Introduction Relationships are an important part of life because we all need that sense of belonging. As humans, we crave social connections. People cannot live in isolation, although some may choose to live that way temporarily.
One study of nearly 7,000 people done in Alameda County in California found that people who had a myriad of social contacts like a spouse or a close-knit family member or another type of affiliation, actually lived longer and had better health when compared to those who were more socially isolated, (PubMed.gov, 1979).
What these findings tell us is that social connections and relationships are vital to our health and wellness, and without them, we do not fare as well.
The relationships we have throughout our lives are vitally important to the quality of our lives and although the actual scientific reason for this may not be entirely known or understood, it could be that this sense of belonging improves the immune system.
This may also lead us to the conclusion that those with poor health or mental health issues may, in fact, be in poor health simply because of loneliness or isolation. Loneliness affects everyone, at one time or another, and loneliness does not discriminate. Those we connect with in our lives are an important part of our health and well-being.
The truth is, we need to belong and feel loved and supported so it’s important to stay connected and to remember to reach out to those around you.
Taking that time to connect with people, whether they are your friends or family members is important, because, without these connections, your life will most likely feel empty and hollow.
The best place to start if you feel lonely or sad is to start by loving yourself. The relationship we develop within ourselves impacts all of the other relationships in our lives. If you don't first love yourself, then you will never find that love in someone else.
Many of us forget to love and nurture ourselves, but it's vitally important to our health and wellness.
Scientists are continually examining the possible link between mental and physical health and how the idea of loneliness affects our bodies. We all feel lonely at different times throughout our lives, and there may be a number of reasons why. Relationships ebb and flow and they change over time. For example, friends may move away or spouses may die, but thankfully other people usually come into our lives to fill in the gaps.
Loneliness may, in fact, affect your brain similar to how to physical pain affects your body. Loneliness definitely has an impact on your quality of life, because those who are lonely may be chronically unhappy.
According to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who wrote in a column for O Magazine regarding a study done in 2003:
"A remarkable study led by Naomi Eisenberger, PhD, an associate professor of social psychology at UCLA, found that being excluded -- which can push you to the social perimeter and, as a result, cause feelings of loneliness -- triggered activity in some of the same regions of the brain that register physical pain," ("Just Say Hello: The Powerful New Way To Combat Loneliness", 2014).
This statement provides a correlation between loneliness and exclusion to physical pain. Looking back at our ancestral history, we can see that our ancestors relied heavily on social connections and groups for both survival and companionship - because staying close to the tribe often meant staying safe because separation meant danger.
Gupta also reported that our bodies may actually sense a threat to its survival, and as a result, turn on some of the same pain signals that would occur if we were in real physical danger.
Those who are chronically lonely may actually have higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol when compared to those who are more socially connected.
In this article, you will learn about the psychology of adult relationships, and the development of those relationships as well as the idea of interpersonal attraction. You will also delve into your own psyche as you learn how vitality important it is to love yourself first.
After that, you will investigate what entails a happy relationship as well as relationship skills and communication strategies.
The final learning outcomes entail learning about the male and female brain and looking into the idea of a soul mate and manifesting love.
Last but not least, you will also learn about some personal intervention methods and how to repair a broken relationship.
Relationships may not always be easy, but they definitely make life worth living!
The Importance of Relationships
Love is the greatest of all the human needs and we can't survive without it. Love is one of the greatest pleasures in life, and if we look back at our lives, it is most often the love that we remember the most.
Relationships can be challenging to say the least, but they can also be immensely rewarding. There are many kinds of love from romantic love to family love to love in friendships and even business relationships. Personal love is often expressed as tenderness; kindness, courtesy, affection and devotion, whilst impersonal love is really love without the personal attachment or emotional involvement.
We may state, for example, that we love all people and all people love us, but that wouldn’t be the same as personal romantic love.
The Importance of Relationships
Relationships are vitally important to a healthy life. There is compelling evidence that shows that having a strong relationship contributes to a long and happy life. On the other hand, there is also evidence that suggests that there may actually be health risks associated with being alone or being isolated.
What does the research show?
Healthy relationships can help you live longer, deal better with stress and even help you achieve and maintain better health.
In a review of over 148 studies, it was discovered that people with strong social relationships were 50% less likely to die prematurely! (University of Minnesota, 2013).
Dan Buettner’s Blue Zone research actually calculated that committing to a life partner could add 3 years to a life expectancy. Researchers Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler also found that men’s life expectancy benefited more from marriage when compared to women’s.
The support offered by a caring friend can actually provide a buffer against the effects of stress.(University of Minnesota, 2013).
One study of over 100 people found that those who completed a stressful task experienced a faster recovery when they were reminded of people with whom they had strong relationships. On the other hand, those who were reminded of stressful relationships actually experienced even more stress and higher blood pressure.
According to research by psychologist Sheldon Cohen, college students who reported being in strong relationships were half as likely to catch a common cold when exposed to a virus. (University of Minnesota, 2013).
A 2012 international Gallup poll found that those who felt they had friends and family to count on were generally much more satisfied with their personal health compared to those who felt more isolated, (University of Minnesota, 2013).
Research also infers that hanging out with healthy people may actually increase your own likelihood of health. In the book "Connected", Christakis and Fowler show that non-obese people are more likely to have non-obese friends because healthy habits spread throughout your social network.
Another survey of 5,000 people done by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that doubling your group of friends had the same effect on your wellbeing as a 50% increase in income, which is quite amazing! (University of Minnesota, 2013).
A lack of social support can have a devastating impact on your health, believe it or not. Some effects of low social support include:
1. Depression.
2. Decreased immune function.
3. Higher blood pressure.
In one 2012 study of breast cancer patients, it was found that those who had fewer satisfying social connections experienced higher levels of pain, depression and fatigue. Loneliness has long been correlated with depression, and research clearly backs this up.
The same study also found a correlation between loneliness and immune system dysregulation, or a lack of social support increasing your chances of getting sick.
In a study done by the University of Chicago in a group of 229 adults, it was found that that loneliness could predict higher blood pressure even years later, which tells us that isolation could have long-term consequences, (University of Minnesota, 2013).
The Importance of Love
Love is one of the most profound emotions known to man. There are of course many different kinds of love, but most of us are seeking that one on one romantic love with a compatible partner. For many of us, the idea of finding a compatible partner is extremely important in terms of our sense of fulfillment in life. Much of this ability to form a stable relationship begins in infancy, with our childhood experiences. Our earliest experiences often determine how we look at life in terms of our childhood caregivers and how they met our needs. Infants need care, protection, and social contact, and there have even been studies that have been done that have shown that infants who did not get the love or affection or the touch they needed suffered severe consequences.
The Importance of Touch
According to one Harvard study, children need touching and attention, and keeping your baby close helps them to feel safe. Researchers also found that early stress from separation may even cause an infant's brain to be more susceptible to stress in the future, (The Harvard University Gazette, 1998).
The relationship we have with our parent's or caregivers appear to establish patterns of relating to others. Failed relationships happen for a number of reasons, and relationship failures are often a source of great psychological anguish.
Touch is just as important for infants as it is for adults. One study in Romania done in the 1980s showed that children who were raised in an orphanage in deprived surroundings had higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol (Scientific American, 2010).
Skin to skin contact, especially in newborns, can help calm and soothe a baby helping them sleep better and cry less. Skin to skin contact can even help mothers by reducing their stress levels and lowering incidence of depression.
Why are Relationships Important?
Sometimes life can be challenging, to say the least. While you may feel like isolating yourself from the world, in times of stress, it is in those times when you need to reconnect with the ones you love even more.
Having meaningful relationships and sharing yourself with others can help you cope better with the stress and strain of life. Healthy relationships can also help you maintain a more positive outlook, helping you stave off feelings of depression, anger or even anxiety.
Sharing your feelings and your hopes and your challenges with others can help you stay connected and maintain that sense of camaraderie. In other words, friends and family are an important part of life.
Healthy relationships stem from mutual respect and equality. Everyone has a unique contribution and something valuable to offer, so it pays to look for someone's positive contribution rather than always looking for ways to find fault.
Having said this, it's also important to stand up for yourself and to let go of any unhealthy relationship patterns because there are some people who may leave us feelings unfulfilled or drained of energy.
As you move through different phases of your life, your needs will change. People also grow and change at different levels, so you may reach a point when an old connection no longer serves you. If you find yourself in a destructive relationship the best thing you can do, if the relationship is no longer repairable, is to let it go.
If a relationship is causing you more stress, anger, anxiety or depression than it is helping you it may be time to pursue another avenue.
Theories of Social Relationships
There are different theories when it comes to social bonding and relationships.
1. The attachment theory
2. The convoy model
3. Socioemotional selective theory
4. Evolutionary psychology
Attachment Theory and Relationships
As we have seen, your experiences with caregivers and role models in your childhood may, in fact, impact the choices you make in love as an adult. This theory is known as the attachment theory (University of Illinois, 2010). This theory infers that as adults, we base our closest relationships on the experiences we had with our caregivers as children.
The attachment theory was first developed by John Bowlby, a British psychoanalyst who studied infant's attachment to their caregivers.
Bowlby’s studies were primarily focused on infants, but he also believed that attachments affected one's relationships all during the course of their life.
Modern day theorists believe that same motivational system is in place when it comes to adults and romantic partnerships. Looking at both kinds of relationships, we can see that each elicit similar responses in terms of helping us feel safe and secure, helping us enjoy close, intimate contact and helping us share discoveries. On the other hand, fears developed in childhood may also cause us to feel insecure when the other partner is unavailable or inaccessible as adults.
As adults we form something called attachment styles - these have also been called attachment patterns or attachment orientations.
Hazen and Shaver (1987) found that adults fall into one of three categories when it comes to relationships:
1. 60% of adults classified themselves as secure
2. 20% classified themselves as avoidant
3. 20% classified themselves as anxious-resistant
Those who classify themselves as secure most likely find it relatively easy to get close to others. They also don't worry as much about being abandoned. Those who classify themselves as avoidant may actually find it difficult or uncomfortable to get close to others and they might also have trust issues. Last but not least, those who classify themselves as anxious or resistant may discover that others are reluctant to get as close as they would like, even to the point of scaring people away.
Studies indicate that the secure attachment style is obviously the most desirable of all three, and for good reason. When selecting partners, you might have a much easier time if you perceive that it is somewhat easy for you to get close to others. The truth is that secure adults tend to be more secure partners in love relationships as well.
The convoy model
The convoy model takes into account all of the changing relationships in adulthood (The Convoy Model, 2015). As you can see from the diagram below, certain relationships will change over time or according to age.
The most important people will be in those inner circles and at the top of the chart. As time goes on, people's importance changes as relationships change or children come and go. The chart below is just one example of how someone's life may be portrayed at a given moment in time.
In the convoy theory of social networks, individuals go through life embedded within a personal network of people, from whom they give and receive social support. The concentric circles are used to separate people in terms of their closeness or their relationship.
Socioemotional selective theory
According to this theory, as we grow older, we tend to prefer more meaningful social relationships. This theory maintains that over time and as our horizons shrink, as they typically do as we age, that we will become increasingly selective, investing greater resources in emotionally meaningful goals and activities.
According to this theory, these motivational shifts also influence our cognitive processing (Bjorklund& Bee, 2008).
As we age, we tend to place a higher value on emotional satisfaction, and, as a result, spend more time with familiar individuals with whom we have had rewarding relationships.
According to this theory, older adults systematically hone their social networks so that those who surround them satisfy their emotional needs (Bjorklund& Bee, 2008).
The socioemotional selective theory has a lot to do with the perception of time, and with how much time one believes they have left on this earth. This perception of time also affects one's motivation, in terms of the goals they set and the people they surround themselves with.
Evolutionary psychology
The evolutionary psychology approach is based on the growing belief that social relationships had an important part in evolution and more specifically in the development of the human mind.
This approach examines how our early ancestors banded together in small groups as an important survival strategy. Social relationships not only protected the group from predators but they also provided access to food, shelter, and insulation from the environment.
According to this theory, individuals who carry genes of cooperativeness, group loyalty, or promotion of social inclusion are more likely to survive in the primal environment and more likely to pass on these genes to their descendants (Bjorklund& Bee, 2008).
This theory plays off the idea that as humans we have a universal need to belong and this need drives our life and our relationships.
Awareness of the Different Types of Relationships
Our family relationships form the base of the pyramid of our life. If we are in disharmony at this bottom level, every other relationship is going to feel this disharmony as well. We are born into these family relationships and we often have no choice as to this manner. Our family relationships extend far beyond our immediate family and they might also include people like our teachers, pastors, or even our friends or work colleagues.
If we were able to live in complete harmony with every living thing, all of our problems would more than likely disappear in an instant. Since we don’t live in a world free of discord, we all need to find a way to peacefully co-exist. We are in essence in a state of connectedness with every living thing around us, so everyone’s harmony or disharmony also affects us.
Our families obviously change over the years as our parent’s pass and our children grow up. Relationships can be a source of great joy, or they can cause us a great amount of discomfort. If our basic family relationships are not a strong source of joy and comfort, this obviously creates a lot of problems for us in all of the other relationships in our world.
The word “family” has many different meanings for each of us. The family used to be represented by a smiling mother and father with several happy children. In today’s world, the word family means something much more - it might mean a single-family home, a foster home, a stepmother or father or even an adoptive family or some kind of blended family.
How does your family influence your life? The answer varies for each of us. When you can learn to honor and praise the members of your family you develop a deep level of respect for one another. In recognizing the essential values each party brings into your life, you do unto others, as you would like done to yourself.
When parents are in harmony, the children are also much more likely to be in harmony as well. However, a wealthy family is not necessarily a rich family in terms of wealth, but they are a rich family in terms of their amount of love and respect. If there is constant discord and angst amongst the family, the family will begin to lose its balance. It is difficult in today’s world to live harmoniously because everywhere you turn you see anger and violence.
It seems as if every time you pick up a newspaper or turn on the television, that you see stories of gangs and drugs, or random shootings or crimes that have gotten out of control. When you strive to seek peace and harmony within your family, this sense of harmony can then expand. Heart by heart and home-by-home, you will then spread this sense of peace to everyone you come in contact with.
Therefore, the secret to a happy life may just lie in seeking a sense of peace and harmony within yourself and within your family life. Then and only then will you be able to spread this same kind of peace throughout the world.
There are obviously many different types of relationships depending on your stage of life. Some of these include:
1. Parental relationships
2. Family relationships
3. Friend relationships
4. Business relationships
5. Intimate and romantic relationships
In addition to different kinds of relationships, there are also different relationships styles.
1. Committed relationships
2. Friend’s only relationships
3. Codependent relationships
4. Independent relationships
5. Dominating relationships
6. Rebound relationships
7. Open relationships
8. Toxic relationships
9. Temporary relationships
10. Purely sexual relationships
How to Create Better Relationships and Greater Family Harmony
Families that are in harmony experience the element of togetherness. Part of being in harmony with life is learning how to create better relationships and harmony within your own family. When you take the time to carefully examine what you devote the 24 hours of your day to you can begin to weed out those things that are not essential.
You can create harmony in many ways from talking with your children while preparing a meal to simply spending time together while doing chores or other everyday activities. When problems arise, taking the time to have a meaningful discussion can go a long way to easing family disputes.
Children often learn to make decisions within the boundaries set by their parents. Parents who take the time to explain the reasoning behind their decisions can help their children in their own decision-making process. Helping your children understand the consequence behind their decisions helps your children learn.
Taking the time to express your appreciation to each member of the family can ease strain and tension and promote a sense of peace and harmony.
Just think about how nice life would be if each of us took the time to tell our loved ones every day how much we really appreciated what they do for us on a daily basis.
Expressing appreciation doesn’t have to be a formal process; if you express appreciation in your own words and actions you can pave the way for others to do the same. For example, you can congratulate your child for a job well done or tell your spouse how much you appreciate them helping out around the house for example.
Establishing open and honest communication is essential for both families and couples. Communicating is all about expressing your needs or feelings to others. While it’s important to express your needs, it’s also important to listen to others, even if you don’t necessarily agree.
If you have a problem, don’t keep it all to yourself. Speak to someone about it.
If you can’t speak to a family member, call a friend and get some honest advice or feedback on the issue at hand.
Most of all don’t be ashamed to ask for help because reaching out to others is a positive step towards promoting good family harmony.
How Healthy is Your Personal Relationship?
Whether you are involved in a serious committed relationship, or a more casual friendship, the health of your relationship can play a big role in your life.
Ideally, a couple will keep each other company and live together for the rest of their lives, but it's also important to remember that people come together for a reason or a season so not all relationships are meant to last a lifetime.
To keep a sense of harmony, a devoted couple should try to solve problems together, and share their happiness as well as sadness together. Working together for a better future is key to promoting a happy and successful partnership.
A harmonious relationship will give both partners a sense of satisfaction and achievement. In addition, healthy relationships also provide a strong and stable environment for raising children.
A healthy relationship means appreciating your partner’s strengths and achievements as well as supporting them when things aren’t going so well. Each of us has our weaknesses and learning how to accept people for who and what they are, can go a long way towards each person’s happiness.
Each of us has a multitude of responsibilities in life, and it can be easy to forget to treat our partners with loving care. Making time to share your successes and disappointments is critical to a healthy relationship.
Relationships are always changing and growing, so you have to work to keep them alive and healthy. It's important to, of course, make time for passion so it goes without saying that you need to have a regular date night to let your hair down and enjoy each other per se. Beyond that, it’s important to remember to bring some fun and play back in your relationship, because laughter can be very healing. Laughing can even be sexy when it comes down to it, so don't forget to make time for fun.
Before you continue reading, take a moment to stop and ask yourself how healthy your relationship is?
If your relationship needs some work, that's OK, because acknowledging that is the first step towards healing.
Business Relationships
Having a sense of peace and balance in your life also includes having a sense of harmony in the workplace. Harmony in the workplace is all about promoting the benefits of an inclusive and culturally diverse workforce.
Culturally diversity refers to the differences between cultures which are associated with things like race, ethnicity, national or geographic origin. There are many types of cultures including ethnic cultures and work cultures.
Diversity is relevant to everyone, as each of us is shaped by our experiences and practices related to our cultural identity. Having cultural diversity in the workplace means being sensitive to specific cultural needs like clothing or dress, religious practices, social values, customs, or even family obligations or non-verbal behaviours such as eye contact or hand gestures.
There are many benefits of being more aware of cultural diversity including avoiding discrimination, developing and maintaining a positive public image, creating a healthy and inclusive work environment, and promoting innovation, creativity and problem-solving.
Attaining peace and harmony in the workplace is a critical ingredient when it comes to your level of happiness in life.
