sutton028

I was recently invited to review a book, How to Gracefully Exit a Relationship by Frank Love, a popular/trade book, rather than a textbook. I’m happy to do so because it echoes much of my own feelings about what we call relationship dissolution and that is that it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lots of relationships end because they should end, because they’re no longer productive or rewarding. Further, there are things you can do to dissolve a relationship effectively/gracefully. This is a short book and can easily be read in one sitting but it covers a wide range of topics such as understanding how you would prefer to be told “it’s over,” negotiating your relationship, unrealistic expectations, the problems with manipulation, expressing your desire to exit the relationship, dealing with an unreasonable partner, dealing with children, and dealing with yourself.

  Conversation is something we engage in everyday, often without thinking about the process itself. Yet, there are conversations that may create difficulty, apprehension, and an uncertainty about how to proceed. Here are a few such conversational situations: small talk, making introductions, giving and receiving compliments, giving and receiving advice, making excuses, and offering apologies. What follows is a brief discussion of each of these conversational situations, some suggestions for making them go more smoothly and effectively, and brief exercises to practice the skills. As such it can easily be used as a unit in a course in Interpersonal Communication [or Introduction to Communication] and in fact much of this comes from my Interpersonal Messages, Interpersonal Communication Book, and 50 Communication Strategies books.   Small Talk Small talk is pervasive; all of us engage in small talk. Sometimes, we use small talk as a preface to big talk. For example, before a...

In this continuing effort to identify and explain (briefly and practically) the skills/strategies of interpersonal communication, here is a brief discussion of empathy. </span><span style='color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; display: none; mso-hide: all; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-no-proof: no;'>     Empathy is feeling what another person feels from that person’s point of view without losing your own identity. Empathy enables you to understand emotionally what another person is experiencing. (To sympathize, in contrast, is to feel for the person—to feel sorry or happy for the person, for example.) Women, research shows, are perceived as more empathic and engage in more empathic communication than do men. So following these suggestions may come more easily to women. </span><span class="BX3HD"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style='font-family: ...