You are the Best Gift in Your Relationships

Posted on 24. Dec, 2009 by admin in boundaries, intimate relationships, love, Relationship Advice, respect

How do you rate the persons that you interact?  Do you rate them as intimate, friend, acquaintance, or stranger? Intimate relationships can include friends. Intimates are those persons you frequency have contact, disclosures personal information during contacts, and come close to in either physical, emotional or sexual ways. If you have many intimate relationships, you may need to re-evaluate what criteria you have used to determine this. These relationships take much work to maintain and should be with people you want to spend the majority of your time. Physical and emotional closeness is not to be confused with sexuality. People who are intimates and friends allow persons to get close in physical distance from them. They do not feel threatened when someone hugs them or touches them in non-sexual ways. Friends are people you can have frequent contact and even disclose personal information. What is the dividing line between intimates and friends is the disclosure of deep and dark secrets. There are many who allow friends to share in these secrets but this can strain relationships with intimates especially if the disclosures include information about them.

I consider acquaintances those persons you meet that you choose not to pursue contact other than those times you run into them in community places or work. This level of a relationship can consist of people you see often, but have not chosen to share any extra time or disclosed any information other than current events, publicly known information, or work related information. Strangers are those people not known to you other than maybe a brief encounter. You may see these people frequently if they frequent places that you attend but you do not engage on any consistent level by your choice. In each of these two types of relationships, the frequency of contact, type of disclosure, and physical, emotional, and sexual closeness is affected. Persons who are acquaintances and strangers are distanced through less planned contact, superficial disclosures, and the absence of physical, emotional, and sexual closeness. Today, there are more incidences of discreet sexual encounters with strangers and acquaintances. This does put people at risk for hurt.

When you first meet someone, how would you rate the content of your interactions in relation to personal information discussed and frequency of contact? Are you placing people in the wrong category? How are you making the distinction of who should go in what category. These are the 3 questions that victims of hurt struggle on a daily basis due to their difficulties reading people and situations. Many victims of abuse guide their decisions on how good a person makes them feel or how guilty or bad they may feel for the other person. As I have stated throughout this book, your feelings should not be the basis alone for decisions regarding your relationships with others. The virtues of honesty, respect, and love will help you make more rational distinctions among those you engage each day. When you begin to disclose intimate information to strangers, you have made this an intimate relationship right from the start. This places the stranger in a position of power due to their possessing information regarding your vulnerabilities. This places you at risk to be taken advantage by this person. Many people who are walking with open “emotional wounds” hold on to an ideal that they can be open with everyone when in reality this does not hold true. When you begin to inventory all of your relationships, you may see that your ideals about family, friends, significant others, and even helping professionals do not match the reality of what is occurring in these relationships based upon my criteria outlined in my book about the virtues of love, respect, and honesty.