When forming deep, intimate relationships, we share a vast amount of personal information that we wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable sharing with others. We feel safe sharing our deepest dreams, desires, fears, past histories, traumas, and goals for the future. Generally, this is a reciprocal and gradual process.

Knowledge

There is a mutual choice for wanting the relationship to continue indefinitely.It allows for trust to continue to deepen, common knowledge to further be shared, mutuality to envelop, care to be shown, and continual effort be put into responsiveness and interdependence for both partners.

Commitment

While the display of care can differ from one person to the next (as a function of communication style or differing displays of affection, for instance), intimate partners tend to display genuine, selfless care for each other.

Care

Healthy intimate relationships involve partners who are mutually responsive to each other's needs. This means recognizing, understanding, and supporting each other, both in times of pain (e.g., losing a <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/parenting">parent</a> or a job) and gain (e.g., getting a promotion, announcing a pregnancy).

Responsiveness

Trust is the <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/confidence">confidence</a> that we place in another human being to act in a way of honor and fairness that is of benefit to us, or at the very least, that our partner will not cause us purposeful harm.

Trust

Intimate relationships also tend to be highly interdependent, wherein each partner influences the other meaningfully, frequently, and vastly, in terms of topic and importance.

Interdependence

After a certain point within a healthy intimate relationship, each partner recognizes a close connection and changes his or her view from "me" to "we."

Mutuality

For the past three years, I have had the pleasure of teaching the course "Psychology of Relationships" to eager students yearning to learn about the nature of human relationships, and hopeful to glean some scientific insight into how to improve their own.

Interdependence

The 7 Elements That Define an Intimate Relationship

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