What Makes Our Relationships Meaningful, Satisfying, or Fulfilling?

Answers from Social Scientists and the Wisdom of Ordinary People

Thomas G. Kirkpatrick

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9798385265534
  9798385265541
• eBook ISBN:
  9798385265558
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Interpersonal Relations in Psychology

This book features a unique research project: it spans fifty years. It seeks to replicate in 2025 findings from research in 1975 asking this question: What makes our relationships meaningful, satisfying, or fulfilling? Look for answers from the expertise of social scientists and the wisdom of ordinary people. The original research centers on four relational qualities: communication openness, being oneself, interpersonal security and warmth, and personal support and growth. The new research replicates three of these qualities and identifies ten themes, seven of which are new: communication, being oneself, and growth along with connection, mutuality, enjoyment, time, work, presence, and transcendence. A follow-up research project discovers that ordinary people's relationships as a whole are meaningful, satisfying, fulfilling, and quite healthy overall. In fact, they have significance, value, and importance; they bring enjoyment, pleasure, or contentment; and they thrive and flourish. Perhaps most astonishingly, in their personal relationships, they do well on all four qualities and ten themes, including practical ways each quality and theme is expressed. Within the book, readers will also find thought-provoking quotations, vignettes, reflections, and case studies drawn from responses of family members, friends, and colleagues.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. What Makes Our Relationships Meaningful, Fulfilling, and Satisfying?
• 2. What Makes Our Relationships Meaningful, Satisfying, or Fulfilling?
• 3. What Makes Our Relationships Meaningful, Satisfying, or Fulfilling?
• 4. Making Relationships Meaningful, Satisfying, or Fulfilling
• About the Author
• Appendix 1: Relationship Science
• Appendix 2: Research Project Summary
• Appendix 3: Interpersonal Relationship Satisfaction Inventory
• Appendix 4: Interpersonal Relationship Satisfaction Inventory
• Appendix 5: Four C’s Signs of Relational Health
• Appendix 6: Meaningful, Satisfying, or Fulfilling Relationships Themes
• Appendix 7: Theme-Related Word Usage
• Appendix 8: Meaningful, Satisfying, or Fulfilling Relationships Themes Components
• Appendix 9: MSF Relationships Inventory
• Appendix 10: Meaningful, Satisfying, and Fulfilling Word Usage
• Appendix 11: Questionnaire Questions
• Appendix 12: Questionnaires Results
• Appendix 13: Brief Reflections and Mini-Case Studies
• Appendix 14: Relationship Satisfaction Inventory
• Bibliography