Relationship PIES - Dating

This is the sixth in a multi-part series of articles.

If you want to develop a relationship with someone, you've gotta pursue a balance of the four aspects of a PIES relationship. Start shallow and work to depth, intensifying in each of the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual.

How does a PIES date go? In truth, dating the way that you probably think about it is a bad idea from the very start. Extensive one-on-one time with a man or a woman that you are interested in is just not a good idea. That tends to quickly produce a little bubble world where the two people relate to each other in ways that they are most comfortable with, ignoring the need to relate in areas that they are less comfortable with.

We're shooting for a balance in the four areas, and a good way to do that is to involve other people in the relationship. Ideally, we want to avoid focusing our attention on a single person. Instead, we want to have a dozen relationships going all at one time, each at a level that works with that person. This isn't anything new, of course. You have a relationship with your family, with your coworkers, with each of your friends, and so on. Unfortunately, we're constantly faced with relationship that aren't going to build any depth, which is why we grasp at the least bit of depth - even when that depth is guaranteed to be in only one aspect. One aspect is better than none, right?

Unfortunately, not. So many people develop strong single-aspect relationships. The classic is the strongly physical relationship, where the two people do many things together, but they never share anything about themselves with each other, they never discuss what's going on in the world, and they just don't get into the nitty-gritties of what really motivates them, their dreams and hopes, etc. We turn our backs on the aspects that we don't want to explore, building a kind of fantasy relationship that will crumble as soon as it is put to the test.

The test comes about when other people are added to the mix, and when they throw curves at the relationship that the two people were diligently avoiding because of the "work" involved. They have no interest in possibly sabotaging their physical relationship because it's the best that they have going. It's better than nothing. Yet life does throw curves at relationships, and the relationship that survives the jostling and bumping is the strong one. It's the balanced one. It's the PIES one.

So which relationship is going to survive? Well, that takes us back to spirituality, which is really the cornerstone of any relationship. If two people are physically attracted to each other, emotionally compatible and intellectually challenged by each other, a disconnect on spirituality is just going to be a drain on anything else that they have. Remember that spirituality is about our basic motivations in life. What we believe at a fundamental level. If I believe that a loving family is important to my relationship with my girlfriend and she believes that family has no real role in our relationship, we're going to lock horns in a fundamental way.

To avoid locking horns over the big stuff, we need to be always looking for what's best for a relationship. For example, can a relationship operate without a loving family being involved? Sure. But it's going to be handicapped. And that brings us back to involving other people in a relationship. Those other people can be a reality check for the relationship. That's true only if those other people have a healthy understanding of relationships. Because we're the reality check for so many other people's relationships, we need to be studying relationships and understanding them.

Don't get me wrong about the non-spiritual aspects of relating. They're still critical, because those aspects are part of us. But without the spiritual, any relationship will lack fundamental resilience.

In summary, if you're trying to develop a relationship with someone, stop being insular and focus on getting your relationship out in the open where others can see it. Make your relationship something to be proud of, not something to sneak by others. As you work on your relationship, ensure that you develop it in a balanced way, avoiding the temptation of delving deeply into one area while letting other areas atrophy. Depth is very appealing to us, but depth without breadth produces a relationship that will eventually fall over.

Next time, marriage.