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Friendships can be defined as voluntary relationships that provide social support. Friendships vary along the following dimensions: short- vs. long-term, task- vs. maintenance-oriented, low vs. high disclosure, low vs. high obligation, and infrequent vs. frequent contact.
Most of our friendships tend to be same-sex friendships. Early research found that women bond primarily through self-disclosure and men through shared activities, but more contemporary research suggests these differences may have been overstated. Cross-sex friendships can be beneficial but also carry the risk of sexual attraction. “Friends with benefits” relationships have become increasingly common but often complicate the nature of communication between the involved parties.
Successful friendships involve sharing joys and sorrows, sharing laughs and memories, listening, maintaining confidences, lending a helping hand, standing up for each other, honouring pledges and commitments, treating each other with respect, having a balanced exchange, valuing connection and autonomy, and apologizing and forgiving.
Family can be broadly defined as a system with two or more interdependent people who have a common history and a present reality, and who expect to influence each other in the future. Family narratives are stories that reinforce shared goals, values, and concerns, and often have meaning that goes beyond the incident being recounted. Rituals may centre on celebrations or become a part of everyday life. Families also have their own communication rules, which govern how family members communicate and what topics they discuss.
Families are systems whose members interact with one another to form a whole. This means that family members are interdependent; a family is more than the sum of its parts; and families have systems within the larger system.
Two categories of rules governing communication in the family are conversation and conformity. Conversation orientation involves the degree to which families favour an open climate of discussion on a wide array of topics. Conformity orientation involves the degree to which family communication stresses uniformity of attitudes, beliefs, and values. These factors can combine to form four different family communication patterns: consensual, pluralistic, protective, and laissez-faire.
Several guidelines are presented to create family interactions that are more satisfying and rewarding. These include: manage the connection-autonomy dialectic; strive for closeness while respecting boundaries; use, but don’t abuse, technology and social media; encourage confirming messages; and deal constructively with family conflict by seeking win–win solutions, expressing appreciation more than complaints, focusing on manageable issues, and not sweating the small stuff.
Most romantic relationships consist of three characteristics: love, commitment, and affection. According to Sternberg’s (2004) triangular theory of love, love has three components: intimacy, passion, and commitment. Different types of love emerge from different combinations of these three components, including romantic love, companionate love, fatuous love, empty love, liking, infatuation, and consummate love. Relational commitment involves a promise—sometimes implied and sometimes explicit—to remain in a relationship and work to make it successful. Expressions of affection can be verbal or non-verbal and range from holding hands, to saying “I love you,” to sexual activity. Communicating affection has both physiological and relational benefits.
Communication in romantic relationships is also enhanced when partners speak the same love language. According to Chapman (2010), each person has a love language, or a particular notion about what counts as love. These include words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. It is also important for romantic partners to use digital communication wisely. Social media, texting, etc. can be valuable tools for relational maintenance, but they can also be intrusive and distracting if not used with care.