Virtues and Atonement

When a person is born, he or she possesses a developmental need for trust in his or her relationship with a parent or caretaker. This person relies solely on a parent to care for his or her physical, social, and emotional needs. Although this person does not remember his or her first year of life, he or she will know by adulthood if he or she experiences difficulties trusting others. Are you suspicious of the person in your relationship? What do you base your suspicions? Have you trusted someone that later took advantage of your confidence? Many persons that have been physically, sexually, or emotionally abused as children lose their ability to determine those persons that they can trust. This also can be said for persons that suffer from serious mental and developmental disabilities. Although these people may have gone through their first year of life and received the nurturing necessary to meet this milestone, a disability or the trauma of abuse and neglect later in their lives delayed their development.

Before behavioral expectations can be developed in this stage, a person will need to learn about the concept of personal boundaries. Boundaries can be defined as borders or limits that can be imposed in physical, sexual, or emotional forms. If a person has been hurt traumatically or repeatedly over time, he or she would have experienced a violation of these boundaries. This can contribute to his or her inability to trust another person. A person with a mental or developmental disability would also experience problems understanding the concept of boundaries. As mentioned, disabilities and trauma are factors that contribute to a person’s irrational thinking. In turn, he or she would not know how to differentiate among the different types of relationships. He or she would either view all persons as untrustworthy or trustworthy without any rational basis for this determination. In this stage of development, the person will initially determine if the other person is trustworthy based upon the other person’s ability to demonstrate love, respect, and honesty to him or her. After determining the person can be trusted, he or she will allow for a nurturing relationship to develop. Do you allow a person that you are involved in an intimate relationship to take care of your emotional and physical needs? Can you become vulnerable to someone that you can trust? Do you have to be in control at all times? Many people who have been hurt as children grow up with the irrational thoughts that they either must be in control at all times or that they cannot control anything in their lives.

Boundaries can be established with another person by changing the frequency of contact, the content of the disclosures during contact, and the physical and sexual distances created. Without boundaries, a person can lose the ability to protect him or herself in physical, sexual, and emotional ways. A relationship can be categorized as intimate, friend, acquaintance, or stranger. Intimate relationships can include friends. Intimates are those persons that you frequently have contact, disclose personal information during contacts, and come in close physical, emotional or sexual contact. These relationships take much work to maintain and should be with people that you want to spend the majority of your time. Physical and emotional closeness is not to be confused with sexuality. You can have intimate friends that you allow to come close to you in physical yet non-sexual ways.

Acquaintances are persons that you have seen before but you choose not to pursue contact other than those times you run into them in community places or work. This type of a relationship can consist of people you see often, but have not chosen to share any extra time or to disclose any information other than current events, publicly known information, or work related information. Strangers are those people not known to you. In each of these two types of relationships, the frequency of contact, type of disclosure, and physical, emotional, and sexual closeness is impacted. You would keep a personal boundary with acquaintances and strangers by minimizing your personal contact, refraining from making personal disclosures, and not becoming physically, sexually, or emotionally involved.

During your development of behavioral expectations in the virtue areas of love, respect, and honesty, a person may discover that he or she has intimate relationships that he or she may need to distance from due to continuous hurtful acts in the relationship that are not atoned. The important part of this stage of a person’s development is to base his or her trust on an absolute standard. Once a person understands these virtues in all developmental stages, he or she will be better equipped to assess whether trust can be established in his or her relationship.

What can you do to allow for your trust to develop in your relationship? You have determined that this is a person that you want to be close to and share intimacy. How can you make yourself more vulnerable to this person? A person can experience hurt in a relationship when the other person does not expose his or her vulnerable side. The person becomes vulnerable when he or she shares his or her insecurities, fears, hopes, dreams, and need for the other person. Using the virtues in this development stage, a person will accept the other person in his or her relationship demonstration of love, respect, and honesty to him or her. The person on the receiving end will be asked to share his or her thoughts and feelings about the other person’s actions.

To demonstrate love, the person that is developing trust can allow the other person to come in close physical contact with him or her while enjoying the feeling of closeness. Do you let the other person in your relationship hold you without questioning his or her act of love. This is a time to be nurtured and not to look for ulterior motives for another person’s act of love. The person that is learning to trust may possess the instinct to pull away or attempt to focus his or her time on other activities that serve as a distraction or contribute to his or her irrational thoughts. The person building trust will need to allow the other person to perform other acts of kindness such as massaging the body, making favorite meals, and writing letters of love. Have you discussed a favorite activity or interest that you have and allowed for the other person in your relationship to be part of the experience with you? By allowing the other person into his or her world, the person that is developing trust is also earning trust.

In regards to showing the virtue of respect, the person that is developing trust should make time each day to share a fear, dream, or hope, and to let the other person know how he or she can share in this experience. By including the other person in these thoughts and feelings, the person that is developing trust will enhance his or her relationship. Respect entails a concerted effort for each person to value the other. Do you accept compliments by the other person in you relationship? Most people that do not trust others will not accept compliments without minimizing the statement in some manner. They do not thank the person for making the compliment because he or she does not believe the statement.

For the virtue of honesty, a person can evaluate his or her ability to trust by participating in daily conversations with the other person about how well he or she is receiving love and respect. This discussion will also include how well he or she shared his or her vulnerabilities. Persons that are developing trust need to let others know how comfortable or uncomfortable that he or she is with the behavioral expectations for the virtues of love and respect. Through honest communication with the use of “I statements”, this person can work to a compromise on how fast or slow the behavioral expectations are incorporated. Both persons in a relationship that is building trust need to keep the other’s vulnerabilities confidential. Violating the other’s confidence will hurt the trust that both are attempting to establish.

For those areas that a person falls short of the mark, he or she will need to take responsibility for his or her actions and atone for the hurt caused the other person. The person that does not meet the expectation may not recognize the impact of the hurt initially. The person committing the hurtful act may feel as though he or she was being helpful by not requiring love and respect by the other person. This new system is intended to help both persons in a relationship to demonstrate these virtues. Once the person takes responsibility for his or her hurtful action, he or she can atone by demonstrating the behavioral expectation that he or she was unable to perform. If through discussions and problem solving that both parties discover that the expectation in question is not attainable at the time, the person that is learning to trust can atone by sharing his or her sorrow and appreciation for the other person’s attempts to show love, respect, or honesty. This person will also communicate the steps that he or she will take to meet this expectation in the future. Over time, the person that is developing trust will need to reciprocate the acts of love and respect outlined in this developmental stage. He or she should not wait too long to do this. Selfless acts are what will help a person to understand the powerful impact this system will have in each relationship that he or she will encounter.