Six Markers of an Intimate Relationship

          Individuals are drawn to live together especially in intimate relationships since ages. Approximately 80% of people live as couples. The intimate relationship offers some very essential benefits to couples. The following six benefits are markers of a happy and healthy intimate relationship.[1] 

Care 

           Care is an important aspect of any good relationship particularly an intimate one. Care assures you that someone is concerned about your well-being and is willing to do their best to alleviate your pain. 

Protection

           Individuals in family and community protect each other from physical, emotional, social, and environmental dangers. The need to protect each other is higher in people who live in intimate relationships. Individuals can value protecting the other to the extent of losing their own life. 

Affection

           Affection involves expressing one’s love and fondness for the other through verbal and physical means. Affection can include hugging, kissing, holding hands, endearing words, and reassurance when the other is down. A healthy development of human beings requires giving and receiving affection. 

Opportunities for Development

           Friends, particularly partners, support each other by helping to pursue dreams and growth in their lives. Supporting the other’s development can include their career, health, social life, spirituality, hobbies, and passions. 

Pleasure (Ananda)

           Psychology has long focused on the connection of pleasure to happiness.[2] Human beings are motivated to avoid pain and increase positive feelings. Indian philosophy calls pleasure ananda. Ananda can be experienced by gratifying needs such as hunger, thirst, knowledge, and sex. One can experience ananda just by being in the presence of a loved one or God. 

Procreation

           From the perspectives of evolution, anthropological philosophy, and religion, procreation is one of the important dimensions of people living as couples. Individuals and cultures on the whole feel the need to extend their selves by begetting children and by nurturing the little ones. 

Research and human experience show that isolation is not good for human beings. Therefore people experience a strong driving force to connect to other people and build healthy relationships particularly intimate ones. 

Individuals in intimate relationships who practice these markers can boost their personal and relational well-being. 

 

 

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[1] The six benefits of intimate relationship are ideas that I heard from one of my professors.  

[2] Kringelbach, M. L. & Berridge, K. C. (2010). The Neuroscience of Happiness and Pleasure. Social Research, 77(2), 659–678.