Interpersonal communication, or one-to-one communication, is necessary for you to function in society. It helps you connect with others and develop empathy, and it contributes to your mental and physical health. Emotional intelligence is made up of being aware of your feelings, managing your emotions, motivating yourself, recognizing emotions in others, and handling relationships. All these have a direct bearing on strategic flexibility.

Strategic flexibility benefits from the contributions of perception, self-concept, and emotional intelligence because together these factors promote self-control, assist in managing emotions, and foster effective listening. They help you maximize your communication, enhance your credibility, and accomplish your intentions—all factors that make your use of the strategic flexibility format both more likely and more effective.

The ingredients that make up your attraction to others include physical attraction, perceived gain, similarities, differences, and proximity. In cyberattraction, those communicating depend on cues such as language, style, timing, speed of writing, and use of punctuation and emoticons.

The motives for seeking out interpersonal relationships are pleasure, affection (warm emotional attachments with others), inclusion (involvement with others), escape, relaxation, control (getting others to do as you want them to or being able to make choices in your life), health, and cybermotivation. Cybermotivation involves less anxiety, entertainment, excitement, unwinding, forgetting about daily problems such as school and work, privacy, complete availability, relieving boredom, bolstering self-esteem, anonymity if you want it, and high levels of self-disclosure.

Relationships with others are governed by the roles you are expected to play. Small talk is an instrument of communication that renders people attractive. To engage in small talk plan ahead, ask open-ended questions, share feelings and information, and reconnect via your past.

Bids and the bidding process are the glue that holds relationships together. Bids can be questions, gestures, looks, or touches, and responses to bids are positive or negative answers to somebody's request for emotional connection. Owned messages are acknowledgments of subjectivity by message senders through the use of firstperson singular terms. Their value is that they provoke less interpersonal defensiveness than you-messages.

Self-disclosure is the process of communicating oneself to another person, telling another who you are and what you are feeling. It can be understood through the Johari Window, which has four panes: open, blind, hidden, and unknown. As relationships develop and disclosure increases, the open pane gets larger.

The essential elements of good relationships include verbal skills, emotional expressiveness, conversational focus, nonverbal analysis, conversational encouragement, care and appreciation, commitment, and adaptation.

For many, the Internet serves as a valuable, important, and worthwhile form of communication because it promotes healthy communication and interaction; allows a strong support system; facilitates the social integration of otherwise marginalized people; reduces the costs of communication; increases the numbers of social contacts; offers opportunities for communication on an international level; and loosens social restrictions. The Internet affirms, reinforces, and assists in maintaining effective interpersonal relationships.