maintaining close and intimate relationships your soul is your relationship with other people. what...

Maintaining Close and Intimate Relationships

Your soul is your relationship with other people. What you say and do

does not die. Tom Wolfe

Prototypes of love

• Love for our first caregivers- a child’s love for a parent (essential for building trust)

• Love for those who depend on us- parent’s love for a child

• Passionate desire for sexual, physical, & emotional closeness with another- romantic love

Signs of love

• Mutual gazing• Cuddling• Kissing• Skin-to-skin contact• Touching body parts considered

private• Oxytocin released at climax as

well as nursing- enhances bonding

The universal need for love

Core virtue of humanity- the capacity to tend & befriend others

• Capacity to love and be loved- valuing close relations with others, reciprocity

• Kindness- generosity, nurturance, care, compassion, altruistic love

• Social intelligence- emotional intelligence, knowing how to fit into different social situations

Secure attachment- prototype for future relationships

• Attachment- emotional link that bonds people over time

• Healthy secure attachment is fostered by responsive, speedy interactions as parents respond to babies’ signals

• Maladaptive parental behaviors can result in insecure attachment patterns

Infancy experiences set us up for later relational patterns

Problems related to poor attachment

• Problems for a child relating to adults

• Poorer coping styles

• Problems coping with parents’ absence

• Later relationship problems

• Emotional disorders

• Conduct disorders

Secure attachments predicts:

• More positive internal model of self & others

• Self perceptions as competent, appealing, loveable

• Concepts of caregivers as accessible, responsive, consistent- they see the world as safe and others as reliable

• self-reinforcing• Better emotional regulation, curiosity, willingness

to ask for help from others

• Comfortable with others, lack of anxiety re: abandonment/ rejection

• Better general coping with life stresses, better adjusted

Love energizes self development

Developing true intimacy means taking risks

• Only through exposing one’s vulnerability can one be open to trusting another & recognizing his/her trustworthiness

• Sex without emotional intimacy becomes goal-driven performance

• Couples don’t always agree on what is satisfying sexually, however

• Resolution of conflict can be managed with:• Neutrality- respecting the good intentions of the other,

taking personal responsibility for one’s own needs

• Mutuality- working toward a mutual cause- satisfaction for both parties, as partners try to please and be pleased

• Key is full & honest communication

Healthy relationships require balance of closeness & separation

Aspects of the healthy relationship

• Honest and open communication builds trust• Don’t assume your partner should be able to read your

mind, or you can read his/her mind

• Partners need to be aware of old relationship garbage & strive not to impose it on new partners

• Both partners should remain individuals with separate interests, goals

• Sexual commitment involves sexual responsibility on both parties• Protection against unwanted pregnancy, STDs

How can you optimize your relationships?

• Minding relationships• Mutual knowing of the other as well as acceptance can produce synchrony

of thought, feeling occurs• Maintaining a sense of being unique & appreciated in the relationship

• Creating a culture of appreciation• Magic ratio of successful marriages: 5:1 • 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative• Without positive expectations of the partner, contempt breaks down the

relationship• Expressing gratitude for small acts creates a culture of gratitude• Trying to avoid the 4 Horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness,

stonewalling• Capitalizing on positive events

• Telling the partner about good things in one’s life & allowing him/her to celebrate with you

• Active/constructive responses amplify the pleasure of a happy event\• Some people are negative, projecting their own negativity on you- in

which case they are not safe people to share good fortune with