How Intimacy Affects Our Relationships and Careers

How willing we are to feel close to others can have widespread consequences.

In the book “Attached.” Amir Levine, M.D. and Rachael S.F. Heller, M.A. discuss their studies about why great relationships work and why other relationship fail.

I see in the results of their studies how our willingness to be close and allow others to be close can have affects wider than just our personal relationships. Success in personal relationships is about trust and emotional intelligence.

Both are characteristics that serve us in our business careers. They both have to do with our feelings about who we are and our ability to empathize with others. If we have a high self acceptance level, we tend to be more secure in allowing others to be themselves.

If we have a high level of emotional intelligence we are able to recognize our own feelings immediately and make appropriate responses. Stimulus from comments goes first to the amygdale and hippocampus sections of our limbic brain which are our first reaction zones.

If we were in danger, they could cause a reaction before the neo cortex or rational brain gets the message. Sometimes the stimulus causes us to immediately say something we shouldn’t or that we later regret. This is where emotional intelligence plays a role. If we have trained ourselves to use caution or allow time for the pre frontal lobes to engage, we are more likely to make an appropriate comment or say nothing.

Appropriate comments can make or break relationships and careers.

The authors of Attached say there are three basic relationship styles. The first is secure, the second anxious, and the third avoidant. You don’t need a lot of explanation to get the drift. Our early childhood may be the first determinant of our style.

As so many characteristics like personality seem to be a result of our early impressions, relationships seem to also get their base with whether we felt loved and were secure or whether we were unsure of our place.

This can manifest in so many situations. How do we relate to our friends? How were our early love relationships? How did we relate to our bosses and fellow workers? If we are entrepreneurs, how do we feel about our customers or followers? What is our relationship to our neighborhood or community or nation?

“Secure people are willing to get close and commit. They have an ability to abide other people’s insecurities and their personalities actually make insecure people feel more secure”. – Attached.  (paraphrased)

Anxious people want to be intimate and close and worry about whether the love is reciprocal. They are the type that might often check in often or ask “Do you love me?” They can make great mates when they are made to feel secure.

The avoidant also wants to be intimate, but doesn’t necessarily want to commit and tries to keep a distance they think of as independence. They are afraid to be swallowed up in a relationship and lose their identity.

An avoidant and an anxious together could be a nightmare.

How often do we relive these combinations in our business life? We have relationships with bosses, co workers, and the public. What is our level of security and how willing are we to be accountable, submissive, transparent, honest, forgiving, or understanding?

The public is very wary these days of relationships. You could call them anxious. They want to be close, but they are not sure of the motivations of possible providers. Secure providers are non dramatic and are willing to provide all the necessary information and can tolerate their customers paranoia.

Avoidant providers are likely to give mixed signals. At first they might sound like a good match, but then their behavior might look like they are more win-lose. The anxious customer will have more difficulty feeling comfortable long term with the avoidant business that might have some mixed agendas.

Understanding our own styles and how to recognize those of others might serve us well in creating personal and business relationships. We might look around at people we know who run successful and unsuccessful businesses and see if we can determine their style.

Even though change is difficult in these styles, we can all improve if we know what we do that creates closer relationships or creates distance. If we recognize other styles, we might be able to make them more secure instead of judging them by properly reacting to their concerns.

Secure people relate best to everyone so maybe someday we will all be secure.

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Read  Attached. By Amir Levine, M.D. and Rachel S.F.Heller M.A.

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