This dissertation focuses on better understanding friendship dissolution. Participants (N= 358) who recalled a friendship that had ended completed a questionnaire that measured characteristics of the friendship prior to dissolution (satisfaction, commitment/investment, and quality of alternatives), reasons for friendship dissolution, emotional responses to friendship dissolution, dissolution behaviors, and post-dissolution social media connection. Those who were in friendships characterized by high commitment/investment and had high quality alternatives tended to attribute the friendship ending due to their partner committing a transgression and/or internal struggles within the friendship. This may be due to highly committed friendships tending to be stable until there are problems and alternatives are seen as appealing. Participants reported experiencing more negative and positive emotion if the friendship ended due to a partner’s transgression or internal struggles. They also reported more negative emotion if the friendship had been satisfying and committed, and more positive emotion if the friendship had been less satisfying and they had high quality alternatives. Four dissolution behaviors were investigated in this dissertation, and each was associated with different profiles of emotional responses and causes of dissolution. The mutual fade out was associated with the friendship ending due to external factors; being ghosted by a friend was associated with feeling negative emotions and the friendship ending due to external factors; ghosting a friend was associated with positive emotions and the friendship ending due to a partner transgression; and open confrontation was associated with the friendship ending due to a partner transgression and/or internal struggles. Finally, results showed that people were less likely to be connected on social media if the friendship had ended due to internal struggles and if they had either been ghosted or had ghosted their friend as a means to end the friendship. Those who reported that their friendship had ended due to external factors through means of the mutual fade out, on the other hand, were more likely to still be connected on social media. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the friendship dissolution process.

Compulsory monogamy, theorized from compulsory heterosexuality, is the normalization of the single dyad by means of violence towards consensual nondyadic relational configurations for the purposes of maintaining monogamy’s power. With compulsory monogamy as the undercurrent, the formation of the polyamorous identity must weave through its grasps and carve pathways towards the full embodiment of polyamory. The purpose of this dissertation is to both recognize where the current conceptualization of compulsory monogamy manifests within people who are newly developing their polyamorous identity or exploring polyamorous experiences, and to understand the process people go through of unbecoming monogamous and becoming polyamorous. This dissertation utilizes both autoethnographic accounts of the researcher’s own polyamorous journey and stories from polyamorous people all around the world. Thirteen polyamorous people participated in semi-structured in-depth interviews where they were asked about their early polyamorous experiences and to tell stories of their process of unlearning elements of monogamy and embracing polyamory while simultaneously grappling with the presence of compulsory monogamy. Several themes were uncovered upon analysis of these stories, including tension with the normative, understanding what polyamory and relationships are, and the process of coming into one’s identity from living and embodying a previously monogamous life. Polyamory is a learn-by-doing, mix-and-match approach to relationships without a blueprint to follow and aspects of relationships are pulled together to form a relationship unique to the people involved. What is gained from a journey through uncertainty, risk, and possibly trauma and violence is a sense of comfort, community, and peace.

In the U.S, Middle Eastern (M.E) students often struggle with negative biases toward them and experience isolation, discrimination, and report a lack of meaningful interactions with U.S. students. Against this backdrop, this dissertation explored the impact of enacted similarity and nonverbal immediacy on social attraction and friendship-potential between same-sex U.S. and M.E. international students during first time interactions on Zoom. A 2 (M.E. vs. U.S. confederate) x 2 (low vs. high similarity) x 2 (low vs. high nonverbal immediacy) x 2 (pre- vs. post-interaction) experimental design was employed, with participants reporting on their perceptions after viewing a profile of a confederate and then again after they interacted with the confederate on Zoom for three minutes. Pre-interaction results indicated that M.E. women were perceived as the most socially attractive, highest friendship potential, and as most likely to engage in pleasant interaction, compared to the other three groups. This finding emerged even though U.S. women rated fellow U.S. women as more similar to them than they rated M.E. women. A potential explanation is intersectionality of gender and ethnicity, with U.S. women stereotyping M.E. women as quiet, submissive, and oppressed, and therefore have sympathy for them and expect them to be kind. Post-interaction results revealed that in interactions between U.S. students, similarity impacted friendship potential but not social attraction, while nonverbal immediacy had a significant impact on both. In intercultural interactions between the U.S. and M.E. students, both nonverbal immediacy and similarity impacted social attraction and friendship potential. There were especially sharp drops in social attraction and friendship potential when the confederates enacted low levels of nonverbal immediacy. Overall, nonverbal immediacy had stronger and more consistent effects compared to similarity. Results indicate that to make positive impressions, both U.S. and M.E. students should use nonverbal immediacy cues such as smiling, leaning in, and being attentive to their interactional partner rather than looking away. Future directions include determining if findings can be generalized to face-to-face interactions and to perceptions of individuals from various cultures.