In one’s lifetime, he or she would meet countless number of people and make different friends at different stages of life. As being a close person of somebody, have you ever imaged how you two would be like in the future and considered the potential impact on your mutual relationship by the outside world, for example, the impact of distance, after all there is often a high probability that two people, no matter buddies or couples, have no choice but to be apart for an unknown period of time.
Each individual owns a unique value system, which is defined as “a hierarchy based on a ranking of an individual’s values in terms of their intensity”. More importantly, according to Rokeach value survey, everyone’s terminal values, which are “goals that individuals would like to achieve during their lifetime” differ due to genetic differentiated personality traits as well as the influence by what they see and experience. When two people are separated by distance, it results in a difference in the view they see, the people they see, and also the incidents they come across, which could further lead to conflicts and misunderstandings easily and negatively affect a relationship.
Our generation is known as millennials in the workplace, who grew up during prosperous times and have life goals more oriented toward becoming rich and famous, which might be an original cause to have the wish of studying abroad or seeking job in huge and international cities other than hometown, therefore long distance relationship occurs more in this generation than in the past. On the other side, millennials take technology as granted and tend to be electronically networked, which makes maintaining a relationship through communication online possible.
It is also worth noticed two theories of motivation. The third hierarchy of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, which refers to social, is required to be satisfied after physiological and safety needs being satisfied, whereas a long distance can be a threat to completely meet each other’s needs of belongingness, acceptance and friendship. In McClelland’s theory of needs, the accomplishment of need for power: “the need to make others behave in a way that they would not have behaved otherwise” can be influenced by geographic factors due to lack of direct communication and understandings.
Relating to Shunan Jiang’s blog, which talks about that lack of communication and differences in values make long-distance relationship hard, it is interesting to read because it reveals a societal difficulty from OB’s perspective. It reminds me that, to maintain such a relationship, high emotional intelligence is necessary because of how important the value of emotional stability is.
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reference:
- Langton, Nancy, Stephen P. Robbins, Tim Judge, and Katherine Breward. Organizational behaviour: concepts, controversies, applications. Toronto: Pearson, 2016. Web. 8 Mar. 2017.
- “Distance Relationships.” Pinterest. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Mar. 2017. <https://www.pinterest.com/explore/distance-relationships/>
embedded classmate’s blog: