This is http://www.essayz.com/a9304284.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %EXCLUSIVE HONESTY INTIMACY AFFECTION SEX INTEGRITY 930428 It is difficult to maintain with integrity rules which require that intimacy, affection and sexual relationships be exclusive in nature. Central to true healthy intimacy, affection and sexual relationships is honesty and integrative patterns of behavior. There is a dissonance between honesty and integrative patterns of behavior---and rules which require that intimacy, affection and sexual relationships be exclusive in nature. Such requirements suggest in covert ways that it is possible to be exclusive in honest and integrative patterns of behavior. It is useful to examine carefully what is covertly suggested by requirements that intimacy, affection and sexual relationships be exclusive in nature; to see if those covert suggestions can be confirmed by open and honest discussion of their import in the light of honest sharing of personal experiences regarding intimacy, affection and sexual relationships. It is one thing to require under threat of informal or formal punishment, excommunication, or banishment that intimacy, affection and sexuality be exclusive in nature. It is quite another thing to engage in open and honest dialogue about the realities of human limitations which make it impossible for any one person to be deeply involved concurrently in many truly intimate, affectionate and deeply sexual relationships. It is unlikely that harm will be done by charitably honest discussion of the reality of those human limitations. It is unlikely that harm will be done in openly and honestly seeking to learn the lessons which may be learned in charitable discussions of personal experiences encountered because of unsuccessful personal efforts to transcend human limitations as regards involvement in many intimate, affectionate and/or sexual relationships. It is also unlikely that harm will be done in charitably open and honest discussions of the harm which is often done by some people trying to control intimacy, affection and sexual relationships---in keeping with the commonly held conviction that there should be communally respected requirements that intimacy, affection and sexuality be exclusive in theory and practice. Those people who feel that there is a genuine need to exert external control over intimate, affectionate, and sexual relationships rarely, if ever, acknowledge that the essence of such relationships is reflexive, not objective. Efforts to control such reflexive relationships end up leading to dishonest modifications of the objective aspects of such relationships---often eliciting objective behaviors designed to conceal and mislead would-be-controllers about the nature of the continuing reflexive relationship. To the extent that such controllers succeed in modifying the relationships, they succeed in leading the participants to be less honest and to be involved in hidden reflexive relationships which have less integrity than they would have, had it been possible to participate in the reflexive relationships openly and honestly. Efforts of controllers to control intimate, affectionate and sexual relationships tend to focus attention primarily upon objective aspects of personal relationships; and thereby generate confusion in young people about what are the most important aspects of personal relationships. Young people get the message that what is important in personal relationships are the objective aspects of the relationships; and that the reflexive aspects of the relationships are much less important than the objective aspects which can easily be manipulated to be misleading. Thus young people learn that the important aspects of life are the aspects of life which can most easily be manipulated to be misleading. This encourages young people to become participants in collusions, addictions and codependent patters of supporting collusions and addictions. Would be controllers not only do not succeed in generating healthy responsible patterns of behavior through their efforts to be in control; instead they succeed in generating both personal and communal disintegration. They themselves become alienated from the people whom they try to control, and ultimately they become alienated from each other and alienated from themselves as they turn their compulsive efforts to control---upon each other and upon themselves. To them it all appears to be very reasonable. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================