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(As stated in the Third Collegiate Edition of Webster’s Dictionary) In most cases that definition does not clear anything but I put it there anyway that way you can have the real definition versus mine. The relationship I’m going to be talking about is the one that can exist between heterogeneous humans both male and female. I’m, not talking about a connection by blood but rather a connection by a commonality. A link between two people, so to speak. And how 2 people bond together to stride towards a common goal. That common goal achieving a friendship, girlfriend/boyfriend, husband/wife..etc. First off, just how is a relationship formed? Well I have come up with a set of stages explaining how two people co-exist together. There are 5 basic stages. The first stage of a relationship is basically acknowledging a person. Knowing that their a living, breathing mammal like yourself and they too have a purpose in this world. Now you acknowledge them pretty much by finding out basic information. This basic information being simple things like their name, gender, sharing a common place with them (school, work for example) and their description (red hair, blue eyes, tall, The second stage is beginning socialization but in a casual sense. Talking to that person only about things you 2 might share at a certain obstacle. Such as asking a person for the homework you missed (“Study buddy”) or what did you miss at the meeting for word last Friday. These brief conversations never exceed anything out of bounds. You would never ask your “study buddy” what their plans are for the weekend or anything to that degree. Following these brief conversations you have, you start offering gestures. You may notice yourself saying “hi” to that person when you see them, a possible handshake and saying “bye.” In today’s society you might say the more common phrase “what’s up?” (which basically means what’s new?, how are things?, what have you been upto..etc.) and you’ll get the most likely response of “nothing much” and you’ll be on The 3rd stage is actually becoming friends with that person. This means being an active part in that person’s personal life. More socially. You start to learn their personal side. This means learning things about them that you wouldn’t normally know from looking at that person. Such as their family, love life, personality..etc. Personality is a vague term though. It includes a vast majority of things summed up into one meaning, “what that person is like.” To actually determine someone’s personality you have to find out a lot of different values about them such as their degree of smartness, temper, reactions towards different things, opinions, hostility, degree of kindness..etc (The list could go on for awhile but you get the idea) Now that you are friend with a person and share a role in their life, you are broken down into 2 types of friends, Friend A and B. -Friend A is a casual friend. One whom you hang out with sometimes and talk to sometimes. This friend is often more a “guest” to you. When ever you see this friend, you more or less act towards him/her as if they were your relative who you haven’t seen in awhile. And like most people, you rarely tell your relatives about more personal things to you. For instance, most people wouldn’t tell their grandmother about their crush on this hot guy/girl in school and what you would like to do that person. (Not to be too judgmental, I could be wrong, some people might do that). -Friend B is your diary. They know everything about you and can blackmail you with it. This friend is often referred to as a “best” friend. They share everything with you and vice-versa. This person tends to act more and get treated like a member of your immediate family like a brother and sister. Thus, you just act normal with them, not treating them like a guest and not thinking anything they do with you is weird. Like your best friend going through your refrigerator and helping themselves. (Once again not to be judgmental, some friends can get very pissed off if their best friend raids their refrigerator). Another example would be a more personal thing like crying in front of your friend, knowing that they will help guide you through whatever is bothering you. - Friend C, I know I didn’t mention it above but their is a possibility for a Friend C. Friend C is a mixture of both, someone who acts as your best friend but just doesn’t quite fill your definition of a “best” friend. This friend could be your best “guy” friend if your a girl or your best “girl” friend if your a guy. Usually these friend is referred too for advice on the opposite sex. Being that they are a member of the opposite sex they can’t relate to everything about you. Like a guy can’t possibly know what PMS is like for a girl. Therefore, this makes them an in-between friend known as Friend C. Well, I won’t lie to you anymore but there is a Friend D. I will get to that later Stages 1-3 are very basic yet complex stages. Some of these stages may not always account towards you and some maybe skipped (or done with so quick that you may not take it into account). These 3 stages happen everyday with you, they’re always repeating throughout with life as you meet new people and make new friends. Now stage 4 and 5 aren’t as common as stages 1-3. These two stages vary from person to person. And these stages don’t always happen as frequently. Your probably wondering, what happens at stage 4 with a person. Well being that this essay is on relationships, its about taking your relationship with a person to a greater degree. Stage 4 is when you start to develop an interest in a person but as more then friends, the term often used is “liking” someone. You find yourself growing attached to that person. You become infatuated (your heart beats fast, you turn pale, you become speechless...etc.) with that person and it can last from a couple minutes to months to years. You find yourself attracting to that person, possibly because of their looks, the way they think/act around you or their personality (*--our good friend). Stage 4 is about becoming interested in someone, Stage 5 is actually knowing that you are interested in a person and wanted to know if the feeling is mutual. To derive this information we use a variety of methods. One method might be just coming out and saying to that person how you feel towards them, this method may be the quickest way to know but it is also the riskiest because the results can hurt you. The may not feel the same way towards you and you’ll feel shot down and this can create friction in your friendship. So most of the time we resort to other methods like flirting with that person, seeing if they flirt back (dropping hints), maybe asking a friend to ask that person how they feel towards you (this usually is a bad/good idea from expierence, it can create friction because that person might want to hear it from you instead and get angry but it also might pan out because that person you “like” might not of known you felt that way and feel the same towards you), another method might be writing how you feel to that person instead of saying it such as in a letter or an e-mail. There are other methods of letting that person know how you feel but those are the most common I have seen. Basically whatever method you may decide upon to let that person know their is two possible outcomes. Either they share the same interest or they do not. -If they don’t share the same interest then you’ll have to get over it and move on. Which can be very hard for a person and might make them feel strange towards them now or things could just be fine, one or the other. -But what happens when they do share the same interest and like you in the same way? That’s where the second part of this essay takes us. To conclude part 1, we take a look back and see the 5 stages. These stages are the basic foundation of relationship and its degrees. Some stages can be skipped. And will be skipped throughout out your life. For instance, you may “like” someone without knowing one thing about them but later on forget about them. That’s what makes relationships In Part 1, we took a look at how relationships become formed. Part 2 gets into the nook’s and cranny’s of a relationship. When stage 5 was complete their were 2 outcomes. That person either like you back or they didn’t. We could look at what happens if they didn’t but that’s a dead end and I choose to avoid that area. I would like to take the other road and continue on about relationships as they become more involved. Okay, so the word is out, you both like each other, now what? Well now you begin this new part of “seeing each other”, also known as dating. What this means is you both start spending time with each other whether it’d be public such as a the mall, movies, pool hall..etc. or non-public such as you own house. When dating that person, you start doing special things for them and with them that you wouldn’t always do as a normal friend. For instance you may start buying them small gifts like a teddy bear, flowers, you may write love letters, you maybe become intimate and hold hands, hug, kiss...etc. After dating someone for awhile and its going “smooth”, you start the next approach, which would be asking them out. This step really doesn’t change much except for social status between you two. Instead of “seeing each other” you are now said to be Well after going out with someone for a while you may tend to think your in love and that this is the right person for you. Well what exactly is love? The dictionary states love as “a deep and tender feeling of affection for or attachment or devotion to a person” and “the person who is the other object of such an affection”, you might be thinking “yeah I feel that...” meanwhile you really still don’t have a true definition of love. Your in luck then, I have come up with my own. “Love is a passionate, overwhelming desire for connection; intimacy. From the moment you wake up, ‘til the moment your eyes close at night. Love is wanting someone so much, that it hurts not to. And when they’re not in your life, it’s empty.” “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not boast. It is not proud. Love is not rude and love is not self-seeking. Love is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hope, always perseveres. Love never fails.” And that ladies and I’m going to look at another approach of relationships now. I could go on about the love getting greater between two people and what happens, but that’s fairy tale stuff and quite frankly life isn’t always a fairytale(but don’t get me wrong they do happen). What causes relationships to fail between two people? Their are multiple reasons for this. A very simple reason is that you two are not compatible, you are like mayonnaise and he/she is like a grape jelly, they don’t mix (if they did that would be pretty gross). You can’t spend a lot of time and fall in “love” with someone if you absolutely hate the things they do, have a far different perspective about things/life, a total different personality (yes that word)...etc. You just won’t work. And that’s a basic reason to not working out with someone whom you like/d. Another thing that can cause a “break up” is becoming bored with a person, sharing too much with them and not having anymore “fun”, so to speak. Things becoming too repetitive can cause one person to seek new opportunities which in a sense could lead to cheating on them. Cheating is a big no no in a relationship. It can instantly destroy a relationship by creating a loss of trust, faith and honesty and those 3 characteristics are an important part of a relationship. As the saying goes “Once a cheater, always a cheater”. And this will give you a bad rap not to mention you’ll most likely be by yourself and you’ dont want either. Now don’t get me wrong but their are numerous more reasons that cause a relationship to fail (Probably could write an essay just on that), I was just touching upon the tip of the iceberg and am moving on. Okay, it’s over, you 2 are done with, now what? Well depending on the degree of your break-up you may still want to or don’t want to have a relationship with this person, but a stage 3 relationship, friends we’re talking about. Let’s say you do decide to become friends again and let things go back to normal. Well, things becoming normal will take quite sometime and healing. Don’t rush it. Let it grow back naturally. You can’t force things back into their place after you have just had them scrambled. A good friend of mine told me that “if you are good enough friends to go out, then you are good enough friends to last after the relationship.” I believe this is true, I also believe that after a relationship with someone it can (possibly can not) bring you closer together as friends. Basically that concept is in your hands. This topic also brings us a new idea....Friend D. -Friend D is a person whom you have shared an intimate personal relationship but it didn’t work out for some reason. Now you know everything about this person both as a friend and as there intimate partner. You both share a lot now but at the same time lost a In conclusion, relationships (if your wondering why I italicized this word throughout this essay it’s because it has so many meanings to it and is the topic of the essay) are very complex part of our life. We have numerous ones we share with different people, all at different levels. I hope after reading this essay that you’ve gotten a sense of all the levels of a relationship and some idea of what they are. You may or may not agree with everything I have written, that is okay, no one person can sum everyone’s perspective into one essay, well I know I can’t. Everyone has their own opinion and is entitled to it. I would like to thank you for reading mine. Bibliography: I like writing, I've been doing it for awhile. I enjoy writing things from a psychological sense Word Count: 2590
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