Relationships come in many different forms. Best friends, lovers, friends, family and associates are all forms of different relationships. One of my most influential and long-lasting relationships has been with my friend/best friend Melanie. We meet as sophomores in high school when we both took the same English/Literature class. First impressions were not kind but eventually we talked and learned that our interest and personalities were well suited to one another. We have gone through many ups and downs and various levels of intimacy within the fifteen years of our relationship. Our relationship started as a casual friendship. We would see and associate with each other during our shared class but it evolved and became more intimate the longer we knew each other. We started seeing each other during our free time at school and then outside of school. I would spend time at her house after school and eventually started staying with her on the weekends as well. When High school was over we started spending even more time together. As our lives progressed we saw each other through breakups and I saw her through the failure of her engagement and the birth of her son. Our friendship was not perfect and after her engagement failed and she started dating there was a gradual distance that crept into the relationship. .
The distance that had been created grew over time and now we are more or less on life support. Facebook and major life crisis are the things that keep us in contact. While we are still friends we actively do not see much of each other. I have known Melanie fifteen years and our relationship has gone through many different stages in that time. At this time it pains me to state that our relationship is in the de-escalation stage. More specifically we are in the individualization stage of de-escalation. According to Beebe, Beebe, and Redmond (2014) the individualization stage of de-escalation is when partners tend to define their lives more as individuals and less in terms of their relationship.