The establishment and maintenance of the intimate relationship
Six elements of intimacy
1. Understanding
Intimate partners have a broad, personal (and often secret) understanding of each other. They are familiar with each other’s experiences, hobbies, emotions, and wishes and generally do not disclose such information to others.
2. Degree of concern
Close partners care for each other and can feel more love from each other. If people think their boyfriend/girlfriend knows, understands, and appreciates themselves better, they will become more intimate with each other.
3. Interdependence
The lives of the two parties in an intimate relationship are also intertwined: one party’s behavior affects the other party’s goal and ability to act. The interdependence of intimate partners refers to the degree to which they need each other and influence each other. This interdependence is frequent (often influencing each other), strong (having a significant influence on each other), diverse (influencing each other in many different ways), and lasting (influencing each other for a long time). When the relationship develops to the degree of interdependence, the behavior of one party will affect itself as well as the other party.
4. Mutual consistency
Because of this close connection, the two sides of the intimate relationship often think that they are a perfect couple rather than two completely separated individuals. They show a high degree of mutual consistency, which means that they identify with the integration of both sides in life, calling themselves “we” rather than “I” and “he/she.” In fact, this change of Appellation from “I” to “we” often marks the development of their relationship to a subtle and significant stage. The degree of accepting others is the most vivid and direct method to evaluate mutual consistency and can effectively judge whether there is an intimate relationship between people.
5. Trust
Another factor in maintaining a close relationship is trust, in which both parties expect each other to be treated with kindness and respect. People believe that intimacy doesn’t hurt and expect their partners to meet their own needs and focus on their own happiness. If this trust is lost, intimate partners will become suspicious of each other, thus undermining intimate relationships’ unique honesty and interdependence.
6. Loyalty
Intimate partners are usually loyal to their intimate relationship, hoping that their intimacy can last until the end of time, and do not hesitate to invest a lot of time, workforce, and material resources. Once this kind of loyalty is lost, the former loving couple and intimate friends will gradually become estranged and separated.
Love is not bound by responsibility and obligation. If the love is only full of responsibility and obligation, then the relationship between two people, to a certain extent is lacked a sense of willingness, more a sense of bondage. The purpose of love is to establish an intimate relationship. We can learn more about ourselves by establishing a deeper psychological connection with our lovers. There are many kinds of intimacy, and the intimacy between lovers is the most unique. Intimacy is an important topic that has been hotly debated in recent years. Rowland Miller, in his book “Intimate Relationships,” writes that intimacy flows between partners – in the journey of intimacy, we learn to face our best as well as our worst qualities, learn to accept and let go, and ultimately will find the bridge to love and happiness. In the writing of Canadian psychotherapist Christopher Moon, this category can be further expanded to include relationships with parents, relationships with children – as long as two people are intimate to a certain extent and open to each other to a certain extent, whether they are family, friends, or lovers, they can be considered a type of intimate relationship.
Intimacy is an important topic that has been hotly debated in recent years. Rowland Miller, in his book “Intimate Relationships,” writes that intimacy flows between partners – in the journey of intimacy, we learn to face our best as well as our worst qualities, learn to accept and let go, and ultimately will find the bridge to love and happiness. In the writing of Canadian psychotherapist Christopher Moon, this category can be further expanded to include relationships with parents, relationships with children – as long as two people are intimate to a certain extent and open to each other to a certain extent, whether they are family, friends, or lovers, they can be considered a type of intimate relationship.
According to Harold Harding Kelley, an American social psychologist, a relationship is when two people can influence each other and depend on each other. In other words, we can only assume that a relationship exists between two people when they influence and depend on each other. Psychologists Levinger and Snoek built on this explanation by proposing a Model of Interdependence and used it to illustrate how relationships change as interdependence increases. In a joint relationship, when the interdependence of two people is high, we call the relationship intimate. There are three characteristics of an intimate relationship: first, the two people have frequent interactions over a long period of time; second, the relationship contains many different kinds of events and shares many activities and interests; and third, the two people have a lot of influence on each other.
However, intimacy does not only exist between relatives and lovers, so let’s break the stereotypes and limitations of intimate relationships. There must be people in your life, too – people you are not related to by blood, emotion, or in a workplace relationship, but who often play an important role in your life. We seem to see many possibilities in the film for the complex proposition of intimacy. Intimate relationships can be built in a much broader place, and it can happen more than just between partners and loved ones or even between people. Intimacy can be built through mutual concern and understanding, creating moving memories that encourage people to continue, but it can also face collapse and demise. However, this does not mean that intimate relationships are irretrievable and irreparable. Another point that shouldn’t be ignored is that we could know that the person can only see a part of a person in an intimate relationship to arise.
Lust or Love？
Lust is what we call sexual attraction. And love is an extraordinary emotion – different from anxiety, fear, depression, and other complex emotions; although it has been studied, it is still unfathomable.
When you stare at each other’s face for a long time, it means that you subconsciously feel that you can develop a long-term love relationship with each other; When you look more at the other person’s body, you may be controlled by desire.
“Whether you will gaze into each other’s eyes for a long time is one of the most reliable marks to judge a true lover,” Cacioppo said.
Pure lust is only based on sexual attraction and fantasy – they dissipate as you come to know each other. Love (which is not exclusive to lust, and the need for sex is part of intimacy) often takes a long time for you to get to know each other. Or it could be said that passion makes you inseparable, while love makes you want to be together for a long time and have a deeper emotional connection. At some stages of intimacy, the two overlap. It’s hard to stay awake. But if you want to pursue healthy intimacy, for those who have just started a relationship and are sexually attracted, one approach has proven to work: learn to listen to your inner feelings. If you are calm, your heart tells you many times that this person is right, this relationship is healthy, you can make each other happier together, then the relationship is likely to be healthy. However, it would help if you were alert to the bad signals in your intimate relationship. Some intuition is very subtle and difficult to say.
Sources:
https://mog.dog/files/Intimate%20Relationships%20%287th%20Edition%29%20-%20Rowland%20Miller.pdf