Understanding relationships Book

The book talks about dialectics, the push and pull of autonomy and connection. Their analytical approach to haptics, nonverbal cues, high context cultures/low context cultures, the dialectics of affection and instrumentality. Lynn H. Turner teaches you how to analyze your communication faults such as selective listening, talkaholic syndrome, using "you" statements over "I" statements, owning. It gives a lot of gold when it comes to conflict resolution. It goes through the dyadic effect, the tendency to return a self-disclosure of with one that matches in level of intimacy. The social penetration model (the people are onions theory) is also discussed. It offers a lot of quizzes to assess yourself. Good journey. Chapter 11 on technology was heavily outdated and completely off in the terms used when speaking about the technology of my generation when it was published. I was 23 at the time of publishing. The book also gets repetitive and derivative sometimes but I just skipped those parts. They could of gone into conflict resolution and listening more.

Ultimately, read this book if you want to work on your listening, conflict resolution skills and assessing faults in your communication skills with coworkers, friends and family. Overall good read. I highlighted the important parts so I can keep this book to return to it when I need a refresher course on the things I need to work on.