The Young Adult Has a Lot of Pressure Put On Them Through the Route of Development

Society has put individuals in a position where people believe that building relationships is a factor in their developmental growth. The psychological stage six, intimacy vs isolation by Erik Erikson talks about the period of young adulthood when people are exploring personal relationships. Individuals between ages 19 to 40 undergo a stage called Intimacy vs. Isolation Stage. Men and women under this age range explore relationships with someone significant to them. This is when people start to share themselves intimately more with others. Some are just searching for someone to spend and share their successes.

However, some avoid intimacy or engaging in relationships and retreat in isolation. Erikson believed it was important that people develop pure relationships with other people. Those who are successful at this will develop relationships that are close and secure. Individuals who enter these emotionally intimate relationships as they enter adulthood play an important part in the intimacy versus isolation stage. These relationships are often romantic, but Erikson believed that friendships that have meaning were important. Erikson described intimate relationships by closeness, honesty, and love. People who can successfully resolve a conflict referring to the intimacy versus isolation stage are able to develop meaningful relationships with others. They have close, lasting romantic relationships, but they also forge strong relationships with family and friends.

A person normally undergoes adversities in life, called developmental conflicts. If these conflicts are not resolved, a person will continue to struggle. If one resolves such matters, he or she can achieve psychological skills that are embedded for the rest of their life. Success leads to strong relationships, while failure results in isolation. Adults who struggle with this stage experience poor romantic relationships. They might never share deep intimacy with their partners or might even struggle to develop any relationships at all. This is difficult as these individuals watch friends fall in love, get married, and start families. Those who struggle to form intimacy with others are often left feeling lonely and isolated.

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Some individuals may feel particularly lonely if they struggle to form close friendships with others. Intimacy pertains to good emotional and physical health wherein a person's perspective now moves from an 'I' to a 'We' perspective. You want to be intimate and commit to a partner. Isolation, on the other hand, occurs when that person fails to find a partner. They now feel alone and might create a feeling of inferiority. This may lead to self-destructive tendencies since insecurities may surface or re-surface.

However, some hesitate to form close ties. They fear that they might lose their identity and that they might be compared. They feel threatened by closeness, and this is the manifestation of isolation or loneliness. Loneliness is a subjective experience of isolation and is not about simply 'being alone.' A lot of people are facing loneliness even in the middle of a crowded area. However, persistent loneliness has an impact on both mental and physical health. Cardiovascular function, stress hormones, and immune function are affected by chronic loneliness leading to anxiety and depression. Unhappiness is a result of a gap between the relationship you have and those you desire.

Different areas of life contribute to loneliness. Age is a factor especially when you are at your 20's to 40's. This is the intimacy vs. isolation stage where you value that sense of belongingness. You want to be connected or be part of someone else's life may it be intimate love relationship or work relationship. If one is not able to achieve these, one might question if he is likable or not. Another contributing factor is gender. Women are more likely to have a clinical diagnosis of depression than men due to loneliness or isolating themselves, especially after giving birth. Other circumstances include separated, divorced or widowed.

Fear of the past also causes social Isolation. This pertains to the person avoiding putting himself in bad situations they faced when he was still a child. One might have been neglected at home or did not get enough attention. Lastly, deprivation which pertains to the socio-economic status of a person. The damaging lack of material benefits such as basic needs leads to social isolation. People in this situation, have fears of establishing closeness which result in loneliness. Young adults often still have not advanced in maturity from adolescence.

Although some have achieved a level of maturity by the early twenties, many others do not arrive at this level until well into their thirties – and still others never do attain full maturity! In today’s complex world, attainment of maturity and relative independence seems to take considerable time. Perhaps it is fortunate, then, that people tend to marry somewhat later than they did in the 1950s. Our society hasn't done much for young adults, either. The emphasis on careers, the isolation of urban living, the splitting apart of relationships because of our need for mobility, and the general impersonal nature of modern life prevent people from naturally developing their intimate relationships. I am typical of many people in having moved dozens of times in my life. I haven't the faintest idea what has happened to the kids I grew up with, or even my college buddies.

My oldest friend lives a thousand miles away. I live where I do out of career necessity and, until recently, have felt no real sense of community. Before I get too depressing, let me mention that many of you may not have had these experiences. If you grew up and stayed in your community, and especially if your community is a rural one, you are much more likely to have deep, long-lasting friendships, to have married your high school sweetheart, and to feel a great love for your community. But this style of life is quickly becoming an anachronism. Erikson calls the maladaptive form promiscuity, referring particularly to the tendency to become intimate too freely, too easily, and without any depth to your intimacy. This can be true of your relationships with friends and neighbors and your whole community as well as with lovers.

The malignancy he calls exclusion, which refers to the tendency to isolate oneself from love, friendship, and community, and to develop a certain hatefulness in compensation for one's loneliness. If you successfully negotiate this stage, you will instead carry with you for the rest of your life the virtue or psychosocial strength Erikson calls love. Love, in the context of his theory, means being able to put aside differences and antagonisms through 'mutuality of devotion.' It includes not only the love we find in a good marriage, but the love between friends and the love of one's neighbor, co-worker, and compatriot as well. In the early stages of being a young adult, they are phased with many life changing decisions. In life we believe that building relationships is the way to happiness.

When you're 18, you're probably starting college or thinking about your future. You're no longer in a high school where you can interact with people, so you want to have relationships that can last. For an example, In college many have said they have found their life long friends or their significant other. Maturity helps to develop these relationships because learning to resolve conflict rather than hold grudges, bonds people significantly. It bonds them significantly because they have learned that though they have differences they still find a common ground within the situation. Intimacy in friendships can been through trust. Trust plays a big part in friendships because people share secrets and those moment are intimate. People need others to be honest and open with.

Constantly pretending to be someone they are not around others, can never open up and start to feel isolated. Even within Family people are closer to some family members than others. We all have been in a situation where we realized that some relationships between cousins, aunt and uncles are different. People find it easier to talk to their aunt or uncle rather than their own parents about a secret or something personal. It can be hard to resolve a conflict with a family member because some may feel as though family should never turn on them in any way. Being able to resolve a family conflict, being able to forgive and move on will lead to success.

Family bonds have more meaning then Friendships because friends can come and go while family is there forever. Friends that have developed a meaningful relationship become family. Those who can achieve having meaningful relationship exceed in the intimacy half of stage six. Meanwhile those who fail this stage often go through more depressing situations. Let’s say someone was in a rocky relationship for two years. Their significant other only spent time with him/her when it was convenient for him/her. Instead of him approaching the situation, he continues to allow this behavior. when the relationship finally ends, he feels damaged, and unable to allow another person in. Even if it were a woman going through a situation like this. They were so damaged from their previous relationship that all the relationships they develop only last for a few months because they may be afraid to open of to another person.

Someone may have friendships that can never last long because they are demanding and have attitude problems that are unchecked. These are the people who have trouble obtaining their identity. If they don’t have idea of who they are and what they want to do their life. They cannot stay committed to others. Although some people can have all their social skills together and still struggle with their identity and end up finding it later in their young adult stage. These two factors coincide with each other, no matter the order, these factors you will see together in everyone. An example of isolation would be a woman in a relationship who constantly is calling their spouse and is asking their where about. She is very clingy and she’s not trusting because of this her relationship did not last.

Some factors that trigger these characteristics can be from her past, so they are the reasons why she acts this way in her relationships and they end up not lasting long. Or if she did not have those characteristics but just simply could not resolve an issue with her spouse and ended up just ending the relationship. As a result, she is left feeling depressed and alone. In the context of his theory, means being able to put aside differences and antagonisms through 'mutuality of devotion.' It includes not only the love we find in a good marriage, but the love between friends and the love of one's neighbor, co-worker, and compatriot as well.

Let’s say two women, Sarah and Kayla, who are related to each other, grew doing everything together. As they got older, they started to go their separate ways. Sara was going to college and was faced with a lot of responsibilities, so she was not going out with Kayla as much as she used. She did not want to be around her as much as she used to be. She eventually cut her out of her life and only seen her at family events. Kayla did not understand why she was being treated like this, because she relied on Sarah for a lot. Sarah then developed a relationship with a guy that Kayla used to talk to a few years ago. Kayla, knowing that her and Sarah were not on the best terms, thought that Sarah was doing all of this just to be mean and despiteful towards her. Kayla then began to hate Sarah, she started rumors about her on social media, started arguments with her at family events, and got other people to hate her as well.

Sarah did not take to time to resolve the issue, she just ignored her and continues to keep her out of her life. From this event happening Sarah found herself cutting people off, keeping herself isolated from making new relationships. She even began to isolate herself from family and going to family events. She felt like no one understood her side of what was going on and people just wanted to see her as wrong the person in the situation. For the past two years Sarah found herself not being able to keep friendships because she felt like opening up to another female or male will only result to them eventually spreading rumors. She found herself constantly telling herself that she doesn’t get along with females and can’t see herself building a bond with them because they can’t be trusted.

Sarah had finally realized what needed to be done for her to move on from this depressing stage in her life. So, she sat down with Kayla and talked everything out, she fixed their broken relationship. Without even realizing that her fall out with Kayla, was the reason to why her social life was suffering, Sarah had started relationships that lasted. She began to be involved with family again, really changing ways and resolving conflicts with other people.

Another example would be a man who suffered from a heart break in his previous relationship. This man named James was in a relationship with this woman who he had been with since high school. They were each-others first for everything, they were what you call High school sweet hearts. He planned to be with her for the rest of his life until they had one harsh argument that caused their relationship to go left. Soon after this situation had happened, she left him and got into another relationship with another guy and a few months later had a child with him. James soon found out that she had been involved with this guy while they were dating.

He then isolated himself from the dating scene and was single for a few years after that. He eventually tried dating again but the relationship did not last long because James couldn’t trust her, he couldn’t see himself loving another woman again after what he had been through from his previous relationship. Every time they would have a small argument James would try to end their relationship because he would accuse her of being sneaky or just being in another relationship with someone else. James not realizing that he needed to resolve the problem from his previous relationship, he continued to deal with these issues in his current relationship.

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