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%MEANINGFUL HEALTHY INTEGRATIVE RESPECTABLE FRIEND+990601
%INTIMACY SEXUALITY RELATIONSHIPS MUTUAL BALANCED+990601
%PLEASURE SATISFACTION GENTLE LIBERATION EXCLUSIVE 990601
To facilitate and promote healthy friendships,
intimacy and sexuality we need to be clear about what
are, and what are not, essential prerequisites to them.
We can become perverse if we are misled in believing
that some aspects of some such relationships are
essential in exclusive ways. It is often difficult
to distinguish between what is essential, and what is
not necessarily essential. We may be unable to
recognize the absence of what is essential. We may be
unable to recognize that focusing exclusively upon what
is NOT essential, may lead to the absence of what is
truly essential.
The following are suggestive of some aspects of
healthy friendships, intimacy and sexuality.
1. Mutuality and balance are essential.
Relationships which are unilateral and/or unbalanced are
not healthy. If there is unilateral dominance, coercion
and/or violence --- the relationship is not health.
2. Honesty and openness are essential. Pretense,
deception, secrecy and collusive games of mutual self
deception undermine the integrity of relationships ---
leading to tragic dis-ease, illness, contention, tension,
conflicts, and so to personal and communal disintegration.
3. Growth and hope are essential. When people in
relationships stop growing and hoping --- they and
their relationships die. In death their
relationships may appear to continue without life,
authenticity, mutuality, balance, honesty, openness,
growth or hope.
4. Liberation and freedom are essential.
Relationships within which participants are not free to be
true to themselves and to each other --- are not
healthy. Compulsive preoccupations with issues of
control, conformity, law, order and discipline --- are
characteristics of unhealthy relationships.
5. Preoccupations which are exclusive of the above
essential aspects of healthy relationships --- are
not essential; they are signs of dysfunctional un-
healthy relationships which do not merit respect or
support.
People who are trapped in dysfunctional un-healthy
RELATIONSHIPS need our understanding, respect and support;
even though their RELATIONSHIPS do not merit our respect
or support. People are not the same as their
relationships. Relationships are not the same as the
people who are participants within them. People and
their relationships are closely interdependent; but they
are not identical to each other. We are bound to become
involved in unhealthy dysfunctional relationships --- if
we fail to distinguish between people and
their relationships.
It is helpful to recognize why/how people get trapped
in prisons of compulsive preoccupations which undermine
personal and communal integrity.
1. People individually and in cohesive communities
of faith --- often come to regard certain ancient texts
as literally true in some absolute sense which they regard
as unchanging --- in spite of subsequent changes in
languages, cultures, sciences, technologies,
communities, people and their inter-relationships.
Such people become frozen and imprisoned in their
conceptions of the best of the past --- which for them
become their gods. Their idolatry undermines
mutuality, balance, honesty, openness, growth, hope,
liberation, and freedom.
2. People become preoccupied with internal and
external expectations ---and with issues of control and
loyalty. People entrap themselves in collusive games of
mutual self deception --- in futile efforts to achieve
security conceived of as freedom from vulnerability.
3. Many people fear God who is Love --- because
they refuse to believe that true security is the freedom
to be safely vulnerable within friendships,
intimacies and sexual relationships which are mutual,
balanced, honest, open, growing, hopeful, liberating and
free.
4. Technocrats seek to achieve salvation through the
fruits of objective science and technologies --- which
are designed to achieve pre-conceived goals. Technocrats
are unable to distinguish between technical problems which
can be "solved"; and human dilemmas which pertain to
conflict resolution in the realm of reflexive
relationships ---with their conflicting ideals, values
and principles --- which are not objective realities
separate from humans and their relationships.
(c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in
www.essayz.com Search for Integrity and Honesty
(On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)
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