Intimate Re1atioDShips iD Movies

"The Story of Us"

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Interpersonal Communication

Barbara CaIltisallO

December 3, 2009

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"Isn't this the moment when one of us is supposed to say, look, this is

ridiculous, we love each other, all couples go through this, let's give it another

by?" he asks.

She gets out of the car without saying a word...

In "The Story of Us" after 15 years of marriage, Ben (Bruce Willis) is still the

free-spirited person he has always been, while Katie (Michele Pfeiffer) is left to

handle life's little problems. When their two children go to summer camp they

face their most important decision - do they end their story or begin a new

chapter? Their first step is to separate while their children are away, which is

marked by the dialogue described above.

This paper will look at their relationship by tracing the different developmental

phases, the types of love each person uses, and how they deal with the Ten

Commandments of Clean Communication. It will also highlight a few aspects

from the textbook chapters that deal with the Dynamics of Interpersonal

Communication and Communication Climate that I felt related to the story the

most.

"People change; people don't change"

Ben and Katie met while he was working as a writer and she was hired as a

temp. As part of the attraction theory aut the matching hypothesis, I

believe that they seek out each other for being in a similar attractiveness range

(we're talking about Michelle Pfeiffer and Bruce Willis herel). I do not think that

they changed a great deal through the years - she starts out as a perfectionist

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and he is more of a free spirit, but it seems that those things that attracted

them to each other are now the same things that are pushing them apart. Ben

is very playful and fun, but his behavior can also be seen as irresponsible.

Katie likes things orderly and, in a way, perfect. She wants to fmd work as a

crossword puzzle writer; she feels that crossword puzzles give her a sense of

completion and perfection "on half a page».

Harold and the Purple Crayon

There was quite a lot of reference to and evidence of compllmentarity. They

are very different from each other (if not completely opposite), and they

defmitely do not possess the characteristics that the other one has. Katie

describes an episode in college when she had to write a report on her favorite

book, "Harold and the Purple Crayon». She felt that Harold was everything she

was not because he kept painting the world any way he wanted. I feel that she

was attracted to Ben since he was like Harold, the only problem was that after

some time she felt she could not get him to put the crayon down...

The paper clips

One of the signs of escalation is a funny interaction: their invitational

communication resembles that of teenagers (at least it reminded me of my

teenage years..•), when he throws paper clips at her while she is typing. She

does not respond at all while he keeps increasing the number of clips he throws

at her. When he fmally throws a handful of paper clips, she gets up and puts

on a hat with a big flashing light on top and smiles. He smiles back. The

connection between them is obvious.

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Except for this interaction, I did not see much more evidence of escalation. I

did not see clearly marked scenes showing "Invitational, Explorational,

Intensifying or Revising." However, it was obvious that they looked at the long­

term viability of the relationship during the escalation period and determined

that they would be together; they initially decided to make a commitment and

get married.

"We were just talking:

Part of me feels that Davi.atioD and deterioratioD went hand in hand because

of how it was presented in the movie. Through snapshots I feel that they have

obviously developed routines, especially since they have two children and both

seem to have great interactions with them. An important one that is seen the

most is "high and loW» during dinnertime and throughout the movie, even when

the children are not around. They talk to each other about what were their

high moments and their low moments during the day.

In their first dinner together while the children are gone, he describes his "high"

as that particular moment when he is with her. She makes it funny and light,

by describing her high as the new Cuisinart she bought. This strikes me as a

shift in her (apart from other efforts she has made, from dressing up and

making dinner). She seems to be going back to the attractioD ph_ and she

is using everything she has. Also, and without trying to over-analyze the

interaction, I felt that there was evidence of what I am calling "reverse

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placemaking": while he moved out she bought kitchen appliances for her

kitchen, without him.

I believe that things do clearly spiral down when Katie hears Ben talking to a

co-worker about their relationship problems and feels that he has been

unfaithful. They have a terrible fight because, more than anything, he has

broken a rule of their relational culture,

"Once you establish anything truly intimate with another person, even talking,

it has to affect the person you're supposed to be the most intimate with," (Katie)

"The wear and tear of the job'

"The diapers, the tantrums, the homework, your mother, his mother, [,',] and

placing the toilet paper roll over the empty cardboard one...does he NOT see

itl?"(Rachel: Rita Wilson)

Their dyadic breakdoWDa are very well represented throughout the whole

movie, especially during a series of scenes when they have their children, his

father passes away, even "funny» references to the children's pets dying. They

also show a rich history and love story.

"72 hours. 4 weeks. 5 years, depending on when you start counting..."

Their lntrapaychic phue seems to have been fairly long but there's no

description of the actual length. They have been seeing several counselors

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"The thought of you guys not being together...You guys were our Fred and Ethel

Mertz'"

During the social phue, they go out with friends and talk about relationships

in general terms. Their friends have very funny views of marriage and

relationships in general. What was interesting to me was that out of the 3

couples, Ben and Katie were the ones that had probably developed the best

relational culture, which should have led them to a successful marriage. Their

friends' relational cultures were quite dysfunctional. They fmally tell their best

friends, Stan and Rachel (Rob Reiner and Rita Wilson) that they are separated

and getting a divorce; Katie also tells the children's dentist, whom she's taking

Thai cooking classes with. A certain connection starts to develop between the

two of them. At different times in the movie, both Ben and Katie think that they

would be the ones to "make it", but that does not seem to be the case.

They fmally decide that once the children come back, they will tell them that

they are getting a divorce. They meet to discuss how they will tell them, and

decide that they will not go to Chow Fun's, the family's favorite Chinese

restaurant, because even though they love the food, the place is not conducive

to talking about something like that. During this interaction, I thought that she

might have some doubts about their upcoming divorce. Ben mentions the fact

that she is seeing someone else (the dentist) and Katie responds that she is not,

that they are just talking - the same response he gave her when he questioned

his relationship with his co-worker. The way their eyes connect at that moment

says it all.

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Finally, when they are driving to pick up the children I feel that there seems to

be a glimpse of arave dre_DI, mostly on her side, on what the relationship

meant, why it failed... They are both very upset, but she catches glimpses of

their whole story as a couple and as a family, their highs and lows, and decides

that there is too much history to let it all go. They go to Chow Fun's for

dinner...

Types of love

I believe that they are both Eros. They start out as having a very romantic and

sexual relationship. He describes their relationship as feeling an instant

connection, "'simpatico - she got me'" he describes to one of his counselors.

Ben also believes in the ideal, the soul-mate, and looks up to his grandmother

and her relationship with his grandfather - she stayed with him through thick

and thin. When he starts writing about the love story of his grandparents, he

realizes that it was all a lie. "'Ive been idealizing my grandparents marriage'" he

tells Stan. "'Fear's what kept them together - fear of loneliness, fear of failure"'.

He fma1ly tells Katie that he has seen the relationship through her eyes and

apologizes.

I believe she is an Eros too - however, she is very much "'a mom'" and seems to

have some Agape tendencies. This also leads to communication problems and

some insight into their different love languages, since she criticizes him of

always having to have his needs met and not caring about other people's needs.

In one of their fights Ben says: "'I'm not a third childl I'm talking about a

connection, something that says that we're on the same side...'"

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Communication

"I think the loudest silences are the ones filled with everything that·s been said.

said wrong. said 300 times. until fighting becomes the condition rather than the

exception and it turns into the language of the relationship.· (Katie)

It was interesting for me to see that even though they had had so much

therapy. Ben and Katie still did a horrible job at communicating and breaking

the Ten Commandments of Clean communication.

They use judgmental words and global labels:

"You·re so God Damn critical''''

They constantly use "you· messages:

"You·re not really hearing me!; you never listen!"

And bring up old history:

"You should be disciplining your children instead of talking to your girlfriend'·

They both have copitlve distortioDS and there is evidence of tUDDel 'risioD

from her part. She only focuses on the bad things. the ones she is upset about

and leaves out the good ones. He is better at trying to show her that there are

also many good parts to their history.

I think that he·s responsible for assumed intent:

"You want to know why I don·t talk to you. because you treat me like rm some

pain in the ass that gets in the way of what otherwise would be a perfectly

normal. organized life!"

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She also magnifies:

"I have to take care of everything around herel"

And contaminates her message by disguising it with a question:

"Why should you be responsible for anything?"

Ben uses cognitive distortions through control fallacies, mixed with irony and

"you" messages:

"So I guess it's all my fault that you hang on to every little things; it's all my

fault that you can't let go of anythingl"

Katie uses calibrated communication:

"In Europe we would have made love first" ...said Ben

"What's that supposed to mean, that I'm not spontaneousl?", asks Katie.

A dance you perfect over time

Why do we form relationships with some people and not with others? Once we

form them, how do we maintain them? Some researchers have suggested that

in addition to coming together and coming apart, any model of relational

communication ought to contain a third area, relational maintenance ­

communication aimed at keeping relationships operating smoothly and

satisfactorily. Ben and Katie's relational maintenance seemed to be through

counselors, but they could not keep it up during their heated fights.

"There are some hurts that you never completely get over"

There are different sources of problems: outside forces, differences and

disagreements and relational transgressions, with several kinds under these

transgressions. The commonsense notion is that a first step to repairing the

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transgression is to talk about the violation, by sending clear and assertive "I

messages". Specifically, and in order for transgressions to be repaired, they

need an acknowledgement, a sincere apology and some type of compensation.

It might have been the way the movie was presented, but in the several heated

interactions between Katie and Ben I did not see apologies of any kind. The

only "I'm sorry" uttered in the whole movie was when Ben tells Katie that he has

seen the relationship through her eyes. When writing the song for the movie,

Eric Clapton noticed this same thing and decided to write a song full of

apologies. ~/;#"~~ ~ ~.A' I

When it comes to communication climate, 1 feel that Katie and Ben did not

seem to know how to create a positive and non-defensive climate. They were

evaluative instead of descriptive and controlling rather than problem-solving.

Most negative climates have a high level of defensiveness: when individuals

perceive that their presenting self is being attacked by face threatening acts.

This is exactly how Ben and Katie interacted.

In conclusion, all marriages go through peaks and valleys and it is important to

know that relationships take work. Dyadic breakdowns will happen, but

through communication we can bring our relationships back to navigation

rather than allowing them to get to the intrapsychic phase. Relationships form

part of a couple's histozy and "histories dontt; happen overnight".