Blog 2: Cohesion

 In today’s blog, I will be discussing the results and impacts of my personal Couple and Family Map.  A family map is a tool that is used to help give a visual representation about the relationships between families and couples through scoring the degree of 3 main characteristics Cohesion, Flexibility, and Communication. When completing the scoring for my family map, for cohesion, I reached a score of 3 and level of connected, for flexibility was given a score of 4 and level of structured, finally for communication, a score of 2 and level of poor. I also decided to do a couple map as contrast to see if there was more cohesion in my personal relationship with someone not of blood relation. For cohesion, the score given is 6 with the level of cohesive, flexibility scored 5 with the level of flexible, and communication scored at 4 with the level of 4. Then putting those levels in the actual diagram for my family map it came out that we are structurally connected and for my couple map it came out that we are flexibly cohesive.

Both maps did fall into the category of balanced despite the different scores. Which I find accurate for my experience growing up and now in a long-term relationship. I chose to focus on the time I was in high school, specifically starting in 9^th grade, as that was before my parents had divorced and our family was then split between living in two different households. When rating characteristics like dependence/independence, I scored 1: highly independent which falls under the unbalanced-disengaged category. Because my parents were consistently having arguments, both parents were working full-time jobs, and so I found that I had to take on more responsibility and become more independent. For example, after school, I would help pick up my younger brother from school, help watch him until my mom comes home from work, I would help start dinner, make sure my brother and I had finished our homework. I would say my mom was always independent but in a relationship with someone else you at times must depend on them. Since my parents were withdrawn from each other I found that they became more independent in their roles and only focused on themselves and us. Whereas in my relationship with my partner, I rated us 5 with more dependence than independence in that I find I am much more dependent on him, but I still maintain my independence to function on my own. This scored in the cohesive category which fits more as it is more balanced relationship, and I can even see the difference in our interactions. I tend to refrain more, and our closeness is very low and I associate that with the dynamic we grew up from high school until I became an adult. In my personal relationship though, I make an active effort to avoid separation and focus on communication and that’s the reason our relationship feels balanced. A family map is a great way to identify the cohesiveness of our families. To see the good, the bad, and the dynamics that we can actively work on to improve to have better relationships with each other to pass onto offspring or partners.