Question 2

A relationship that comes to mind for this question is one with my co-worker at my current job. When she was first hired our relationship was an I-It because I viewed her as an employee who would be working in the office, and not really as someone I cared to know. The reason for this is because I am a busy person who works a lot and outside of work school keeps me very busy. As much as I value a good friendship, when my co-worker first started I was not looking to make friends simply because I had a busy schedule so I felt unavailable in a social aspect. When I did have any downtime I liked to spend it with my girlfriend who also has a busy schedule as a teacher. Although I would see her once a week at work, I never felt close to her and we rarely talked about anything that was not work-related. After a month or so of working with her casual talk had progressed into us both disclosing personal information about our families and life in general. This was the transition from the I-It to the I-You period. We started relating a lot on different aspects of our lives, and this lead to us deciding to get together outside of work. Getting to know her better made me want to invite her along to some social gatherings with some of my other friends. We went out dancing to San Francisco quite a few weekends which ended up being a lot of fun. I felt that the I-You changed to the I-Thou after we became comfortable with each other outside of work. She started to tell me about some of the hard times she went through in her life, including a period of depression that her family couldn't pull her out of for quite some time. I also became comfortable telling her about my life, and we eventually added each other on Facebook. We Facebook and text message often about work, politics, personal life stuff, and I do consider her a friend now rather than a co-worker. I feel a genuine trust with her as well and that's very special to me because I know she understands all of the negative aspects of our current job. Our employers have shown us a lack of respect on several occasions and I always feel comfortable talking to her about this because she is always on the same page as a friend who happens to work for the same company. In the beginning it was harder to talk to her about these issues because I was unsure if I could trust her, and now I wouldn't think twice about venting to her on issues pertaining to our job.