Page 36 - Relationships101 A Guide To Building Healthy Relationships Final 1

Chapter Four ~ Relationships

Intimacy

1. A close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with
another person or group.
2. A close association with a detailed knowledge and deep understanding of a
person, place, subject, or a period in history.
3. An act or expression serving as a token of familiarity, affection or the like.
4. Sexual intercourse.
5. The quality of being comfortable, warm or familiar.

Are you intimate with yourself? Are you in close association with, or have a detailed knowledge or deep
understanding of who you are? Are you comfortable, warm, and familiar with yourself? If not, then how
can you relate on this level in a relationship?

Merriam-Webster defines relationship as:

1. The state of being related.
2. The relations connecting or binding participants in a relationship.
3. A state of affairs existing between having relations or dealings; a romantic or
passionate attachment.
4. The relations connecting or binding participants in a relationship.
5. A state of affairs existing between having relations or dealings; a romantic or
passionate attachment.

Do you want to be in a relationship? (This is for you even if you are already in a relationship.) Do you
want to be connected on an intimate level? Do you want to have healthy bonds in your romantic or
platonic attachments? Are you willing to find out the strengths, weaknesses, and behavior you bring to
a relationship?

If no, put the book down and stay the way you are. You are probably experiencing the successful
relationships you want in life and there is nothing to fix and there is no need to change anything.
If you answered yes, keep reading.

Let me share this with you. The purpose of human relationships may be the expansion of consciousness
itself. Through the process of identifying and resolving relationship problems, we are forced to deal
with our internal incongruences, or inability to handle relationship issues in a productive manner and
come to an understanding with someone with whom we once clashed. As we become more conscious

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