identity and intimacy

Why Subservience Is Always Dangerous

• Those who want to control everything and deliberately choose someone with weak ego-strength are sure to reap a bitter harvest. The subservient partner or friend becomes increasingly unhappy, less and less fun to be with, less interesting, less lovable, and - most significantly - less able to love.
• The best friendships, marriages, business partnerships and parent-child relationships are those that strive for balance. The connections work because each person is getting some needs met, and it is a fairly even swap.
• For such mutuality to occur, three things must happen. First, the two unashamedly enter the friendship with the hope that some of their desires will be answered, and second, both listen carefully to the data their friend is feeding them about what is desired from the friendship. Finally they both throw themselves into meeting as many of those desires as possible.
• We would like our friends and our mates to be so attuned to us that they know our desires instinctively, but that does not happen often; we cannot assume that our partners can read our minds.
• You take risks if you become open about your longings. Once in a while the other person will not respond. But it is sad if you stop expressing them because of occasional disappointment and thereby bed down with disappointment as your constant companion.
• Is usch raw animal passion wrong? Some theologians and other thinkers believe so, calling Eros, "I-love-you-because-I-need-you." He is, in one psychologist's words, "seeking self-gratification by means of another," and with such a definition the writer supposes he is pointing out how evil pure erotic desire is. But it is not evil when rightly used: it is wonderful. It is I-love-you-and-I-need-you.

Self-Worth: A Requirement for Intimacy

• "Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals.... Benefits which cannot be repaid and obligations which cannot be discharged are not commonly found to increase affection. They excite gratitude indeed and heighten veneration, but commonly take away that easy freedom and familiarity of intercourse without which... there cannot be friendship. - Samuel Johnson "
• We can't have a very positive self-perception if we're not loving and being loved. And we can't be good at love unless we have healthy self-worth.
• a good relationship will help build self-image, but you cannot depend on others for nearly all your sense of worth. It must come from within you.
• the better we can know ourselves the better we're going to feel about who we are - the more at peace we'll be.
• Self-acceptance doesn't mean that we'll like all we find within, or that we'll stop working to improve our faults. There is a difference between encouraging the sinful tendencies within us and accepting the fact that they are there.
• it is also essential to get a grasp of your hopes, your desires, your particular pleasures, what you like, and how you're different from others in these needs.
• how could they reveal their needs and desires to their close friends and mates if they didn't know what they wanted?

The Art of Adaptation

• just as it is important to ascertain your desires, it is crucial to bend to the desires of your friend.
• If both have strong reasons to stick to their guns, then they try something else. Negotiation. Compromise.

--- quoted from "The Friendship Factor" by Alan Loy Mcginnis