Cultivating Personal Relationships

The research described earlier indicates that people are hardwired to be social, and they are generally happier and healthier when they are feeling connected to others. We need to talk with and touch others, cooperate on projects, share opinions, values and emotions, help others, mate and raise children together. We need people in our lives, and without them we are lonely. Some of our social needs are met through association with acquaintances, or in groups to which we belong. The most important determinant of job and church satisfaction for most people is the social climate. However, rich social interaction with groups of people can still leave us longing for a greater sense of intimacy with and belonging to individuals.
The Need to Belong
Ongoing research on the human need to belong by Roy Baumeister at Case Western University and Mark Leary at Wake Forest University provides consistent support that belongingness is a universal need met by predicable psychological processes. The findings strongly support a number of universal interpersonal patterns. The ability to meet the need for belonging is so important to psychological functioning that satisfaction of the need is essential to well-being, and frustration of the need is central to physical and emotional ill-being.
The people to whom we are attached collectively meet our needs for bonding. The loss of one relationship can often be replaced over time by another, and doing so reduces the sense of loss. However, most people prefer to have their belongingness needs met over time by the same small number of individuals. The need to belong in intimate relationships seems to have a limit for each person, so that we lose interest in new opportunities with new people when that limit is approached. The void of loneliness is filled and much of the seeking for significant sources of belonging desists.
Persons in our lives meet more of our needs for belonging when we experience a greater degree of thriving feelings with and for them. These experiences are more likely to happen in the context of long-term stable caring relationships, and especially in marriages. Frequency of interaction also plays an important role in developing and sustaining meaningful bonds.
Our deepest emotional needs are met through our most personal and significant relationships. While the dynamics of personal relationships are complex, three important components cover so much territory that they deserve considerable examination. Relationships operate largely on companionship, significant attachments, and quality care-giving.
Companionship: Sharing Values and Interests
Most people like to do things with other people, sharing values and interests. These opportunities create companionship, and foster feelings of belonging. Companionship provides us with social pleasure that lasts long after the time spent together. This can be measured by increases of dopamine and oxytocin that are more sustainable than any other source of pleasure.
According to Steven Reiss at Ohio State University, there are sixteen universal values shown below that all individuals share to some extent. They were validated through extensive factor analysis of measurements of over 300 component desires. The main markers for our individual life desires and goals are found in those values which are very strong compared to other persons (top 20% tile), and those which are very weak (bottom 20% tile). Those of moderate intensity barely distinguish us from other persons, and draw little social response from others.
Reiss Profile of Values
Influence Others Order and Organization Companionship Sex and Beauty
Self-Reliance Collecting Things Raising Children Consuming Food
Knowledge Loyalty to a Heritage Social Status Exercise of Muscles
Social Inclusion Social Justice Getting Even Emotional Calm

The most exciting thing about this approach is the way it predicts social responses between individuals. Most people are comfortable with their own uniqueness, and don't understand why some others are not comfortable with them. We think that our own values are natural, and that others should and will like us for them. However, individuals low on self-reliance seem defective to those high on that value. People high in desire for exercising muscles don't tend to congregate with those high in desire for eating. People low in value of knowledge think those high in value are annoying intellectuals. So, people are attracted to others with whom they share the same levels of significant basic values.
One thing we can do with your own profiles is to understand where our values are consistent and inconsistent with social norms and expectations. We can benefit from broadly presenting your consistencies, and keeping you inconsistencies between us and our friends. Most others will be so sure that they are normal that they won't understand our significant differences from social norms. We benefit from aligning ourselves as much as possible with others who can and will support us in our values.
Attachment and Friendships
The next component of relationships is attachment. We attach to friends and relatives though our feelings of pleasure and contentment (safety) in their presence, and when we think of them or being with them. We feel safer knowing they are in our lives. The closer they are, the more access we have to them and the more we can rely on them the better we feel. These bonds can grow richer with time. The main way to raise our consistent levels of positive feelings is to be with the right people at the right times.
Some people exhibit what scientists and mental health practitioners call insecure attachment. Anxiety, self-doubt and distrust interfere with them learning and using the healthy steps to forming relationships. They may seem disinterested and emotionally neutral, overly demanding toward others, or constantly seeking reassurance. They struggle to provide supportive responses to the emotions and needs of others. These persons may benefit from psychological treatment, especially if their insecurity stems from traumatic attachment injuries with persons who were in positions to be their caregivers.
There are some common benefits to having good friends and a supportive spouse. We can rely on them to help us regulate our feelings. Remember how attachment works with children. When they feel safe, they venture out into the word to interact. When they have distressing experiences, they draw close to their parents. Somehow their parent's touch, tone of voice, eye contact and reassuring words comfort them. When they are excited or pleased with themselves, they look to share that with their parents to increase or prolong the pleasure and self-esteem.
That is also what good friends and spouses do for each other. A biological mechanism, called mirror neurons, has been discovered that allows us to do this. These are special brain cells that detect and represent the feelings of others. These feelings are experienced in our bodies in much the same way as our own feelings. This phenomenon supports empathy and compassion for others. These feelings are activated unconsciously by visual and auditory cues, but we can learn to detect and respond to them in various ways. If we are empathetic our responses are supportive, but if we chose to ignore them or get irritated by them, our responses are not supportive.
Quality Human Care
The third component of relationships is receiving and providing quality human care. It might be helpful to briefly review how care-giving fits into our human emotional needs. Infants rely on their parents for safety by maintaining proximity when they feel threat, and seeking comfort when they are distressed. Parents that are emotionally available are tuned in to their children's feelings, and respond willingly to their needs. Follow-up on the strange situation research mentioned earlier found that children who receive this type of care-giving are more secure, and engage life and other people more constructively. Subsequently they are more secure and attuned care-givers to others.
We transfer much of our care-giving needs from our parents to others when we make friends and marry. We also become care-givers. While we are more mature, with more complex emotional needs, the nature of care-giving remains remarkably similar. As we develop into adolescence and adulthood, we learn to become caregivers with siblings and friends. Part of this process is unconscious and part is intentional, allowing us to select whose feelings we are going to be open to, and which persons we are going to provide emotional care. For those that we select, we are more attuned or emotionally available. The more emotionally available, the higher the level of safety and comfort we represent to those persons, and the more they become attached to us.
If you have a spouse and/ or children you are one of their primary care-givers. You may also be a caregiver to other persons that you implicitly or explicitly agree to nurture. Some may be your friends, and others may be people you have chosen to help. Care-giving fosters attachment and pleasure (thriving) in the giver as well as the receiver of care. Accepting and responding well in care-giving roles is critical to our own personal growth. Balancing the well-being of others with our own well-being contributes to both happiness and meaning in life.
The child seeks a caregiver when he experiences difficulty regulating his emotions by himself. Your trusting friends and spouse will come to you for the same reason. It is now a well proven scientific fact that a caregiver's appropriate responses alleviate the recipient's stress and distress through an emotional regulatory effect on the recipient which calms the amygdala and activates the parasympathetic nervous system This is accomplished largely through what Stephen Porges at the University of Illinois at Chicago refers to as the social engagement system. The calmness of the caregiver is conveyed to the attached person though body language, facial expressions and tone of voice and felt through the function of mirror neurons.
The other main aspect of care-giving is guidance, and the best principles of guidance are not intuitive to most individuals. What we all know is that it helps to be heard, so listening is not only comforting but a major part of the guidance process. However, care must be given not to encourage our friends or spouses to prolong negative and self defeating perspectives. So, while our friends are expressing distress, we should acknowledge and comfort the distress with compassion and empathy without collaborating with their blame of others or situations. Remember that each time a distressing situation is remembered and discussed the opportunity exists to alter and emotionally resolve the experiences associated with it in the ways described in the section on managing stress and distress.
Engaging the self-distanced orientation discussed earlier is more important in our social lives than any other area, because of the way it flavors our reactions to the negativity and positivity of others. In the self-immersed orientation, insecurely attached people experience all of the negativity of others as intense personal threats, and all of the positivity of others as affirmation of their selves. This results in reactions to others that mirror them, either positively or negatively. In the self-distanced orientation securely attached individuals tend to respond to positivity with positivity, and negativity with compassion. It is easy to see how the self-distanced orientation creates greater security, endears us to others and facilitates meaningful relationships.

Actively engage other people
You don’t have to be an extrovert to have a rewarding and supportive social life. There are potential friends and mates in your world suited to your degree of sociability, but you must find and befriend some of them. Meet people where those with your interests and values congregate. Observe who you are attracted to, talk and do things with them, and pay attention to how it feels. If it feels good, then find out if you can feel good and be safe doing things with them.
Share information about yourself
There are steps to getting to know people in each culture that go essentially unstated. At the risk of being simplistic, I will outline the general ones here. First, share facts about yourself with others and see if this information is treated with respect. If so, share your opinions and see if you are safe differing with them. If you try this several times with a particular individual, and the good feelings disappear each time, slow down until you have more experiences with that individual.
If you still feel safe and enjoy a person, start practicing self-disclosure. Share some of your positive and negative experiences and feelings, and see how those are handled. Encourage that person to do likewise, and don't allow this to go on one-sided. Finally, share confidences after you have reached a very high level of trust. If the mutual sharing of confidences is beneficial and confidential, you are well on your way toward forming a meaningful friendship.
Build trust over time
For you to be a good friend, you must play the giving side of the relationship by showing interest and respect, providing support, and keeping confidences. These three qualities endear people to each other and promote trust and attachment. The quickest way to lose momentum in relationships is to violate these principles. Some people are incapable of being good friends because they do not have sufficient emotional and character maturity to respond to others in this way. As you develop that maturity, you become more attractive as a friend. You also develop the discernment not to rely on people who can't really be part of your support system. The discussion later on spiritual and character development will head you in the direction of social attraction and meaningful relationships.
Include quality care-givers in your social support system
To find high quality emotional support for yourself you will need to know what to look for. Start by developing the assurance that your potential caregiver is capable and wants to understand and respond to your feelings and desires. This assurance, and the expectation that confidences will be kept will have a detectable safe-calming effect. Your caregiver should reinforce that you are both responsible for and capable of emotional resolutions and positive changes. He or she should help you challenge negativity and form beneficial perspectives. He should also express happiness about your positive changes, and provide gentle accountability if asked to do so.
Persons of great maturity in these areas are very attractive to others, and in great demand. They are able to be caregivers to many, but they only really confide in a few others. If you are not sufficiently mature, they are more likely to be your mentor or spiritual counselor than your friend. These relationships are invaluable, but only exist as long as you are working on your own personal growth. If that is what you are committed to do, find one or more of these people. At some point be clear with them that you desire their guidance, and see if they agree to play that role.
Provide emotional support
Care-giving is central to emotional development throughout the life span. This care can be summed up in two major actions: giving comfort and proving guidance. These two responses correspond with the two ways people process the emotional issues in their lives: emotional regulation and problem-solving. Through eye contact, physical closeness, touch, facial expressions, tone of voice, receptive body language and empathy a caregiver can read and choose to respond to the stress and distress of another.
Being emotionally open and physically present is calming to others in distress. This might include some appropriate form of physical touch. There is no need to solve their problems. Expressions of empathy for the distress they are experiencing helps friends bear and then resolve hurt feelings and confusion.
Provide good guidance
The essence of guidance is assisting another person with adaptive reflection. Usually this is to achieve resolution of distressing experiences, but sometimes it is to solve a life problem. Constructive problem-solving requires a certain level of emotional regulation. Until your friend is able to be constructive, don't encourage problem-solving. Readiness for problem-solving occurs when your friend or spouse is no longer approaching the issue from a negative and limiting perspective that will lead to few if any good options. This signals a point of willingness to explore a more positive or spiritual perspective. A positive perspective is based in enabling beliefs and a spiritual perspective is based in gratitude, compassion, forgiveness and service to others.
Good guidance reinforces your friend's or spouse's responsibility for constructive solutions. This means that you do not take over the solution of the problem. Your friend's acceptance of responsibility is the next step in problem-solving. Suggestions should be kept at a minimum. The best suggestions are the ones that are requested. Most people have a lot of difficulty accepting unsolicited suggestions, especially if there is an implied obligation to follow them.
Good guidance also reinforces your friend or partner as capable. Expressions of confidence in his or her ability and willingness to stay in the problem-solving process until reaching a good solution may be all that is needed in any one encounter. It also helps to praise more positive emotional responses and perspectives as they arise. Reinforcing your partner as responsible and capable instills a sense of comfort and hope. Do express a willingness to cooperate with good solutions. Support can come in many forms of assistance, especially encouragement and praise.
Maintain trust as the core of relationships
Trust is also reinforced by strict confidentiality. Sharing very personal information with others about your friend or partner, failing to provide comfort when sought, and interjecting your need and issues into your spouse's or friend's problems can be experienced as betrayal of the implied care-giving relationship. Care-giving that provides comfort and guidance builds trust in the relationship, and trust opens the door to deeper friendship and intimacy