Familiarity Supports

What feels like home to one person (the city, the country, the beach, the lake, the list goes on...) can feel completely isolating or overwhelming to someone else.

Things that feel comfortable to one person may feel completely uncomfortable to another person. Our level of comfort in relationships and in life are, in part, affected by what is familiar to us. Relationships and positive life experiences can help provide us with expectations and ideas that affect our relationships with others as well as our feelings of belonging. We don’t always realize that part of our emotional support comes from predictability in relationships and in repeated community built connections.

The places we most often visit become a part of our community. The people who work there or other customers who also frequently visit can become, at the least, someone we began to recognize and, at the most, someone with whom we may establish a relationship. When convenience or availability to connect, with people and places, diminishes or is no longer possible feelings of disconnection within our communities and relationships can start to surface.

Our personal relationships with others may begin with a one-time meeting but can grow in to lifelong connections and friendships. Our community relationships are further established as our trust and dependence grows. Trust can be built and also rebuilt with time and effort. Unfamiliar can become a new familiar as we grow individually and as new relationships and community connections continue to develop.

In person meetings can provide a deeper sense of connectedness than other types of communication. When in person connections continue, impart due to intentional planning, our feelings of connectedness continue to develop. What is not always recognized is that those same feelings of connectedness are actually tied to a level of caring.

Spending time, in person, with someone, and sharing “life” together helps us to continue to feel connected. When we are feeling disconnected we can intentionally reconnect in our relationships and within our communities.

Familiarity makes it’s much easier to “catch up” on life. Familiarity is base line support we can build on. Caring takes that support to the next level. Caring about one another involves knowing one another at each, and different, stages in life. Change will be necessary and again unfamiliar can become familiar over time as we remain open to new and different.

Each day is an opportunity to become more connected to friends, family, and community and especially in our personal relationships. Get to know someone again as life changes, rebuild trust in areas where trust has been broken, and commitment to caring better. All essential keys to developing and maintaining relationships.

Keep connecting with Real Life Relationships. Visit the website and learn more about additional individual and self-guided support available relating to relationships. www.RealLifeRelationships.org