you say “oh you don’t really mean that,” the relationship is dead.

     People you want to have relationships with had their preferences before they met you.  People do not spring into existence, just because you get interested.  Mostly they were doing fine… and you just showed up and now you want to object to their preferences.  So, if their preference is not illegal, immoral, dangerous or stinky, when you object then you show that it’s all about you having your way. 

     And that brings us to the fourth requirement of relationships. The fourth requirement of the relationship is this; the proper management of conflict requires each partner to listen for and adapt to the strengths and limitations of their partner.

   If your partner says to you, as the Tracy Chapman song says,

 “I told that I love you and there ain’t no more to say…”

     …you need to hear that as part of who they are and how they can or are willing to express themselves.  If you want or need someone to keep proving their love to you and the person says to you “I have told you that I love you and there ain’t no more to say…” then you have to hear and understand that limitation. If you can’t accept that, the way they are, don’t expect them to change for you.  That means you need to move on. 

     Walk the hell away.

     Listen, we all know that people do try to stick with a relationship because of what they imagine to be the requirements of radioactive love.  But heat is not the most powerful force holding a relationship together.  The most powerful force is adaptation; partners adapting to the strengths and limitations of each other.

     No real relationships are without conflicts. So the point is to be in a relationship that you and your partner believe is worth adapting too.  Since the requirements of your radioactive-love are never going to fit the requirements of the relationship, you must always decide what you are willing to do for the relationship.  If you decide that you cannot adapt to your partner’s strengths and limitations, then get out quickly.  Don’t linger, because lingering will almost always lead to a destructive relationship; a relationship in which at least one person in the relationship is subject to physical or psychological harm.

     Yes it was hot-love at first; radioactive love. Yet it was love without a willingness to learn and adapt to the person we said we loved.  It was radioactive at first sight… but what if the requirements of your heat are not the requirements of the relationship? 

    What then?

     With some frequency I give this talk to college students.  And during the last six summers, I have come out of hiding to give this talk to high school students attending North Carolina’s Governor’s School East held at Meredith College in Raleigh. When I give this talk to 15 and 16 year olds, I rock the house.

     After my talk in the Summer 2011, one of the students, Julius Kellinghusen, wrote it up for the Governor’s School East newsletter.  With the title of the article being “Doctor Love speaks out on teen romance and relationships” he ended his write up saying:

    “While being both caring and frightening, Dr. Nacoste and his lessons will be remembered for many years to come. So when you’re in that illegal, immoral, dangerous, or maybe even stinky relationship—just remember: ‘Get up and walk the HELL away.’”

    Apparently at Governor’s School East, they call me “Dr. Love.”

     With lamentation in her voice, Natasha Bedingfield sings:

                                                                                                           Who doesn’t long for someone to hold…

Who knows how to love you without being told…

Somebody tell me why I’m on my own…

If there’s a soulmate for everyone…

     More than ever, people want to know how relationships work. Jordan Sparks sings:

     Why does love always feel like a battlefield, a battlefield, a battlefield?

      Almost as if he is in conversation with Natasha and Jordan, John Legend sings:

‘Cause everybody knows, that nobody really knows

How to make it work, or how to ease the hurt

We’ve heard it all before, that everybody knows

How to make it right, I wish we gave it one more try

‘Cause everybody knows, but nobody really knows…

     To get answers to their relationship questions, to find love that lasts, to figure out how to manage their relationships, people are reading relationship columns, blogs, and books. No doubt, more than ever, people are wondering whether there is a course to take to at least understand what the hell is going on. Well, is there?

     Yes there is.

      And I have been teaching that course to college students since 1999. 

     When the summer of 1999 rolled around, I had been teaching social psychology for about 10 years.  And I wasn’t happy.

     Oh, I liked being a professor. 

    And I liked teaching the social psychology course.  But I wasn’t happy with the way the field of social psychology was being covered by the textbooks. 

     All of the social psychology textbooks had the same organization, and that meant that interpersonal relationships were buried in chapter 9 or 10 somewhere.  All the textbooks start with psychological stuff; how we think about things; how we feel about things.  My training and my life experience told me that that’s not social. 

     How can we call ourselves social psychologists if we wait to show what we know about relationships so late in our coverage of social psychological topics and research? How can we offer people any help with their interpersonal relationships if we talk as if all that matters is how we think?

     I was really irritated by this because using any textbook almost forced me to teach the course in the way the textbook was organized.

     I was not happy. 

     So, I did something that some of my colleagues thought a little crazy.  I threw away all of the lectures I had developed, used, and refined over ten years. 

     I threw them away.

      Then I said to myself, ok Rupert… put your time where your mouth is. I said to myself, if you can teach the course in a new way, then you can write a new kind of social psychology book. Come up with a better way to organize a book and then teach the course that way. 

     That’s what I did.  I created a new social psychology course.

    In that course, I do not offer one-shot solutions to problems that occur in relationships.  What I do is teach students about the nature of being interdependent with another person.  All relationships are relationships of interdependence; each person depends on the other person for interpersonal satisfaction.  And it turns out that being interdependent with someone, in romance or friendship, has no one-shot, one-answer solution. 

     Interdependence in its completeness is something we all need and want to understand. We search for, we long for interdependence. We have different ways of stating this longing. We say “someone to love me.”  We say “someone to watch over me.”  However it is phrased, what we search for in interdependence with another person is safety… home. 

     Yet despite our longings to be interdependent, we don’t do it very well.  Why is that?  Simple; it takes time to learn how interdependence really works.  That’s the point of my course; to give people a framework, a lens, an eye, through which to see how the interpersonal works. So, in my course we take on these questions:

 What is an interpersonal relationship?

Why are interpersonal relationships so difficult to manage?

What are the types of interpersonal relationships?

What are the general requirements of interpersonal relationships?

What dimensions of interdependence lead us to feel safe in our relationships?

What can go wrong in our relationships because we are so motivated to find safety in our relationships?

     Even books by therapists do not take on these essential questions. Books like The Dance of Anger are books that try to heal the charred skin that remains after people have been burned by trying and failing to find relationship satisfaction by living out their relationship-stereotypes and romantic ideals.  My course is about prevention.

     My idea is that if we give people a realistic, scientifically established, understanding of how interpersonal relationships work, that will go a long way to preventing people from throwing themselves into the fiery pit of relationship confusion and eventual anger.  Once I started teaching my course the new way, with the entire focus of the course on relationship-development, students went wild.

     Students started evaluating the course with comments like this:

     “I would just like to say that I’m glad that I had the opportunity to rid myself of my romantic ideals about relationships.  Although the truth is cold and the reality even colder, at least through the knowledge I have learned in this course I no longer feel lost, confused, or that I will be wasting my time with bad relationships in the future. I now feel as though I have a real chance at developing a genuine, healthy, longstanding, love-filled communal relationship.”

     Also evaluating my course, another student wrote:

     “An excellent course. This should be taught in high schools!! This should be made a university-wide requirement [because] this course… enhances students’ maturity in dealing with others, both in intimate relationships and friendships.”

     So hold on; in my posts up until Summer, 2012, I will give you a glimpse into the teachings of my course.  One of the themes of the course is this: Relationships present to us problems to solve. That means that relationships require work. What surprises my students is that some of that work is us working to understand ourselves.

     Come go with me into a glimpse of a course that causes students to learn to accept the fact that it is only through relationships, through interdependence, that we can discover our authentic-self.  Paul Laurence Dunbar, the poet, puts the invitation and experience I am offering, this way:

 Come, come away to the river’s bank,
Come in the early morning;
Come when the grass with dew is dank,
There you will find the warning –
A hint in the kiss of the quickening air
Of the secret that birds and breezes bear.

     Come along for a glimpse into a course that helps people develop a new way of looking at the interpersonal. Come along for a glimpse into a course that makes the secrets of managing interdependence coherent; the “…secret that birds and breezes bear.”  

     Come; let’s make our way home.

    About ten years ago, I was working at home and decided to head out to Wholes Food to pick up something to cook for dinner.  Not being in a romantic relationship, I was not paying attention to the particulars of the day.  But when I got to Wholes Food I knew something was going on because the parking lot was full.  It was only11:30 or so in the morning. 

    Finally I found a place to park and wandered into the store and holy smoke, the place was packed with nervous men.  The store had set up three different lines where men could buy only one thing; flowers. Looking to the front of the line, looking at a time piece, these men’s faces were filled with tension.

    I got out of there.  I headed down to Quail Ridge Books, my favorite bookstore.  And lo and behold there were more men.  This time they were standing in front of the greeting card section.  One man was beside himself, saying to one of the clerks, “Is this all you have?”  With polite tension in her voice, the clerk replied, “You understand sir that today is Valentine’s Day and people buy cards in advance.”  That didn’t help the guy; he continued to look in anguish, sweat on his brow.

    What the hell, I thought, is going on?  When did Valentine’s Day turn into a day for the wailing and gnashing of teeth? I realized that something had changed.

    Not long after I stumbled upon and read Barbara Whitehead’s book, “Why There Are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman.”

    Disregard the first part of the title because that is not what the book is about.  In a way, we should also disregard the second part of the title because the book is about the plight of anyone, woman or man, who is seeking a long lasting romantic relationship.  You see, in her book, Dr. Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University showed that there has been a major shift in the way society manages romantic interpersonal relationships. That shift has been from a marriage-dating-system to a relationship-dating-system.

    The marriage system was meant to bring two never-married-single people together for life-long marriage. That system had courtship expectations and rules.  Almost unnoticed by us in our everyday life, American society has moved away from that system and created a new system; the relationship-dating system.

    And how does this new system work.  Very simply, the relationship-dating system is designed to make sure people have intimate relationships. That’s the end of the sentence.  People, never-married or not, are expected to have intimate relationships, but not necessarily marriage, and certainly not life-long marriage.  In the relationship-dating system, there are no courtship expectations and rules, and break ups are expected.  I mean come on, how long can two people be expected to stay together… get real.

   No courtship expectations or rules… so no wonder that today dating motivations are all over the place. Once I understood the claim of a shift I began to discuss this idea in my general social psychology course.  To get into that discussion I ask students, “What are the goals of dating, nowadays?”  Every time I do this I get a flood of responses.  What are the goals of dating nowadays?  Here are some of the unedited responses I get:

    To have fun…                     

  For money…                     

  Out of pity…

    To learn…          To find your soulmate       

   To get help with homework…       

   To have a servant…         

  For serious reasons…        Social pressure…

  To feel better

   For something to do…       To have a servant…       

   To fit in…

   Companionship…              For gifts…                        

   To kill time     Fear of being alone…      

   To please family…             

   To acclimate to a new situation…

   To get a free meal…     To gain status…                 

   To meet people…     To gain experience…  

    To find out who you are…  To rebel against family…

   To experience interest…    To have a Valentine…   

   To get transportation…     

    To get over past relationships…

    Yikes…dating motivations are all over the place nowadays.  Remember these responses come from 200, nineteen and twenty year old college students. And marriage is not mentioned in this list. And the reason is we are living in a relationship-dating system.  That is also why people today say that marriage is not necessary for a good life.  That is also why having a baby is now disconnected from marriage.  As put by Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, “Marriage has become a luxury good.”

   So in the relationship-dating system which provides no clear ways to show our partners that we really care, without that context, way too much hangs on Valentine’s Day. Things are so loose now, that what were normal expectations are now extreme. Acts of love have to be overblown. If they aren’t, they are a deal breaker.  Valentine’s Day becomes our day of romantic apocalypse. 

    But I analyze romantic relationships because it is what I am called to do as an interpersonal psychologist. Interpersonal psychology is the area of study in which social psychologists develop theoretical and practical knowledge of how interpersonal relationships work. Interpersonal psychology is based on the idea that all relationships are relationships of interdependence; that is relationships where each person depends on the other person to obtain interpersonal satisfaction.

    Nothing brings all that together like romance.  So I study and analyze the dynamics of intimate, romantic relationships because I believe that analysis and understanding is important to all our everyday lives.

    At last night’s Grammy Awards, Adele swept all of the categories in which her album was nominated. 

      When she won the Album of the Year, she said her album was about something everyone has had to deal with.  Adele said, “This record is inspired by something really normal and everyone’s been through it…a rubbish relationship.”  Indeed… indeed…

    But how is it that we go from being “…in love” to realizing we have made a terrible mistake?  What is the dark magic of relationships that leads us to go with hope and optimism into a rubbish relationship?

    Is that the most important question?  Maybe we should ask, instead, what don’t we know about relationships that we need to know to give us a chance at success?  What do we need to know to prevent us from turning our own relationships into rubbish?

   Hold on; switchback ahead… a steep, curvy one.  Let’s talk about intimate relationships; let’s talk about the dynamics of developing intimate relationships in the 21^st century.  You see… something has changed… and there is no better evidence of that than Valentine’s Day, 2012; the apocalypse-now of romance.

    For both groups the title of my talk was, “Interpersonal Leadership: Moving from Tolerance to Acceptance.”  In both cases, the students admitted that with all the diversity in their social environments there is a lot of worry about being perceived as racist.  I told them that such worries come from trying just to be tolerant of people from different groups, rather than trying to accepting that those people are your equals.

    Tolerance, you see, is the shelter for those who are worried, uncertain and anxious. Tolerance is “…putting up with.” You can’t get to acceptance if you are worried, uncertain and anxious.  That is why we need “interpersonal leaders.”  We need individuals who are willing to stand up to the conformity pressures that push us to just tolerate, and then behind closed doors talk about members of other groups with anti-group slurs and stereotypes.  Interpersonal leaders are needed so that we move from tolerance to acceptance; respect for all.

    It was a talk I designed to be a challenge to the students; a challenge to make a difference.  It became even more of a challenge when I told them that my time is coming to an end.  My time of working to improve the diversity environment of America is almost over. 

   I started doing diversity work in the U.S. Navy in 1974.  I have been at this a long time.  That is why I had something to say, and so wrote and published my memoir of work on diversity: Making Gumbo in the University.

    Now it seems that my effort was worthwhile.  Reviewing my memoir for the journal Making Connections: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Cultural Diversity  Professor Edward Washington wrote:

     “Making Gumbo in the University deserves to be read for its progressive ideas and policies on diversity on the 21st century college campus. Nacoste argues for an intellectually dynamic university and he champions the need for ongoing dialogue about diversity as a way for colleges to remain on the cutting edge of beneficial change. Administrators should not be afraid to lead in this area, all students benefit from learning to be more tolerant of others, and the willingness and ability to change for the better is, for Nacoste, the “responsibility” of all university communities.”

A reviewer for the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education wrote:

    “Dr. Rupert Nacoste, a Louisiana-born interpersonal social psychologist, draws on the imagery of gumbo to distill lessons learned from his experience as the first vice provost for diversity and African American affairs at North Carolina State University.  (He resigned after two years and returned to the NCSU NCSU North Carolina State University faculty.) Without bitterness, he outlines his view that the recipe for achieving diversity in the modern university requires stirring up the “conflict of ideas” and allowing them to simmer into a rich concoction of durable relationships and intellectual ferment.”

         Finally, Dr. John Saltmarsh, the Director of the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE)  at the University of Massachusetts, Boston said to his readership: “I highly recommend a very compelling and somewhat iconoclastic book by Rupert Nacoste, the person in charge of diversity at North Carolina State University at the beginning of the 2000s. His book is called Making Gumbo in the University, and is a very smart inside look at the politics and positioning of diversity on campus, and the challenges encountered when taking diversity seriously.”

   That is why I was serious when I told these NCSU students that my time is coming to an end.  But I shocked them when I told them that it is now their time to work for things to change when it comes to acceptance of diversity in America.  I shocked them.

    I know that because I saw a reaction in both sets of students’ eyes. In their eyes, I saw thoughtfulness mixed with a bit of fear, and a bit of anger.  Me!  I have to take this up now.  Me! Dammit… why me; why isn’t this done already. 

   Both sets of students had already admitted to me that they continue to experience “…the moment.”  All of them nodded with vigor to say that yes, they had experienced that moment when someone in group utters ugly, intolerant words; racial, gender, ethnic, religious slurs.  Oh yeah… they said… and they said that when it happens they are uncomfortable but silent.  Yet they looked at me with anxiety, fear and anger when I said their time to work for change had come.  Some students actually slide down in their seats. 

    Arms folded in front of them in self defense in their eyes I saw the question. Why does it fall to “…me” was the question I saw in their eyes.  And so I told them why.  Because just like they were trying to do, too many before them had been sitting and “…waiting… waiting on the world to change.”  No more, I said to them.  You asked me to come and speak with you, so now you have no excuse.  You cannot say you didn’t know. 

    You see I taught them a strategy that works.  Speak up and speak for yourself.  Based on social psychological research (see my previous post), I taught them in that moment all there is something they can do that is easily within their power. That something is to softly say to the person,

• I would prefer not to hear that kind of racial/gender/ethnic slur. I find it offensive.
• I really don’t like to hear people referred to as stereotypes. I find it offensive.

    I showed those students that it is up to them to set new norms for their communities and to talk about new norms and to display new norms. That is how they can become the interpersonal leaders we need in the 21^st century America. 

    So now they had too much information to be able to say “I don’t know what to do.”  Now, like the students in my classes, they knew too much. Now like to the students in my classes, I made it clear that they have the ability to work for change and so the responsibility.

    They felt trapped.  That is why I saw thoughtfulness mixed with a bit of fear, and a bit of anger.  Me!  I have to take this up now.  Me! Dammit… why me; why isn’t this done already. 

    Why is it up to them?  No heroes will come.  Change will come through everyday people standing up for change; being interpersonal leaders.  And now is that time. As the prologue to the science-fiction series Torchwood proclaims,

“The 21^st Century is when everything changes. You have to be ready.”

    In their own words “Wake Up! It’s Serious: A Campaign for Change” is a campaign designed to help individuals learn how to speak up in the presence of intolerance  by refusing to be silent when another person uses derogatory group terms.

     Refusing to be silent?  What does that mean?  Well, when I teach about the fact that there are no innocent racial slurs, I also teach that to reduce people’s ease with using anti-group slurs each of us has a responsibility to confront a person when they do so.   That is why Wake Up! is also a student campaign for change that is designed to spread awareness of intolerance and motivate personal responsibility for taking action and managing emotion in the face of intolerance. So we show up and participate in activities like “Respect the Pack” which was put on by student government to raise awareness of the problems the intolerant language causes on our campus.

    Ok, but is spreading awareness enough? People always say that lack of education and understanding is the problem.  But, the truth is those of us who think it is wrong for anybody to speak in anti-group (racial, gender, ethnic, religious) slurs are already aware.  So awareness is not the issue. 

     Yes, you are right.  That is why Wake Up! is also a student campaign to advocate taking a stand in the face of intolerance and to teach our student body strategies to do so.

     Strategies?  Yes, strategies… you see, as part of my course I teach students how to take a stand against intolerant language in the moment that it happens.  That strategy is not based on my opinion; the strategy I teach comes from research by other social psychologists who have studied what are effective methods, strategies for standing up for change.

     Through a set of three experiments, Czopp, Monteith & Mark (Czopp, A. M., Monteith, M.J. & Mark, A. Y. (2006). Standing up for change: Reducing bias through interpersonal confrontation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 784-803.)  investigated (1) whether white students’ use of racial stereotypes decreased after being  confronted about using a racial stereotype, (2) whether reactions to the confrontation were influenced by the race of the person making the objection and (3) whether a confrontation in one situation influenced the use of racial stereotypes in another situation. What did these researchers find?

     First off, race of the confronter made no difference.  It did not matter whether the person objecting was black or white the confrontation had the same effect. Second, the research shows that people’s interpersonal fears are accurate.  The research confirmed that when confronted, the person confronted shows anger and irritation toward confronters. But the research also shows that when not confronted, perpetrators act as if they have been encouraged to continue.  By not confronting a person who uses demeaning group language, the perpetrator acts as if you have encouraged them to continue and say more in the same vein.  So the question is what are you prepared to live with interpersonally?

     Songwriter and singer John Mayer has suggested that many young people today want change, but don’t know what to do to bring it about.  According to Mr. Mayer, young people do not behave to cause change because they don’t think they have the means.  So young people, Mayer says,

“…just keep waiting…

…waiting on the world to change.”

   Yet the findings of the research by Czopp, Monteith & Mark indicates that in social interaction we don’t have to stand around waiting on the world to change. One thing the research suggests is an interpersonal strategy for dealing with another person’s use of offensive racial slurs or stereotypes.  Turns out the confrontation does not have to be harsh and loud.

    One of the basic principles for managing interpersonal conflict is speaking for your-self. When we are confronting a interpersonal conflict episode in our relationships, we have to admit our preferences; say “I” not “You.” Make the statement an honest self-disclosure. Be not accusatory; name calling is just name calling.  Following on this for the case of group offensive slurs and stereotypes, an effective strategy is to say:

 •     I would prefer that you don’t use that kind of language around me. I find it offensive.

 •     I really don’t like to hear slurs about a religion. I find it offensive.

 •     I really don’t like that you refer to people in stereotypes. I find it offensive.

     The research by Czopp, Monteith & Mark shows that these kinds of confrontations are effective in that they have specific effects.  One, in the immediate situation, these kinds statements reduce the perpetrator’s use of stereotyped language and claims.  Two, these kinds of challenges cause the perpetrator to experience negative self-evaluations.  These effects are both specific and socially significant. So it turns out we don’t have to wait on a hero. 

     Members of “Wake Up! It’s Serious: A Campaign for Change” have realized that reality; no heroes will come; there will be not be another Martin Luther King Jr.  These young people have come to understand what Dr. King meant when he said:

 The greatest tragedy of this age

Will not be the vitriolic words and deeds of the children of darkness…

But the appalling silence of the children of light.

     Members of Wake Up! have come to understand their role as “…children of light.”

    That picture is from the very successful Open-mic that Wake Up! put on in the Fall, 2011.  Look closely at the neo-diversity of the people who turned out and stayed to be in that picture.  Have no doubt that on the campus of North Carolina State University, there is a set of students who have dedicated themselves to pushing students on our campus to “Wake Up” to the reality of the neo-diversity of the 21^st Century.  That reality being that interaction between groups is unavoidable, and that negative group language is only going to get in the way of our growth as a nation.

    These students were among the Wake Up! group who have made this commitment.

    Will you join the campaign?  Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wake-Up-Its-Serious-A-Campaign-for-Change/143249339096798 and like us.

     “I have a few white friends who throw the “N word” around with an “a” at the end. It makes me uncomfortable when they use it, especially when they use it to describe me (I am white).”

     Dear Amy answered by calling this practice unacceptable.  Her answer was a good one, but I was puzzled.

     My puzzlement had to do with why this group of white people got such apparent joy out of doing this.  That quandary of mine grew when I got a paper from one of my students in which he described the same practice among his white acquaintances.  He was uncomfortable and he was verbal in saying to his friends that their behavior was “…racist.” Interestingly, his friends argued that they were just having fun; that this was harmless.

     My puzzlement went nuclear when I got a paper from a white female who said it made her “angry” that blacks could call themselves “niggers” but she wasn’t allowed too.  Really, I wondered… it makes you angry?  Why in the world would that be the case?

     A lot of different student groups on our campus invite me to lecture on neo-diversity.  Our campus is predominantly white, so most of the time I lecture to racially mixed groups.  But on October 19, 2011, I had the unique opportunity to give a lecture to a predominantly black student group because the invitation came from a black fraternity. I chose as my topic, “There Are No Innocent Racial Slurs.”

    This was a real opportunity to address an ugly within-group dynamic in this community of young African-Americans.  So, I went loaded for bear.  Using the same analysis I use in my “Interpersonal Relationships and Race” class, I made the point that black people calling each other “…nigger” is just as unacceptable as whites or members of other groups doing so. That practice is unacceptable because it is done for the same reason; to make an interpersonal power move.  Use of the word “…nigger” is always an attempt to say “I am superior to you.”  How so?

     Some parts of our language have an intergroup character; words are used to distinguish us versus them, and with that superior versus inferior.  Not only that, but the intergroup character of language has a history. Saying that “…I didn’t mean it that way” means you know that history.  Turns out, that history is so strong you can’t change the meaning of the word; there is no other way to use the word.

     Jabara Asim writes with clarity about this in his book, “The N-Word”

       Mr. Asim writes:  “…the word ‘nigger’ serves primarily—even in its contemporary ‘friendlier’ usage—as a linguistic extension of white supremacy, the most potent part of a language of oppression that has changed over time from overt to covert.”

    Going on, Asim says,   

    “’Nigger’… is not one of those words of innocuous meaning that morphed over time into something different and harmful; it has always been tethered to notions of race and racial inferiority.”

    So one African-American saying to another, “What’s up… my nigger,” is not friendly or affectionate.  It is one black person reminding another black person of their place in the racial hierarchy of America.  “My nigger…”; “your nothing special, just another nigger” and not only that but “I can talk to you this way because I own you like a slave.”

     When I got around to making this point, the predominantly African American audience went hushed. I had hit home.  Like black students in my class, they had not thought of it this way.  These young black people had not realized that through their language they were perpetuating racisms legacy.

     No matter whose mouth it comes out of, there are no innocent uses of a racial slur.  The intergroup character of language has a history.

    Understanding that makes it less than a puzzle that some whites want to use the word freely towards each other; they say harmlessly, with affection.  Keep in mind that when I teach about the use of racial and other anti-group slurs, I make the point that these slurs are used for one reason: to display power.  The use of anti-group slurs is to pull the “…superiority card.” 

    Whites who call each other nigger do so to show they are still superior to blacks.  Since by being white the term cannot actually apply to them, they are just showing that they know that there are still niggers in the world; there are still people who by their skin color are inferior to white people.  That’s why those whites say that it’s fun; it feels good to remind themselves that they are still superior.

     As for those whites who say “…well if they call each other that then why can’t I call them that?”  What an arrogant, transparent argument. 

     Whites who call each other niggers do not do so in the presence of black people.  Not surprising because they know there would be justified negative consequences because those whites know there is only one way to use the word “…nigger,” however it is spelled. Yet some whites want to be able to use the word.  Why?  There is only one possibility; to show that whites are still superior to blacks. Whites who do this are making a white supremacy claim.  It is pulling the “…superiority-card.” Those whites seem to be saying “…because I am white, I have the right to use this word.” Those whites seem to be saying, “look we invented the word to use against them; so it’s our word after all.” Indeed… that also explains why a young white person would become “…angry” because that white person can’t call black people niggers even though some black people call each other that. 

     Angry about what; how is calling a black person or a white friend a nigger important to your everyday life? 

    Answer me that.