Stories that trigger challenging experiences of failure, abandonment, rejection, and criticism in romantic relationships

Kiesler's (1983) Interpersonal Cycle Model has become a powerful tool for conceptualizing, organizing, and evaluating interpersonal tendencies in recent years. Accordingly, the Interpersonal Cyclical Model provides a theoretical basis for the nature of relationships and thus facilitates an understanding of 'self' and 'the others’' relationships. The first of the two main purposes of our study was to create valid and reliable stories about the four themes (failure, abandonment, rejec-tion, and criticism) that we define as challenging life events. The second one offered a theoretical example of these stories in interpersonal relations, based on the model. For this purpose, two different samples were defined. In the first, twelve stories were created, inspired by sample situa-tions of failure, abandonment, rejection, and criticism, received from a total of 40 people aged between 18-35 (age: M = 25.46, SD = 1.66). The level of representation of the target theme of the stories was examined by three judges and ten reviewers who are experts in clinical psychology. To test the effectiveness of the scenarios, five judges with theoretical knowledge on Interpersonal Schemas. Secondly, three separate judges were involved to evaluate their codability in accord-ance with the model. At this stage, the intraclass correlation coefficient of reliability for all stories was found to be high and significant (ICC = .84 to .99, p = .025) according to the results of the pilot study, which was performed on 15 people (age: M = 22.43, SD = 3.87), seven of whom were male. It was decided that the psychometric properties of the Story Completion Inventory in Ro-mantic Relationships were at levels that could be studied within the framework of Cognitive Interpersonal Theory and could be used in the literature.