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.

Relationship PIES - Spiritual

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

Last time, I talked about the emotional and how emotions are given to us. That they are instinctive. This time, we go to the other extreme and talk about the thing that most uniquely defines who we are - our spiritual side.

For most people, this immediately means God, religion and prayer. When I speak of spirituality, I'm talking about something that is the common denominator of all spirituality, and that is the ethics and mnrality that someone practices. You may choose not to steal, and your rationale may be that it is in violation of a Holy Commandment. You may choose not to steal, and your reationale may be that it's against the law. Either way, you are making ethical and moral choices, and they are based on some view of reality that influences everything that you do. That is your spirituality.

In the context of relationships, this is the most critical aspect of relating. Two people can have an incredibly deep relationship if they are compatible in their spirituality. They may not be attracted to each other physically, emotionally or intellectually, but if they share a spiritual connection, there is something deep within each of them that will draw them towards each other. Quite likely, they will find common ground in the other aspects of their lives. This is called "learning to love each other", and people have done it for generations after finding themselves married to each other.

I want to present a warning here about relationships that are predominantly spiritual becuase I'm sure that some readers mentally skipped the "not prayer" statements, while greedily absorbing the "spirituality lets you go deep". Depth of a spiritual relationship comes from sharing the same core values, not just the same church or the same prayers. If two people can pray a Catholic rosary together, but differ over the morality of homosexuality, or the legitimacy of the war in Iraq, then any spiritual connection that they have is tenuous at best.

Another important thing to consider here is that many people don't even have a formed notion of their spirituality, of their ethics and morality. They just live life one challenge at a time, without thinking about the big picture. Yet, when the time comes, everyone makes a decision. If faced with a decision to have an abortion, a decision will have to be made. If faced with a decision to tell that little white lie, a decision will have to be made. We have an ethical and moral structure within us, and it's up to us to explore it and refine it. If we don't do that, then we will fall back on our instincts and simply do whatever our instincts (our emotional side) tells us to do. We will be at the mercy of whatever emotions we have, and uninformed choices are not always the best ones.

If you want to develop your ability to spiritually relate to others, be sure to develop your spirituality. If you don't know how, look into some formulated packages of spirituality. Religions are just that. Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, and many more besides. They all entail rules of conduct that are consistent with the ethics and morality that come from the basic notions of the faiths - the beliefs. And be sure to look at the ideals of the faith more than the actions of those who claim to be the faithful. Sometimes, extremists can misinterpret the ideal ethical and moral structure espoused by a faith into something that is fundamentally inconsistent with it. This is true of all faiths because it is true of people. Sometimes I wonder whether that has happened with the American constitution. How many of our laws are fundamentally at odds with what the original writers had in mind?

To relate to others spiritually takes little more than a conversation or some simple actions. When a man opens a door for a woman - or doesn't open it - he is declaring a little bit of his spirituality to her. When a woman dresses in the sexy dress versus the frumpy dress, she is displaying a little bit of her spirituality to the world. These are tiny glimpses of the ethical and moral structure that each holds within them. Explore the small and the large when you want to pursue a relationship. You never know something until you ask. Indeed, the very act of asking may help someone to spend the time to figure out why they believe what they believe.

Unless practiced, it can be very difficult to distill the ethical and moral situation. Consider that the large organized religions are the distillation of hundreds or even thousands of years of people looking hard at ethics and morality. There must be something to the religions. They have motivated people do some very good things. It is that understanding that we should be looking to gain, because our relationships will be that much more easily understood, ultimately leading to the best relationships possible.

Next time, dating.