Lesson 2: Need to Belong (aka Glowworm Theory)

In 1995, a couple of really smart, interesting psychologists named Baumeister and Leary published an article entitled The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation. I had the occasion to read this article when I was a student in a social psychology class at Michigan State University. It, to this day, is probably the most influential scholarly work I have ever read in the course of my academic career. This article is the cornerstone of one of my best and favorite lectures in my Interpersonal Communication class - the Glowworm lecture.

My students have told me that this lecture helps them re-frame and reevaluate some of the relationships they have on the basis of this lecture. So, for your reading delight, I present the highlights (i.e. the Blogger's version) of that lecture.


1. The human need to belong can be considered to be sort of a metaphorical bucket that each of us fills with different people who serve, to some degree or another, our need to belong. Some of us have really small shot glass-sized buckets, others of us (myself included) have big wiskey barrel-sized buckets. The bigger a person's bucket, the more relationships we tend to work to maintain with others to see to the meeting of our need to belong.

2. Because human beings are basically all replaceable, we can think of the relationships with which we fill our buckets as Barbies and G. I. Joes. They're all basically the same, they all take up about the same amount of space, and they all service our need to belong in some small way or another. If one of them stops working to contribute to our feeling a sense of belonging, we toss it out of the bucket and find a new one to replace it.

3. Ideally, we want to invest our time in a relationship that does the work of several loose associations we have with other people. We foster relationships with people who provide for a multitude of our needs and desires, especially when they satisfy a need for affection and warmth. I liken this relationship to being a Glowworm. Glowworms are considerably larger than Barbies and G.I. Joes, and they feel vastly less replaceable than the cookie-cutter sameness of Barbies and G.I. Joes. Generally, our Glowworms take the form of best friends, and often ideally, romantic partners.

So the question now is how does this help us to understand the choices we make in our relationships?

Well, here go.

Because our buckets are fairly fixed in size, we can only fill it with a finite number of relationships. When we choose to invest ourselves in a significant relationship with a Glowworm, we don't have the space (i.e., the energy and resources) to maintain our relationships with our Glowworm and all of our Barbies and G.I. Joes. As a result of that finite amount of space, and as a result of our restricted amount of energy to expend, and because our Glowworms occupy so much space, necessarily, we choose to terminate some of our less important Barbie and G.I. Joe relationships. If you've ever noticed that when a friend of yours starts dating someone seriously that you hear from them less, it isn't because they are lazy or mean, it's because they are trying to make space in their bucket to grow a relationship that is increasingly valuable and beneficial to them (yes, more so than his or her relationship with you is).

Similarly, and often more importantly, we toss our Barbies and G.I. Joes out of our own buckets in order to make room to grow our own Glowworms. As a result, we restrict the number of people on whom we can rely for social resources while we are fostering a relationship with a Glowworm. As long as our Glowworm is in our bucket, we don't really notice the fact that we have fewer Barbies and Joes than we used to. We do, however, notice this in a big way if our relationship with our Glowworm ends. Sometimes our Glowworm jumps out, sometimes we toss them out, but the point is sometimes the Glowworm departs our bucket. What that also leaves is a huge hole in the place in our bucket where the worm (and before that, Barbies and Joes) used to be.

That sudden and very noticeable space in our bucket where there used to be a Glowworm, but there is no longer, hurts. That hurt comes from the fact that our need to belong is unmet and, if you'd read Baumeister and Leary, you'd know that that's a huge bummer. Enter the dreaded rebound. Basically, rebounds are people with whom we foster relationships that are characterized mostly by an illusion of intimacy. They fill the empty space in our buckets for a temporary time while we work to reestablish our relationships with foregone Barbies and Joes whom we tossed while the Glowworm was taking up so much space. Sometimes our rebound Glowworm is someone we've had on our proverbial "hook" because we know they want to be our Glowworms, and we take advantage of that willingness when we need a boost in our sense of belonging (humans are such scumbags sometimes).

Okay, so you know that: 1) you work to fill your bucket, 2) most relationships are basically replaceable, that 3) they are ideally replaceable with a Glowworm, and 4) when the Glowworm relationship ends, we notice a huge sense of loss and hurt that comes from an unmet need to belong which often sends us off looking for a rebound.

There is one last lesson I must teach you. That is: Beware the JabbaWorm.

Jabba the Hutt, of course, is a character from the Star Wars movies. I'm not so much interested in the story-relevant attributes of the Jabba character, rather, his physical appearance is what I'm really trying to evoke here. He's a big, fat, sloppy, sluggish, disgusting thing that takes up space and hordes resources. Sometimes, we form relationships that are a lot like that. We trick ourselves into thinking that they are a Glowworm - they look like Glowworms. They take up a lot of space, they result in our kicking extraneous Barbies and Joes from our buckets, and we expend energy and resources on them. The trouble with a JabbaWorm is that they don't give us anything. They are resource suckers. They drain us. They take up our time and energy and love and keep us from fitting relationships into our buckets that do feed us. So, beware of the JabbaWorm, and know when to kick such sloppy people out of your bucket to make room for relationships that are good uses of your time and energy.

So, that's the abridged version GlowWorm lecture. I hope that your current and past relationships make a little more sense in light of all of this information.

Class dismissed.

Daytime Tri-Cities Day 5: Keeping Your Relationship Fresh

Today's topic (and the last one for the week) was about keeping a relationship fresh and warding off boredom.

So let's suppose you've managed to meet a great person, you've dated a while, you've made a long-term commitment to each other, and the relationship has gone on . . . and on . . . and on. Inevitably, the boredom that comes with the mundane routine of everyday life sets in. You find yourself not only bored with your life, but also bored with your partner. And that, my friends, is bad news if you don't manage it well.

The thing about boredom and routine is that they are normal. I repeat: being periodically bored is a normal part of even the happiest most functional relationships. I talked in the Daytime segment today about where that boredom comes from and why it's natural. What I want to spend the blog post talking more about, though, is what to do about that boredom.

So, I present to you a few tips for reducing boredom and reintroducing excitement into our relationships:

• Date your partner. At the start of the relationship, we plan and do activities that we enjoy. We go to concerts and out to dinner. We make trips to the zoo and and go on moonlit walks. As we grow into a stable pattern in our relationship and life happens around that relationship, we tend to stop prioritizing these enjoyable activities. We feel like these small delights are luxuries that we aren't entitled to when we have the responsibility of everyday life to attend to. Let me tell you what - if your relationship is working and happy, you'll be happier while you do all the other things that life demands.
• Create a relationship bucket list. Many of us have either a mental or written list of the things that we want to do in the short time we have on this planet. I recommend making a relationship bucket list of activities that you would like to do with your partner. Decide together on things that you want and are committed to trying to do. These can be small things like going ice skating together, or bigger things like taking a luxurious vacation together that you plan and save up for. (By the way, vacations are especially good for relationships - especially your sex lives. Check out this article published by USA Today about the subject). Not only will you create a list of things that you are looking forward to doing together, but the activity of creating the list and adding to it when you come up with a new idea can also create fun in the relationship.

• Play with your partner. We often think of play as being something the children do. Happy relationships, though, are characterized by playfulness and lighthearted activity that might include having nicknames for your partner, gentle teasing, wrestling, or playing literal games like board games. In addition to breaking the routine and monotony of a relationship, Leslie Baxter, a relationship researcher, contends that play can serve other important relationship-improving functions. Having a playful atmosphere in our relationship allows us to express our feelings for each other, manage conflict in a non-confrontational way, and to develop a culture in our relationship that makes us feel special and unique as compared to other relationships (here's the citation for her article on play in Human Communication Research). 

Naturally, the best thing to do in your relationship when boredom sets in is to tell your partner that you think it's time to break your routine. Be sure to be clear that you don't blame your partner for your boredom, and invite your partner to think about ways that you can reintroduce fun and excitement in a way that you'll both enjoy. While relationships do require some work and tending to in order to thrive, they are supposed to be joyful and fulfilling. When you start to lose sight of the joy, go get it back. Have fun!

Daytime Tri-Cities Day 4: Commitment

Today's topic on Daytime was moving a relationship from dating to commitment.

I'm not typically one to point to the media for reasons that people have misinformed perceptions of how relationships are supposed to function. However, I can think of numerous examples in which men and women are stereotypically pitted against one another in a battle over commitment. Committed relationships are often (though not always) painted as the holy grail of relationships that women will chase relentlessly and twist themselves into insane people to find. Commitment for men, on the other hand, is portrayed as relational kryptonite and something that men avoid and twist themselves into emotionally aloof and romantically dysfunctional people to avoid.

My annoyance about these exaggerated portrayals of men and women in romantic relationships is not so much their inaccuracy. Rather, my malfunction with them is that they take something that is so very, very simple and make seem more difficult than juggling chainsaws.  

Here's the simple reality of all of this ridiculous commitment nonsense: Commitment is one person's plan to keep hanging out with another person. When two people are committed to each other, that means that they each plan to keep hanging out with each other.

When we think about it this way, suddenly commitment isn't something that we have to have an intense, anxiety-ridden conversation about. Rather, it's something that becomes very plain to see. If at the end of a date, your potential-partner says "I'd like to see you again. I'll give you a call in a few days to make plans". If after that, he calls in a few days to make plans and then you do those plans - well congratulations, you have commitment! 

Okay, yes, I'm oversimplifying this a bit - but just a bit. Commitment really is that simple. What is less simple is knowing what that commitment means. In other words, what we really want to know is exactly how long our potential-partner plans to continue planning to hang out with us. What we want to know even more than that, though, is whether our potential-partner's plan to keep hanging out with us also includes plans to escalate our relationship, become more emotionally intimate, choose to not date other people. Those are big questions. And we are reasonable to want the answers to them.

Before you decide to embark on a stressful, dramatic state-of-the-relationship conversation (as us academic folks like to call these talks), consider this: often without words, our partners will communicate both their level of commitment and their plans to increase the intimacy in the relationship. If they call, come by, regularly work to be a part of your every day experience, that's commitment. And from that kind of commitment comes talking and sharing and emotional closeness and intimacy.

On the flip side of obvious commitment, however, is an obvious lack of commitment. If your potential-partner is not behaving with you in a way that gives you confidence that they have the intention to see you in the future, or to move toward greater intimacy, that's also informative. In that case, you may want to have a conversation about it. My recommendation, however, is not to have a huge, dramatic talk full of demands and ultimatums. Rather, simply say "I would like to keep seeing you and hanging out with you. Do you have plans to continue seeing and hanging out with me?". If he says yes, and you have no reason not to trust him, take him at his word and carry on. If he says no or that he isn't sure, now you have a choice to make (which yesterday's blog post will help with). 

The point I'm trying to make is that figuring out whether someone is committed to us is a simple task that we frequently make needlessly complicated. When we take something simple and over-complicate it, we turn the relationship into bad, hard work and that can thwart our efforts to grow closeness with another person. Keep making plans. Keep keeping those plans. Let closeness grow from the time and talk that you share with another person. Enjoy. 

Happy Valentine's Day. :)

Daytime Tri-Cities Day 3: When to Let Go

Today's topic on Daytime was Knowing When to Let it Go.

Here's the video.

So we've met someone we're attracted to. We've been out a few times. But still, something about it doesn't feel totally right. We're having trouble figuring out whether our partner is as into us as we are into them. This results in the inevitable question: am I wise to hang on or should I just let it go?

The best advice I can give a person about when it's time to let a potential relationship go is when pursuing or participating in the relationship causes more hurt or anxiety than joy. Now, it's important for me to ask you to reframe your thinking. Many folks have been in long relationships, especially marriages up to this point in their lives. We tend to have the mentality that we should hold onto a relationship for as long as we can as hard as we can because that's what is necessary of a marriage. Let me be clear, holding on and doing the work is important BUT at the start of a relationship, if you feel like you're forcing a square peg into a round hole, cut and run.

Here's the thing. Relationships are supposed to make our lives better. We are supposed to be spending time and cultivating a relationship with someone who adds to our lives. I think that you will agree that while there is a certain excitement that comes from the chasing and hunting and playing hard to get that start most relationships, there comes a point that all of that excitement turns into anxiety and then eventually annoyance. Anxiety is not good. It is a relationship mind trick. Anxiety is easily mistaken for excitement when, in fact, it is not. It is bad and unnecessary. It doesn't make you better as a person and it doesn't add to your life. There is no point to holding on to anxiety. Cut and run.

There are books and movies that try to point out tips and tricks to help you know whether someone is into you. Does he fail to call? Does he frequently cancel his plans with you? Does he stand you up? Is he dating other people? Does he hit on your friends? Do you have to initiate all of the contact you have with him?

These are, in fact, all signs that a person isn't as invested in you and your relationship as you are. BUT, in my estimation, the best indicator of whether someone is worth holding onto is how pursuing that relationship and spending time with that person make you feel.

• If you feel valued, respected, and honored by your partner, hold onto it.
• If you happily look forward to the next time you will see or speak to your partner, hold onto it.
• If you feel that you can comfortably be yourself and that your partner will still find you attractive and enjoyable, hold onto it.

HOWEVER

• If you feel dismissed, disregarded, or unimportant to your partner, especially if you have communicated this to your partner, let it go. 
• If you compulsively check your phone or voicemail to see if your partner has contacted you because you don't know when or (worse yet) if they will contact you, let it go. 
• If you feel that you have to hide who you really are, or avoid communicating what you want, need or expect in the relationship because you fear that your partner will like you less, let it go.

Of course, there are other nuanced things to consider when you decide to stay or leave a relationship, especially as the relationship progresses, but if at the start of a relationship you don't feel confident that your partner is invested in you, that situation is highly unlikely to get better. Actually, if you stick around and pursue a disinterested partner even when the relationship doesn't make your life better, you set a precedent that communicates your consent to being dismissed, disregarded, disrespected, or made to feel unimportant by a partner. That's a bad foot to start any relationship on. 

So, as much as the idea of being alone is sometimes more awful than continuing to pursue a less than perfect relationship, always consider what such a choice says about your perception of your own value as a person. If you believe you are worth a joyful, happy relationship with someone who unabashedly and consistently communicates that you are valuable to them, don't bind yourself to anyone offering anything less.

Daytime Tri-Cities Day 2: The First Date

On Day 2 of Relationship 101 on Daytime, we talked about first date dos and don'ts. Here's the long story short: be the best version of yourself and leave your baggage at home.

Here's the video.

We put a lot of pressure on the first date. We tend to walk into a first date scenario with the belief that we are screening a person for their long-term date potential. While there's no really getting around that - we wouldn't go on a first date if we didn't think we might want to pursue a relationship with a person - the fact is that the first date isn't the right context for making that decision. Rather, a first date is just an opportunity to have a conversation with a person and figure out whether we want to see them again. That's it. Seriously.

First dates are a place for you to present a happy, well-groomed, friendly, socially-appropriate version of your naturally interesting self to a person who should be presenting a similar version of his/her naturally interesting self. Talk about what's cool about you, what you're proud of in your life, how you spend your time, the happy relationships you have cultivated with your family and friends, neat talents or hobbies or interests you have, the last book you read, your taste in music.

First dates are not the time to talk about your failed relationships, how you've been hurt, your anxieties about yourself, the anger or mistrust or resentment you have toward the opposite sex, the complexities in your life that you think will be challenges for another person to deal with in an ongoing relationship. Yes, there is a time and place and need to discuss all of that - eventually. A friendly conversation with someone you're only getting to know isn't it. We'll get to that as a relationship grows and we develop mutual trust, but we can't do that on a first date. If all you are on the first date is anxiety and complaint and baggage, a) you don't entice a person into wanting to get to know more about you and b) they have no reason to deal with your baggage; they are hauling around some of their own. 

Now, some of you may be asking: "Hey Doc Carrie, the truth is that I have baggage. I have been hurt. I have conflict with my ex-spouse on an ongoing basis. I feel like a person should know all of that going in. Aren't I lying if I don't share it?" I have one response to that:

Imagine if you met a person in a coffee shop, you swapped phone numbers, and you arranged a first date. When you arrive at the agreed upon location, you see your date in sweat pants, a very old tshirt, with hair that hasn't been carefully attended to. You would be displeased. We know that sprucing up - doing up the hair, wearing something flattering, and smelling nice - are all adornments that accentuate who we are, but strictly speaking, aren't entirely honest. Yet, we expect that a person is going to take enough care to work to present his or her best face on a first date. Being mindful of what not to talk about on a first date is no more deceptive than wearing eyeliner or cologne. 

So, as we gear up for a first date, spend some time thinking about what you like and are proud of about yourself. Bring all of that wonderfulness about who you are to the front of your mind and keep it there as you dress for, arrive at, and participate in your date. Let all of what's great about you show in the conversation and worry about the pile of metaphorical luggage waiting back for you at the house when you get home.

Valentine's Week on Daytime Tri-Cities - Day 1: Getting a Date

Every day from February 11 - 14, I will be doing a short spot on some element of dating and relationships on Daytime Tri-Cities. Each day's segment is about 4 minutes long which isn't really long enough to get into any meaty content, so I'm elaborating on each day's content a bit here.

On Monday, February 11, the topic is How Dating Has Changed . . . We Aren't in Our 20s Anymore.

Here's the video.

So the question is . . . has dating changed since most of us were in our 20s. The answer is, yes, quite a bit. 

When we were in our late teens and early 20s, we were likely in school or had friends who were going to school. We were out and about and regularly meeting people. I tell my college students, especially freshmen, that as much as college is for getting an education, it is also the greatest opportunity to meet new and different people that they will likely ever have. 

As adults in our 30s and 40s and 50s and beyond, we no longer have the repeated and abundant opportunity to meet new people at the start of every new semester. Rather, our lives are fairly routinized. We see the same people we always see at work and at church and where we volunteer or grocery shop. Then, we come home to the same people who are always at home. These might be family members or roommates or no one at all. All of that repetitive sameness of every day life creates a daunting challenge for folks dating past their middle 30s to even meet a potential date. So, we combat this by doing something new. Be somewhere different. Visit the vending machine on a different floor of your office building. Have lunch at a new restaurant. Sit in and drink your latte rather than taking it to go. If you don't expose yourself to new environments, you won't expose yourself to new people. If you've already ruled out everyone you know as a possible dating partner, you need to meet new people.

It isn't just that meeting people is different than it used to be. Technology has changed the way we date - truly. Personally, I find the business of building a relationship by text messaging to be annoying to say the least. Worse than that, though, there is an abundance of research that suggests that we develop inaccurate and idealized versions of people with whom we are building new relationships via text. We can edit texts and emails. We can think carefully about customizing our messages to our potential-partner's preferences. We become an edited, manicured, ideal, and seemingly perfect version of ourselves that our beautiful, imperfect selves could never be in reality. The discrepancy between who we seem to be via text and who we are in real life can undermine the growth of a relationship.

Technology has changed dating in another way as well: it makes our potential dating partners constantly accessible to us. Actually, it's not that we have constant access to a possible partner. Rather, we expect that we have constant access to a possible partner. We keep our mobile phones and other devices close by at all times. We get calls and texts and emails and chat messages all on the same gadget (and so do our potential dating partners), so by golly, we expect that if we call or text or email or chat that our communication will be responded to as quickly as possible. We have lost all sense of communicative boundary. Gone are the days of calling once and waiting by the one phone with the one answering machine for a call back or a message. Now, if we don't reply to an email, we send a text. If we don't get a reply to the text, we chat or send another email. Finally, after all of that, we might decide to call. The fact is, technology provides us an abundance of ways to make a nuisance of ourselves at the start of a relationship. Call. Leave voicemail. Step away from the smartphone. 

Although technology has posed new challenges for those of us who are dating after 30, it has also allowed us the opportunity to meet people we would never have run into in spite of our best attempts. Online dating allows us the unique chance to, in the span of 10 minutes, scan profiles, find one we like, send the fella an email, read his response, and immediately decide if we wish to reply or move on to someone new. On top of being able to evaluate a possible partner in less time than it takes toenail polish to dry, we have the added bonus of being able to do all of this all without the hassle of getting spruced up and ever leaving the comfort of our couches or pajama pants. The great thing about online dating is that we really do have the potential to meet folks we would never have run into without the help of a website. The trouble is . . . rather the troubles are numerous. We have to contend with a certain amount of misrepresentation. Often, people who create online dating profiles lie about personal characteristics like weight and height which increase their apparent physical attractiveness (which, as it happens, is especially true of people who are not particularly physically attractive). Although people tend to be honest about other things like income and relationship status, the fact is, online dating encourages self-misrepresentation that dating face to face allows us to avoid. Although it has its challenges, dating online isn't impossible and can be fun if you do it safely and smartly and never spend more than 2 days emailing before you get them on the phone, and never spend more than a week on the phone/online before you meet them in person. 

Clearly, this isn't an exhaustive account of how dating past 30something is different than dating at 20something, but it's a start. Finding someone to love later in life isn't impossible, it's just a new and different set of challenges we eventually learn to navigate just like we've learned to navigate so many challenges before this. The best part about dating past 30something is that it gives us a good reason to break our routine and find creative ways to spend our time. In the end, dating is about adding fullness and richness to a life we already love living. If we commit to living some of our lives out and about in our communities and we look happy and confident while doing it, we've already improved our chances of meeting someone we want to have dinner and a movie with . . . and that is something that hasn't changed a bit.

Questions, Class?

If you have a question, post a comment to this entry. I'll do my best to focus my lessons around the things you most want to know about.

Lesson 1: Communication Is What Relationships Are Made Of

Welcome students.

When I teach Interpersonal Communication in the classroom, the first lesson always includes a discussion on why Interpersonal Communication is important to study. Many people have the idea that because we have been in relationships for our entire lives, that a class on relationships can't tell us anything that we haven't already figured out through trial and error (or success).

The trouble is that people aren't necessarily focused on understanding how communication has played a role in their various relational successes (or failures). We tend to focus on personality characteristics, events, or circumstances in understanding our relationships rather than what messages we have exchanged with a partner. I find this funny because the fact is that a relationship only exists between any two people because communication happens between them. As soon as the exchange of messages between two people stops, those two people are no longer bound by a relationship. In short: relationships are made of communication.

When we consider the truth of the statement "relationships are made of communication", suddenly it makes sense to pay special attention to understanding whether the communication that happens between two people is of good quality. Consider this analogy: Let's suppose you're trying to make guacamole. You have at your disposal enough avocados to make a batch, but the avocados you have are from the bottom of the barrel and they are smashed and bruised and old. You think, "eh, guacamole is just smashed avocados anyway, so these should be fine". So, you proceed to make your guacamole. When you go to taste it, however, although it is clearly recognizable as guacamole, you find that it tastes . . . well, off. The quality of that guacamole is a direct function of the quality of the avocados you used to make it. Similarly, the quality of the communication that you exchange with another person directly affects the quality of the relationship. To state it simply: your relationship is only as good as the quality of the communication that comprises it.

Over the course of the lessons that I present here, I'm going to try to draw your attention to the messages you exchange with the important people in your life and call you to evaluate whether you're trying to make good guacamole with bad avocados.

Class dismissed.

Welcome to Relationship School

Relationships are profoundly influential in the lives of most human beings. We spend tremendous amounts of time wanting relationships, thinking about our relationships, cultivating the relationships we already have, trying to figure out how to initiate relationships with people we don't yet have relationships with, well . . . you get the idea.

Interestingly, though, for as much time and energy as the average person spends in the pursuit of satisfying relationships, very few people have ever been given any kind of education about how to communicate with other people in a way that promotes positive relationships. This isn't because we don't know about how communication affects relationships. In fact, the opposite is true. There are many, many scholars who have published many, many, many articles about this very thing. The trouble is, only a fraction of that research ever makes it to the masses - ordinary people who could benefit from what scholars have uncovered in their research.

That's where I come in. 

As an Assistant Professor of Communication at East Tennessee State University, my objective is to take my knowledge and understanding of academic findings and bring that information to my students in a way that is understandable and meaningful to them in order to help them build better, happier, more satisfying relationships. Now, I've started this blog to allow me to give short lessons on how communication affects relationships and allow readers to talk to me about their own relationships. It is my hope that I can provide tidbits of insight to help readers understand what effects their communication is having on their ability to form, maintain, and enjoy their relationships. 

Visit when you can. Learn what you can. Comment when you have thoughts and questions. 

Class is in session.