ABSTRACT
Relational Dialectics Theory (RDT) allows us to understand meaning making within relationships by examining how our contradictory needs, such as privacy and openness, are represented in discourses. The author uses RDT to frame personal narrative detailing a history with physical abuse through a discussion of the competing discourses of family love and support and abuse. He knows the difference between a memory from the first house in Vermillion and the second house in Vermillion. Moving is such a part of his identity that he makes many decisions based on conditional time with an exit strategy. When he considers the most important people in life, the women who impact me stand together en masse. They talk with each other and laugh because they can relate to each other's experiences. These women affect and change me as a group. The men who profoundly changed me stand apart from each other, because their influence happened individually.
