HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS: BOUNDARIES AND LOVE

Wednesday, 29^th April 2015

CONFERENCE

HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS: BOUNDARIES AND LOVE

Richard Harvey

Psychotherapist and writer 

Last Tuesday we had the special visit of Richard Harvey, a psychotherapist and writer with humanistic and transpersonal foundations. The conference was focused on human relationships specially the importance of boundaries in love. 

On one hand, etymologically relationship comes from the Middle French relater, and the Latin term, relatae, which means that you communicate the story, you are the story. On the other hand, the term boundary is originated with the verb bind, which means how we are bound to this world in the sense of how we relate to the world.

According to the writer, there are three types of relationships, You, the Others and the World, as well as some boundaries such as: attraction, what is essential for a human relationship and three types of healthy relationships (I, You and We). 

From the very beginning we start our life with our breathe in and breathe out which states the crucial relationship between the inner and the external. As we do not live isolated, we should be able to answer some questions as follows to improve our relationships and recognize those feelings and factors (judgement, attraction, fear…) that may be affecting our relations: Who am I? Who is the other? What distance is between us? How do I judge? Who are you to me? How are we similar and what makes us different? 

One of the points that more attracted my attention was his classification of unhealthy relationships: 

- Boundaryless relationships are those in which there is a merging need of going back to the mother- child relationship of security.

- Power-over relationship: that in which there is idolization, domination and no meeting is possible. Normally there is a feeling of frustration and they disagree and argue with each other.

- Freezer relationship: they put each other down and they enjoy that frosty and bitter treatment.

- Bridge relationship: that kind of relationship that is based on the premise “the more I walk to meet you, the more you walk away and we don’t meet each other”. To sum up, nobody gives in to try to find a middle way solution.

I do agree with Harvey with the fact that a healthy relationship depends on the two individuals knowing themselves first. People mistake when they forget about themselves, their likes, hobbies or studies. They abandon their self-realization and what they really want to achieve in life. 

Harvey states that there are some keys in order to achieve a healthy relationship: 

1) The shadow-self in the only part of ourselves.

2) Communicate: talk, share and communicate with each other, touch and allow yourself to be touch, learn to listen and sustain attention, sympathy and empathy.

3) Discover the relationship between:

- Love, which is crucial, continuous and cannot be confused with need. 

- Need, which is not desire.

- Desire, which has to do with satisfaction, is not continuous and is not love.

4) Learn to experience your feelings and emotional life: feeling awareness should be developed to understand the layers of emotions. We should ask each other where and how we feel angry or sad…