Transparency in Relationships

Ever wonder how a relationship seems to just fade away? Old friends from school become whole different individuals when you meet up with them 10 years later. Relatives wonder at how family members have changed/ evolved as they age. Even some married couples who live together discover they don't know each other anymore after years of estranged relations.

Communication and self-disclosure, more than feelings and commitment, are the most significant parts of any relationship whether platonic or intimate. When we share personal experiences and thoughts with other people, a bond is created and as we continue to do so, this same bond is made stronger. However the opposite also takes place when we stop communicating. The awkward silences and doubts leave much room for misunderstanding and eventually resentment.

Sydney Jourard, a humanistic psychologist, has written extensively about self-disclosure. Self-disclosure to him is both a symptom of a healthy personality and a means of achieving personal adjustment. One achieves personality health by the unity of the real self and identified self and acts as a real self that he/she is in a position to grow. He uncovered how and why people use self-disclosure. Self-disclosure is then linked to personal growth, attraction, trust, liking, and personal adjustment. It also differs considerably according to gender differences.

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• Self-Disclosure as a function of personal growth - One's self grows from the consequence of being. People's selves stop growing when they repress them. The ultimate means of becoming well adjusted, according to Jourard, is to make ourselves "transparent," to allow others to see all of us, in other words, to hide nothing. Transparent people have nothing to be anxious about; they need not spend time and effort avoiding disclosure. More important, only through self-disclosure can we truly come to know ourselves. If we are not open and transparent to others, we are not open and transparent to ourselves. If we are not aware of all parts of ourselves, we cannot grow and become fully self-actualized.
• Method of self-disclosure - The disclosure reciprocity is the dyadic effect- when one person discloses personal information in a conversation, the other is likely to reciprocate. When people disclose information about themselves to us, we are attracted to them and a feeling of trust develops. We respond by disclosing personal information to that person.
• Self-disclosure as a function of attraction and trust - According to Jourard, this is the result of fondness and trust that develop when someone relates something personal to us. When people show that they like and trust us enough to share personal information, we begin to like and trust them in return. An expression of our new feeling, we are likely to disclose something about ourselves, thus strengthening the positive feelings.
• Self-disclosure as an interacting norm - Another explanation for this is that people disclose at a level of intimacy they feel is appropriate to the situation. We match our partner's intimacy level because that person has provided us with information about what the norm is for the particular situation. However this is set at a particular limitation as too much intimacy early in a relationship may scare off a potential friend.
• Gender differences - There is a non-expressive role into which our society pushes males. American women are relatively free to express themselves. According to Jourard, "the male role requires man to appear tough, objective, striving, achieving, unsentimental, and emotionally unexpressive. But seeming is not being. If a man is tender (behind persona), if he weeps, if he shows weakness, he will probably regard himself as inferior to other men. The male role and the man's self-structure will not allow him to acknowledge or to disclose the entire breadth and depth of his inner experience to himself or to others. Man seems rather obliged, to hide much of his real self - the ongoing flow of his spontaneous inner experience - from himself and from others." Males generally believe that for them to be as expressive and disclosing as females is inappropriate. Males may fear that they will be ridiculed or rejected if they begin to disclose at higher levels to acquaintances and friends.
• Self-disclosure and personal adjustment - To disclose ourselves openly to others is part of the personal growth or self-actualization process. To Jourard, we can never know ourselves without becoming "transparent" within an interpersonal relationship. As long as we hide parts of ourselves from others, we will remain hidden from us as well. Personal growth can only take place when we act in a genuine, totally open manner. Jourard has gone so far as to claim that mental illness is the result of lack of disclosure. He and Rogers have insisted on the therapeutic value of self-disclosure. Part of what the therapist provides is the opportunity to be genuine and open in an interpersonal relationship. Self-disclosure in a marital relationship was a strong predictor of marital satisfaction, suggesting its ability to develop and maintain long-term romantic relationship.

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