Relatedness

To be “related” to someone – to have intimacy – clearly requires that both parties feel free to speak their minds, commit to listening, and strive to understand each other.

In other words, relationships are fundamentally defined by reciprocity.

Clearly, you and I do not have a “relationship” if you forbid me to provide any feedback about anything you say or do. If I am not allowed to change my facial expression, open my mouth and say anything, or provide any response or feedback to your words or actions, then clearly I cannot be said to be having a relationship with you in any way at all.

Clearly, any intimate relationship also requires that both parties respect each other’s thoughts, emotions and opinions. I cannot say that you and I are “close,” while at the same time disagreeing with everything that you say, and criticizing everything that you do.

Similarly, intimacy requires feedback that is objective. If you show me a portrait you have painted and I tell you that it is terrible because I am jealous of how good it is, clearly the feedback that I’m giving you is not objective. This is equally true if I tell you that your portrait is wonderful when it is not because I am afraid of hurting your feelings.

This requirement for objective feedback does not exist only in relation to external objects.

If I am angry with you, and you ask me how I am feeling, and I tell you that I am “fine,” then I am not giving you objective feedback. Expecting any relationship to flourish when you mislead your partner is like expecting a doctor to cure the pain in your arm after you tell him that your leg is hurting.

Thus if you and I have an intimate relationship, it must be true that we are giving each other objective and authentic feedback. We cannot be “close” if everything I say to you is a lie, or if every emotion that I claim to feel is manufactured – or, of course, if I only tell you what I think you “want to hear,” or keep silent out of fear, or actively mislead you.

Intimacy and Value

Similarly, intimacy cannot coexist with any sort of “third-party validation” of each other’s value.

If I date you only because you “look good on my arm,” then it is not because I find particular value in you, but rather because I imagine that other people will find “value” in your appearance. If a woman marries a doctor because she primarily desires the prestige of being a doctor’s wife, then the value of the man she is marrying is defined by the possible judgments of other people – not the man in and of himself.

An actor who befriends an agent in the hopes of gaining representation cannot claim to be “close” to that agent, but rather is using him as a means to an end. This is not always bad, of course – economically, I “use” my grocer as a means to the end of getting food, just as he “uses” me as a means to the end of getting money – but I would certainly not claim that I am “close” to my grocer!

Reciprocity

Without reciprocity, relationships are empty, manipulative, meaningless – and somewhat delusional.

We would not look at a ventriloquist who said “I have a close relationship with my dummy,” as particularly sane or healthy, because his dummy, being functionally inert, clearly cannot provide any objective reciprocity in such a “relationship.”

Also, if the primary “reciprocity” in a relationship is based on third-party validation, then clearly individual, or one-on-one reciprocity, is not particularly present.

If a woman dates a man because he is “so cute that her friends will be envious,” then obviously her primary relationship is with her friends, not with the cute man. He is merely a means to an end, which is the envy of her friends. Thus the primary reciprocity she experiences is not with him, but with others.

In the same way, a man who dates a woman because he fears solitude does not have a positive relationship with her, but rather a “negative” relationship with his own fears. She is an anxiety-avoidance mechanism, and only has “value” as a human shield against his own low self-esteem. He has the same motives as a bank robber who grabs a hostage in order to avoid capture.