Two writers recently collaborated on a book called Relationships, interviewing 300 couples in the course of their research. "Everyone," said one of the co-authors in summary, 'is looking for a close, one-to relationship." However making such close relationships last is difficult because, the authors concluded, people have the freedom to choose close relationships other than lifelong marriage.

What did the authors mean by a "close" relationship? a "one-to-relationship"? One of the first things we run into when we talk about close relationships is the fact that the word means different things to different people. Our understanding of what close relationships means depends on our experiences and our expectations of relationships.

For many people, close relationships means just one thing, a sexual relationship. For example, the "personal column of a local weekly entertainment publication recently listed 129 ads, and most requesting correspondence from people interested in "relationships". Most of them focused on physical attractiveness etc -----

When we form close relationships, how important is it for us to go beyond the physical in understanding what a good human relationship can be.

Each of us has experienced different levels of relationships. Sometimes it is hard to know what close relationships and nurturing friendships really are.

It is this freedom to "be ourselves" that makes our relationships close. Most of us hide our real selves, or some aspects of our real selves, in various habits or patterns we learned early in our close relationships. Sometimes this is conscious, but most often it is the unconscious ways we react to others that block intimacy in our important close relationships and prevent us from becoming or staying very close to one another.

Developing Intimacy the pathway to close relationships.

A doctor who works with couples who have sexual problems said that intimacy is "the mutual belief of two people that what is hidden between them hurts their close relationships, and what is revealed between them can only help their relationships." You may have a different definition of intimacy, but whatever it is, you need to know what intimacy is really about, otherwise you will fail to understand the basis of close relationships.

The greater the degree of friendship in close relationships, then the greater the degree of trust, acceptance, freedom to be oneself, love for the person of the other. assumption of responsibility for one another, and respect. Good friendship accepts the other person as he or she really is, not as what each needs and wants the other to be. Good friendship within close relationships is nurturing: it allows each person to be oneself, to be loved for that, and therefore gives support for that person to continue to grow in becoming the person he or she needs to be.

Close relationships are those in which we can ourselves. But how does this kind of friendship happen? Think of a good friend you already have had. Certainly, when you first met, you did not feel that complete openness to be yourself. You might even have disliked that person because of your own barriers to intimacy. "She must be stuck-up" - she carries herself like she's too good for everybody else!" or "he really acts as though he is God's gift to women." But when you got to really know the person you realized you were mistaken.

To become close there is a certain process you go through: one of you has to make a first move, taking a risk to be friends, revealing oneself, a little bit - perhaps even feeling a little foolish; the other responding in friendliness and not rejection, and a little trust is established between you. Is this the developing of a close relationships?

That good friendship really then keeps growing through are series risk-takings and acceptances in the formation of close relationships - where one of you can reveal more about your own feelings and the other person accepts you. Trust grows, enough so that one of you reveals even more, to find acceptance once again from the other person. Hence a further step in the development of close relationships.This process continues until each person begins to feel that " I can really be myself with you". Does this describe any of the experiences you have had in the formation of your close relationships?

Deep and abiding intimacy is at the heart of all close relationships, and is the life breath which sustains these close relationships. Intimacy between two persons - using the word intimacy psychological and emotional sense , not in the physical, sexual sense - is a very special kind of experience in all close relationships. We need intimacy, but intimacy is rarely total and complete. We want it and we have to work at it. We possess it by degrees.

When we find great intimacy with even one person in our close relationships, we are indeed very fortunate. Once discovered and experienced you have found the true nature of all close relationships.

Maintaining Intimacy

When we find good friendship in our close relationships, how do we keep it? How do we build intimacy in the ongoing changes which inevitably occur in all close relationships. Often the critical tension in maintaining intimacy is the conflict we often face between seeking our own personal fulfilment and the need to foster and maintain our close relationships.

It is a tension between how much "me-ness" and "we-ness" shall exist in our close relationships. If relationships are to last, they have to be part of our own personal fulfilment, not something that hurts our growth. Yet one of the difficulties in building close relationships is that we have learnt to see "giving" as somehow hurting our own needs for personal growth.

Also, most people think about marriage or intimacy as something we can find and then keep - like a beautiful house we find, move into, and live in happily ever after. We learn to think of close relationships like some kind of destination we arrive at with another.

Close relationships are not "found": there is no such thing as a permanent state of intimacy. As Carl Rogers described it, the "good life" is a process of being, not a state of being". Close relationships are also this. The "process of intimacy," if we can call it that, consists of habits of openness, acceptance, trust, revelation with another - habits which we must continue to work at if love is to stay alive and to grow.

Vital communication, acceptance, trust, and ultimately commitment are actual tools and links that keep two persons living within these close relationships as they travel together through personal and social change.

Intimacy can grow with these tools if the relationship is giving. Intimacy cannot exist in close relationships that are primarily needing, looking to the other for rewards.

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