Relationship 101 – The 10 Basic Relationships

Relationship Basics

People take relationships for granted in life and treat all their relationships the same. Not understanding the different types of relationships lead to many relationship problems.

• People break relationships by mismatching the type of energy required for each relationship connection.
• At redefining points in life, such as midlife crisis, a person will get confuse as all their relationships shift around unexpectedly due to changes in chemistry and personal needs.
• We are taught to try to keep relationships forever, yet many relationships are very transitory.
• People often rush to find their soulmate. In a rush to create a stronger relationship, many people push lesser relationships to break as they go beyond the chemistry of the relationship.

The first step in finding your soul partner is to take a step back to explore the nature of our relationships. Understanding the chemistry and variations of relationship helps us to better balance out all of our relationships. Once you understand the types of relationships that exist and how to work with relationship chemistry, you will be able to move ahead and find the person that matches down to the very toes of your soul.

To learn more about relationship chemistry read the tree of love article.

Another dangerous relationship trap is to limit your current relationships only to fit the patterns you saw while growing up.

Modern culture only has a few culturally approved relationship patterns. For instance: English has words for “soulmate” and “friend”  but lacks few common-use words for any special person who falls in between friend and soulmate. A culture constantly evolves, and as a result, so do relationship types. An excellent example of this is the more modern “friend with benefits”.

In helping people balance out their relationships, I have needed to expand our modern language. I have clarified some relationship types such as true-friend. I have also created several new classifications such as “Soul Companion”.

Let’s start by reviewing the basic relationships most people experience in life. The first trap of relationships is to only limit relationships down to a friend, partner and everyone else. Placing a person into a category that doesn’t truly match the relationship will cause inappropriate interchanges later in life.

Types of Relationship

Acquaintance

A person you know and interact with. Many people we consider as friends are acquaintances. Generally speaking, respect acquaintances, give them space as required and learn not to take seriously any judgments they may pass your way. Keep things simple and don’t push too hard on what to expect from an acquaintance.

Friend

A person you enjoy spending extra time with. In this friendships are measured by the time & activities you share with that person. Since time is limited, this why the number of good friends we have gets limited by how we spend time with others. If you don’t have time for a person, then they aren’t a friend they are an acquaintance. Likewise, if one of your friends never seems to have time for you, then they are treating you only as an acquaintance.

True Friend

This is a person who won’t judge you. A true friend is a relationship that transcends time, and this friendship isn’t defined by how much time you do spend with them. You might be a true friend for only 5 minutes and yet that 5 minutes lasts a lifetime. They won’t hold you back nor measure you. True friends are true treasures. Not many people can hold another without judgment.

Karmic Relationship

A karmic partner isn’t a soulmate. Instead, this is a relationship about resolving out life and social lessons. Often the lesson we need to learn is only apparent and discovered after the karmic relationship ends. A karmic relationship teaches us the lesson we don’t want to face on our own. Often karmic relationships don’t survive past the lesson being taught.

Be careful with a karmic relationship.

Karmic relationships often start hot and furious. It isn’t uncommon for a person to mistake a karmic relationship to be a soul mate. Fortunately many times the conflict that occurs in karmic relationship breaks two people apart before marriage happens, but it’s very intense and often passionate up front.

Partner

A person that shares social obligations with you, obligations that define how you appear in public. Partners can mix with other categories. So it’s possible you can have a Partner who is more of an acquaintance than a friend. People tend to push “Partner” into meaning more due to the shared social obligations you have with each other. Many divorced partners with children fall into the eternal friend (see below) category since they can’t stomach the term partner anymore.

Soulmate & Soul Companion

This is the relationship ideal people seek. Soul mates and soul companions are the relationships of almost perfect chemistry.

A soulmate is a slightly deeper relationship than soul companion since a soulmate relationship has the additional mating instincts binding the relationship.

Learn more about Soulmates and Soul Companions.

Twin Flame

In practice, a twin flame is a karmic soulmate!

Learn more about twin flames.

Old Friend

Simply defined: A person who has been connected to you for a long time.

We are body, mind, and spirit. This means three different types of Old Friends.

• Old friends of the Mind have spent a long time sharing or even building a connected story.
• Old friends of the Body have spent much time sharing in physical activities.
• An Old Friend of Spirit is someone that moves along in the same direction as you over a lifetime, even across lifetimes. You could be working on different things, creating very different stories and yet there is a harmony between you and an old friend of spirit.

Just because a person is an old friend doesn’t necessarily make them a true friend. Some enemies, for example, will call each other old friends due to the amount of time they have spent sparring against each other. Also, old friends of the mind can go away very quickly, especially when a person has shifted their personal story deeply. In fact, old friends of the mind can come into conflict when trying to force another back into an older story.

An old friend of spirit is usually not a Karmic relationship. Karmic relationships exist to teach a lesson against. Compared to an old friend of spirit where two connect across lifetimes only because they like to flow with each other. Usually, there isn’t a karmic debt between you and another as old friends of spirit.

Old Friends can be tricky because with the length of time we know another person, people are often tempted to assume or push the connection the old friends to be deeper than it is in reality. So understand, even with old friends care needs to be taken in how you relate to each.

Eternal Friend

This is a rarer situation, but becoming ever more common. When two people have drifted apart and yet are forced to keep a friendship thru a bond that transcends each person. This happens most commonly with two adults with children that end up divorcing from each other. The children bind those two people together eternally, and yet often these two adults cannot just be best friends anymore. An Eternal friend is a new named I coined for this type of friendship. It symbolizes the fact you have a deep external connection, where ideally you should work closely together but are also far apart. By giving it a new name, a couple won’t be trapped in trying to force the relationship to be that of a best friend, but the two people need to work with each other in ways that are greater than just a simple friendship.

Now great care must be used for defining an Eternal Friend. When relationships reach a trouble spot, it isn’t always possible to know if two people can become closer and evolve into a soul mate or if the relationship is drifting apart into becoming an Eternal friend. I have found that it can take up to a year, allowing each partner to grow to determine which direction the relationship is truly moving towards.

An Eternal Friend is technically a subset of being a partner. However, after divorce people don’t want to refer to each other as partners anymore. So I created the term Eternal Friend to help give a touch extra “social” distance between the two ex-Married partners. I use the word “eternal” to indicate despite the distancing that might need to happen between the two friends, obligations or other larger events are going to tie these two people together for a long time.

I use the word eternal to reinforce the need to take care of this type of friend. The last thing you want to create is an eternal enemy instead! Since when you push too hard to break away when a long-term connection is still present, it becomes all too easy to push too hard to break that old friend and create a person becomes eternally against you. All too often this happens with two divorced people in this western culture.

Since Eternal Friend is a new term, it has no social baggage associated with it, and it’s easier for two people to come to common separate terms within the Eternal Friend concept.

Next Steps

Read more about how to find your Soul Partner!

Understanding Love