Types of Relationships

relationship: a connection, association, or involvement; a connection between persons by blood or marriage; an emotional or other connection between people 1, Random House Webster's unabridged dictionary

Let's identify types of relationships. There's love, lust, and just plain having fun. The beauty of a relationship is that it may start out one way and end up another. Lust or just plain having fun may develop into true love or end up as it began; both lust and just plain having fun are double-edged swords.

There are other kinds of relationships, such as with colleagues, associates, and friends. These can end as love, lust, or just plain having fun. We'll talk a little about those also, but first we must understand that the point of all relationships is companionship. What you get out of a relationship depends on the type of relationship you're cultivating. Just remember: no matter what type of relationship you're developing, if you plant a good seed, you will harvest a good crop. Also remember that, like crops, some relationships are harder to cultivate than others.

Now let's talk about some different kinds of relationships: business relationships, social relationships, family relationships, platonic relationships, lustful relationships, loving relationships, just plain having fun, and the big kahuna, marriage. All relationships should come with a written plan. You should use the Bible as a guide to let you know when you're off track and what you should do to get back on track.

Business Relationships

These relationships can be simply business, or they can develop into social or personal relationships, which include love, lust, and/or sex. One reason business relationships can easily involve lust, sex, or love is that the people you meet on the job are those you spend the most time with. That proximity and time spent together brings you closer to those people in your feelings, often changing your heart. You may find out that you like someone more than you originally thought, and a different type of relationship begins.

Social Relationships

The one type of relationship that we all need most to get along in the world is social relationships — that is, relationships pertaining to the life, welfare, and relations of human beings in a community. Some people are naturally more social than others, Being in a social relationship means communicating openly. Having a social relationship means you have a common thread, something you share that brings you together, such as a certain event or place. Perhaps you're in the same business, neighborhood, school, family, or organization, or you may be in a yearly, monthly, or weekly gathering that allows people to congregate and communicate.

Family Relationships

The one relationship we all have in common is family. I've often heard people say, "I have no family." This is false; we all came from somewhere! Parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews, and cousins (first through fourth) are family. All descendants of a common progenitor are considered family. In my most humble opinion, being family means being related through blood or marriage or being bonded through a sorority or fraternity. Although sorority sisters and fraternity brothers aren't blood relatives, once you've crossed the burning sand together, you're born as sisters or brothers for life.

Platonic Relationships

For most of us, the relationships that bond us within the same sex are platonic. I say "most of us" because some people form romantic or sexual relationships with others of the same gender. Platonic relationships are also possible between sexes, but these relationships often turn into lust, sex and sometimes love. Believe it or not, this has a lot to do with proximity. (I will talk more about the role of proximity later in this chapter.)

Lustful Relationships

Lust, by definition, is an intense sexual desire or appetite.

The most common relationship between a man and a woman is lust. Yes, I did say the most common. Lust is what gets our attention at the beginning of a relationship. It is also responsible for ruining more relationships than I care to mention. That's not to say that lust is necessarily a bad thing or that every relationship is lustful or sexual; some are strictly platonic. However, what may appear to be a platonic relationship could have a bit of lustfulness involved, even if neither party is aware of it.

You see, lust is an urge that's often uncontrollable. Because of this, lust can become a double-edged sword; your lustful ways may draw you to your mate, but they may also draw you away from your mate to someone else. Uncontrolled lust will draw you from one person to another in a vicious cycle. This cycle may cause you to have a difficult time establishing a long-lasting and successful relationship. You may be successful in having many mates but unsuccessful in developing true love, which is what we all subconsciously desire. That brings me to my next point.

Love Relationships

Love is a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.

I define love here because some of us have never taken the time to look up the meaning of the word in a dictionary or the Bible. Therefore, they've never read what it means to love or be loved. Could this be why so many of us don't understand what it means to love or accept love from someone?

True love is the foundation of life. Try this on for size: God created us — and the world — out of love. True love enriches our lives and manifests itself in our hearts, minds, and finances beyond our ability to exhaust it. So with true love comes a richness of life, even a financial richness of life, beyond our wildest dreams.

Unfortunately, the opposite is true for those who never open their hearts and accept true love. Although life is the basis of love, it may seem to be out of our reach. But because we were all created from love, love is within all of us. Love is the most misunderstood, abused, and misused aspect of humanity that each of us has to deal with. Although we are created from love, we must still learn how to love and be in love. You can't learn how to be in love by reading a book, nor can you learn it through study; you can learn it only by experiencing it.

The beauty is that love is not something that can be faked or staged; you can't be tricked into thinking that you're in love, at least not for a prolonged period. If you think you might be in love, you're not, because love is something that you will know unmistakably. You may not comprehend or believe this, and you may want to argue the point. I can't explain this to you. All I can say is that you will know love when you find it or when it finds you — when you open your heart and accept it.

You might wonder, How will I know love? or How will I find love? My only answer is that the feeling is different for every single person. To find true love, you must let go and follow your heart. Love with your heart, not with your eyes or your mind, and love according to your own standards, not your family's or friends' standards.

Remember that love is not what someone tells you; it's what he or she shows you — hence the statement "Don't tell me how much you love me. Show me." Men often mistake multiple sexual experiences with love, whereas women usually seek qualities in men to quantify their quest for love. That is not to say that some women don't seek multiple sexual partners to find those qualities.

Basically, men consider multiple sexual experiences to be love, and women consider a relationship with a quality man to be love. In describing love, I'm not talking about materialist things, nor am I talking about nonmaterialistic things, such as sex or lust, that a person may bring to the table and that may be confused with love. Although gifts and trinkets are proof that love may exist, they are still only proof of love; they aren't love itself. Some people may use gifts and trinkets to try to trick you into thinking that they are in love with you when their gifts are actually derived from lust. There is a significant difference between someone attempting to buy you with gifts and someone letting you know that you're special to him or her. You will know the difference. You may or may not care about your partner's intentions as long as that person is buying you gifts. But I warn you that without love, the gifts will soon stop.

When you're in love, you don't care about the gifts; you'll only care about the love. This is the kind of love that makes you whistle or sing out loud; it's real love — or true love. My late grandmother often said that when a woman is really happy in her relationship, she whistles as she goes about her day. So if your wife, girlfriend, or significant other whistles, pat yourself on the back. You're doing something right.

Songwriters have written many songs about love and the effects of love. Some lyrics that come to mind are "If I have to beg and plead for your sympathy, I don't mind, because it means so much to me." (Ain't too proud to beg – the Temptations). If you're ready, willing, and able to do something silly for the attention of the person that you love, you might be in love. Love releases all inhibitions, shame, and embarrassment. Love supersedes everything, (LSE) but pain can run an overwhelming and blinding interference, and humility creates opportunities for successful love.

Here is another songwriter's version of love: "Love the one you're with." (Luther Vandross) That is not really about love but about making love, or sex. Love opens the mind, heart, and soul, and it creates synergy between two people.

Here is the biblical understanding of love:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things 1 Cor. 13:4-8 (English Standard Version) Enough said!

Now let's talk about kissing.

Kissing is one of the things that really causes us to think of true love. A soft kiss from a lover's lips can cause you to drift in the moment and make you want to kiss for hours on end. True love creates smiles that push up from within you at even the slightest thought of your lover, like flowers growing out of the ground. Yes, I said smiles because not only is there a smile on your lips but in your eyes as well.

Kissing speaks volumes as the first sign of a possible strong relationship, because if the first kiss is bad, there may not be a second kiss. A bad kiss is a closed-mouth kiss, a dry kiss, a wet kiss, a stiff kiss, a mushy kiss, a hard kiss, or an overaggressive, tongue-in-the-mouth kiss. Kissing is special and different for every person. The key here — and the reason kissing is special — is if you're really into a person, you pay attention to what he or she likes and expects in a kiss.

The catch is you must pay close attention at the exact moment the kiss begins. Don't worry about knowing how to kiss or what kind of kiss will be a good or bad kiss — until the moment of the kiss. With that said, pay very close attention to what the person you're about to kiss really wants, because the aforementioned bad kisses (closed-mouth kisses, dry kisses, wet kisses, stiff kisses, mushy kisses, hard kisses, and overaggressive, tongue-in-the- mouth kisses) may be great kisses to the person that you're about to kiss.

Great kissers pay close attention to the person that they're about to kiss. They do not have just one type of kiss but can deliver a type specific to each person kissed. When you kiss someone, the kiss is how that person feels about you and how you feel about him or her. A kiss should never be used as a stepping-stone to elevate the relationship to the next level of intimacy. A lot of people kiss only to move hurriedly to sex. However, kissing is meant to create desire and passion. Kisses should be soft, gentle, and deliberate.

A great kiss is when your mate pays close attention to your lips, both the top and the bottom, and gives both the insides and outsides of your lips special attention. A great kisser pauses to kiss both corners of your mouth, enjoying your lips.

Think about this for a minute: What is the point in people having nice lips if they don't use them for kissing or if they don't know how to enjoy kissing? This may sound as if I'm talking in circles; however, a kiss is only as special as the person who is delivering it and the person who is receiving it. With kissing, it is to each his own.

When you find the kind of love I'm talking about, it is not a panacea; you will still have relationship issues to deal with. However, those issues, whatever they may be, will bring you closer and closer to each other and closer to God. When you're in love — really in love — you aren't intimidated by the actions, reactions, or responses of others to your lover. Instead, you will defend and honor your lover against any and all attacks from your family, friends, and anyone else.

Love will change you for the better. Everyone around you will notice the change, and some will envy you because of that change and the love you and your partner have for each other. Your love will make others question their relationships and the love shared between them and their mates. They may think or feel that the special someone they love does not understand them, talk to them, defend them, or love them the way you love your mate. I know this because I've experienced both sides, and when the love is real, there is no better feeling in the world. With that said, I'm not saying that I'm the only one in the world that knows how to love or how it feels; I'm simply saying that I know how to love.

I must warn you that sometimes true love hurts — really hurts. When you lose true love, the pain is not like that of a broken bone or torn muscle; it's much worse and much deeper than that. True love hurts deep down inside you, so deep you can't control the pain. The pain is in everything you do, everything you think, everything you say, and everything you want to say. Your life stops! Yes, just like that, it stops.

When you love someone who walks away, you're destroyed both emotionally and physically. I mention this because it's likely that someone is going to hurt you, and I mean really, really hurt you. If you don't understand this, you will never recover from your lost love and won't get back in the saddle — and you will never find true love again.

Some people think recovery involves learning to return the favor and hurting the ex-lover or someone else. The problem here is that they rarely hurt the person that hurt them, and someone else becomes a victim. They learn to hurt from being hurt, and that's not recovery.

Let me share a little story with you. A friend of mine was badly hurt by his lover near the end of their college years when she broke off their long and what he thought to be great relationship. She told him that she didn't want to continue the relationship because she wanted to keep her options open. To my friend, this statement meant that he was no longer good enough to be considered her lover.

This very painful experience caused my friend to go on a rampage, seeking out sexual partners as conquests in a vendetta against the opposite sex. This behavior caused multiple problems. First, it belittled the importance of a healthy, monogamous sexual relationship. It also prevented trust and the ability to have feelings of falling in love. It basically destroyed his chances of finding and keeping a soul mate.

You see, my friend did not learn to get back in the saddle; instead, he learned how to badly hurt other people after being badly hurt himself. Many years later, after being hurt again in a long, psychologically stressful marriage, he got divorced, still not understanding that pain from the past had caused deep resentment and unresolved feelings.

His vendetta continued, this time in a slightly different manner. He acted in an all-for-me and all-about-me manner. He got involved in a long relationship that appeared to be great, but instead of risking being hurt, he decided to end the relationship, citing reasons and justifications that no one understood. This may seem insignificant at first glance; however, I knew the history, and I understood what had happened. Because of the unresolved issues from his college lover abruptly breaking off their relationship and the damage from his marriage, my friend decided to be the one to end what was, in his own words, a great relationship, using minor reasons and excuses as justification.

The bottom line is that my friend didn't learn how to get back into the saddle or to trust his heart and love again. He learned how to use pain to defend himself against true love. Pain only causes more pain later. I am concerned that my friend's life will be one great relationship after another destroyed for no reason, causing many other people to be damaged and learn what my friend learned: protect yourself against love by hurting the people who really love you.