Every year for the past three years, I have had the pleasure of teaching
the course 'Psychology of Relationships' to eager students yearning to
learn about the nature
of human relationships, and hopeful in gleaning some scientific insight
into how to improve their own. What I have found my students enjoy
learning most about, perhaps given the current climate of casual
relationships which can go ill-defined, are the key factors which make
an intimate relationship namely that: Intimate.
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As per Miller's (2014) summary of the works of Ben-Ari and Lavee
(2007), the nature of the happiest intimate relationships differ in
contrast to casual relationships in seven distinct ways:
knowledge,
interdependence, caring, trust, responsiveness, mutuality, and
commitment.
1) Knowledge.
When forming deep intimate relationships, we share a vast amount of
personal information that we wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable
sharing with others. Of course the amount of information we share may
differ from one person to the next, and research shows that women, on
average, tend to share more intimate information with their friends as
well as partners, in comparison to men who general reserve more intimate
topics for their partners. Nonetheless, with intimate partners in
healthy relationships, we feel safe in sharing our deepest dreams, desires, fears, past histories, traumas, and goals for the future. Generally, this is a reciprocal and gradual process.
2) Interdependence.
Intimate relationships also tend to be highly interdependent,
wherein each partner influences the other, meaningfully, frequently, and
vastly, in terms of topic and importance. This can range from choosing
what to eat to dinner, to where to live.
3) Care.
Care is another hallmark of healthy intimate relationships. There is a
considerable amount of care each partner places in the other, and this
differs from the care that one would typically display to another,
non-intimate person. Intimate partners thus show concern for each
other's well being, comfort in times of distress, and safekeeping the
other from harm. While the display of care can differ from one person to
the next (as a function of communication style, or differing displays
of affection, for instance), nevertheless, intimate partners tend to
display genuine, selfless care for each other.
4) Trust.
In my personal opinion, trust is what holds the other six components of intimacy
together. While trust is a difficult concept to discuss because of its
complexity, we certainly feel it without fully being able to define it.
In my estimation, it is the confidence
that we place in another human being to act in a way of honor,
fairness, and that is of benefit to us, or at the very least, that our
partner will not cause us purposeful harm.
5) Responsiveness.
Healthy intimate relationships involves partners who are mutually responsive to each others' needs. This means recognizing, understanding and supporting each other both in times of pain (losing a parent, or a job) and in gain (getting a promotion, announcing a pregnancy). When each partner feels the other meets his or her needs, this culminates in feeling appreciated and loved.
6) Mutuality.
After a certain point within a healthy intimate relationship, each partner recognizes a close connection and changes his or her view from 'me' to 'we'. For instance, wherein at the beginning of a relationship, a partner may say, "Mark and I are going to out of town this weekend", when the relationship deepens, both partners change their view of themselves, just as their lexicon: "we are going out of town this weekend".
After a certain point within a healthy intimate relationship, each partner recognizes a close connection and changes his or her view from 'me' to 'we'. For instance, wherein at the beginning of a relationship, a partner may say, "Mark and I are going to out of town this weekend", when the relationship deepens, both partners change their view of themselves, just as their lexicon: "we are going out of town this weekend".
7) Commitment.
Lastly, within healthy intimate relationships, there is a mutual
volition for wanting the relationship to continue indefinitely, which
further allows the other six components of intimacy to grow. With the
idea that the relationship is to continue for an indeterminate amount of
time, it allows for trust to continue to deepen, common knowledge to
further be shared, mutuality to envelop, care to be shown, and continual
effort put into responsiveness and interdependence for both partners.
BY
Mariana Bockarova, Ph.D., is a researcher at the University of Toronto.
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