Journey to Reclaiming Self: Embracing the Impact of Relationships on Identity
Written by Camille Morris
I have never been a fan of chocolate ice cream. While there are many amazing methods for consuming chocolate - cake, brownies, bars, but ice cream? Absolutely not! It tasted every bit of wrong and always left me questioning how something so good could be ruined in so many ways. All of which I told Kyra when we sat across each other at a dessert shop for the first time. I'd decided on ube toast while she had a heaping scoop of double chocolate chip ice cream with matcha dust on top. She laughed when I explained my less-than-ideal reaction to her dessert of choice.
I met Kyra in a dark time of my life when the pressures of school, combined with a growing sense of isolation left me in perpetual survival mode. I was nowhere near happy. Kyra and I sat next to each other in a graduate-level literature class which meant we spent about one-and-a-half hours twice a week waxing poetically about how much of our modern literature is just an ode to a history we could have never really known, never really experienced. Our only connection to those unreachable lives being the stories we tell. Through these conversations I got to learn more about her, and we built a sense of camaraderie, even then I was still shocked when she invited me to hang out.
Kyra and I met up at a dessert shop which is how the conversation first came up; I hated chocolate ice cream and she - in the age-old tale of irony - absolutely loves it. Eventually she convinced me to try her fave treat and I did, grudgingly at first then out of habit. I learned how to accept chocolate ice cream because Kyra meant more than my personal preferences. Until it became natural - just like having her by my side. We often ate chocolate ice cream when we were together because that was part of being us. She gave me energy, made me have faith in my future again, reminded me of all the small beauties in life; and in exchange I put up with the worst form of chocolate - a fair trade.
I don't talk to Kyra anymore. We grew apart, becoming two very different people as we settled on our veering paths. I never saw a reality where Kyra is in my life. Then again, up until my early twenties I didn’t see a reality where I could tolerate chocolate ice cream. Kyra was a poignant lesson in how meaningful relationships change us. Living is a constant reminder that there are no constants. We are constantly evolving and there is no bigger influence to this evolution than the people who enter (and leave) our lives.
Building relationships, like so many other things in our lives, has a set of scripts and processes that have been exhaustively theorized as we work to understand such an ingrained practice of humanity - building relationships. And I know what you're thinking: it's obvious, why would we need years and years of research on something we've been doing since the dawn of man? There's a difference between doing and knowing, a level of understanding that is accessed when we can put language to the actions we take and create a shared understanding of how we do what we do.
So, how do we establish relationships? In 1978, Mark Knapp proposed a staircase model for the way in which relationships are able to develop. It has five stages:
Stage 1: Initiating:
This is first contact, the initial hug or handshake (or DM, let's be real) that expresses an acknowledgment of the other person.
Stage 2: Experimenting:
This is the stage where people are getting to know each other, treading shallow water and occasionally dipping their heads beyond the surface to understand each other more to determine if it's worth it.
Stage 3: Intensifying:
Ok, so the initial tests have been passed. This stage is when more information is shared as people delve more deeply into learning about each other. If experimenting is treading the lake, then intensifying is scuba diving into the ocean. It's where we go from knowing about each other to knowing each other.
Stage 4: Integrating:
This stage is when things fully come together. People embrace the intimacy of being in a close relationship as they begin to form a shared identity.
Stage 5: Bonding:
It's official! And the whole world knows. In this stage public gestures and announcements solidify the intentions for a long-term relationship. For romantic or professional relationships this could also signify when a formal legal/written contract is made such as a marriage license.
While Knapp initially intended these stages to center on romantic relationships, you can recognize these stages in many of the relationships you make: the first time you decide to tell your coworker how you really feel about your boss's fourth team meeting in as many days, or when you make that dedicated post to your best friend on Insta. Each of these bonded relationships creates an identity - a 'we' - that is formed in the dynamic between two people. This shared identity can be understood in multiple ways including my favorite: Communication Theory of Identity developed by Michael Hecht. In this theory there are four loci of identity: personal, enacted, relational, and communal. The personal self is the core of a person, the enacted self is the way a person performs in the world, the relational self is who you become in relationship to another person, and the communal self is the way the larger collectives you belong to define you.
For the purposes of this piece, I want to focus on the relational identity. Which entails how a person internalizes others' interpretations of them, how someone sees themselves through their relationships, how different identities relate to each other, and the relationship itself becoming an identity. For example, a woman who has a newborn may spend a lot of time worrying about how others interpret her parenting skills, understanding who she is now that her life is wrapped around keeping this young life alive, and learning how to balance being a mother with being a program director for a non-profit. So much folded into the relationship between a mom and her newborn.
Unfortunately, bonded relationships do not always last forever. We are evolving creatures, always in flux. Relationships cannot stay constant and when people do not evolve together, they dissolve. Luckily, Knapp has stages that explain this as well:
Stage 1: Differentiating:
This is where the 'we' begins to deteriorate. Differences between each individual become clearer and there is a purposeful "reboundary-ing".
Stage 2: Circumscribing:
Per Wrench, Punyanunt-Carter & Thweatt this is when "communication will lessen in quality and quantity" as people realize they want to share less in the relationship which is "often marked by avoidance of contentious issues and reduction of shared space".
Stage 3: Stagnation:
As the name implies, this is when a relationship hits torpor as neither person puts effort into growing it. It is when people share space "with each other physically but not emotionally".
Stage 4: Avoidance:
This stage is when people in the relationship no longer want to share space with each other.
Stage 5: Terminating:
And it's over. The relationship is a wrap as one or both parties choose to end the partnership.
Knapp manages to make something as messy and complicated as losing an important relationship in one's life seem practical - five simple steps to watching it all fall apart. Which is why I lean on Communication Theory of Identity to capture the impact, because who we are to each other and what we create together is an integral frame of our identity. And when we experience a loss of our identity it can lead to "increased levels of generalized anxiety, low self-esteem, depression, a loss of self-confidence, social anxiety, isolation, chronic loneliness, all of which threaten our ability to connect with other people”. Which is to say the long-term consequences of identity loss can be severe.
● Grief is unavoidable. Losing a piece of oneself, especially when it is rooted in someone else, comes with a lot of grief. While I want to provide actionable steps for each of these little life lessons, grief doesn’t come with as easy of an answer. Oppressive, volatile, and unavoidable - grief is something that will be experienced one way or another. My best advice for this is to let it happen; fighting a losing battle against grief will only mean experiencing it pervasively - it will eat at your insides, manipulate your emotions, and taint seemingly unrelated experiences. So, feel it. Sit with the anger, bask in the acceptance, wade but don’t drown in the depression. Allow these feelings to happen because they will anyway.
● We are complex. If there’s one lesson to take from CTI, it is that people are multifaceted. We are not one thing, one idea, one other person. The beauty in losing one aspect of an identity is the space it creates to explore and embrace so many other parts of oneself. So, explore them: journal, meditate, try something new. Sit with yourself in silence to hear what you desire outside of the noise of life. And if you don’t know where to start, here are some questions I’d suggest:
○ Who do you want to be? List three aspects of your ideal self and one step you can take toward each of them.
○ What activities make you find flow, losing track of time and body?
○ In the past year, what are the highlighted accomplishments and experiences you have had that really align with your purpose?
○ Imagine your ideal day: What are you doing? What feelings arise?
● Find Community. In the many times I have read others' insights into healing, this recommendation has always frustrated me. I was lonely. The whole reason I was seeking out advice from the experts was because I didn't feel I could rely on anyone in my life. The search for community meant putting myself in an unfortunately vulnerable situation by laying bare all the aspects of my life that made me feel the most insecure. But with time I've learned the truth of this statement and just how much my frustration was framed by fear. Seeking community is more than replacing all that the person you lost had provided, it’s more than networking and the endless droll of small talk. Finding community is simply sharing space. Doing what aligns with you with others, from going to a group fitness class to volunteering at the local shelter. It means being open to others and recognizing the interconnectedness of people.
● When all else fails: survive. We are first and foremost entities of flesh and blood with basic needs such as food, water, and shelter. We exist within bodies, and we owe it to them, as our vehicle for experiencing the world, to keep them functioning. Eat, sleep, drink water, shower when you can manage. Take it one day, one hour, one minute at a time and listen to your body’s requests. Treat your body as a third party to what you are experiencing and care for it as such. This is far from an exhaustive list of tactics for recovering your identity after it has been severed but it’s some starting steps to discovery, to redefinition, to relearning your relationship to chocolate ice cream.
References
Alger, A.-M. (2014, June 13). “I don’t know who I am anymore”: Losing my identity. Counselling Directory. https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/memberarticles/i-dont-know-who-i-am-anymore-losing-myidentity#:~:text=Such%20loss%20of%20identity%20can,to%20connect%20with%20other%20people
Jung, E., Hecht, M. L. (2004). Elaborating the Communication Theory of Identity: Identity Gaps and Communication Outcomes. Communication Quarterly, 52(3), 265-283.
Saha, S. (2023, December 11). Navigating love and connection: A deep dive into Knapp’s relationship model. SimpliMBA. https://www.simplimba.com/a-deep-dive-into-knapps-relationship-model/#Real-Life_Examples3
Wrench, J. S., Punyanunt-Carter, N. M., & Thweatt, K. S. (2022, May 18). 8.3: Stages of relationships. Social Sci LibreTexts. https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Communication/Interpersonal_Communication/Interpersonal_ Communication_-_A_Mindful_Approach_to_Relationships_(Wrench_et_al.)/08%3A_Building_and_Maintaining_Relation ships/8.03%3A_Stages_of_Relationships
