When two people begin to share intimate details about one another, it makes their relationship stronger and they grow closer together. It takes them to a new level of intimacy where they feel comfortable sharing personal stories and feelings with one another. Intimate relationships obviously do not start off with detailed and intimate communication. There are stages and development over time that get a couple to that stage in their relationship. Three of the important aspects of relationship talk have to do with explicitness, depth, and valence of the relationship. Explicitness is the interpersonal level and clarity of the message which is the first degree of a conversation where it barely hits the surface of relationship talk. Depth refers to self-disclosure and how personal the information being shared is. This distinguishes the public from private conversations. Valence, especially negative valence, has to do with the tone in which the message is given and how the receiver interprets the tone with the message (Knobloch, Solomon, & Theiss, …show more content…
One study shows that couples that discuss and talk more about their sexual relationship have a happier and more intimate sexual relationship (Wheeless & Parsons, 1995). However, this is a topic that finds itself hard to be brought up within a relationship. People do not want to feel that they are trying to speed up the relationship if their partner is not ready for it, but at the same time it is a topic that needs to be addressed before relationships can move any further. The most important topics that are spoken about within sexual communication is safer sex practices, sexual initiation, and sexual pleasure. Partners should feel comfortable talking about sex before it happens in their relationship and it is important in the satisfaction of their relationship. If one partner is not happy with their sexual experiences, but never tells their partner; it could lead to an unhappy relationship. Not only should partners be able to openly talk to one another, but how people read their partner’s body language and nonverbal communication is just as important as verbal communication. It is shown that “nonverbal communication during sex fully mediated the relationship between sexual self-esteem and sexual satisfaction” (Babin, 2012). Non-verbal communication actually has more impact on a relationship and how partners understand one another than verbal communication