Overview: Resources for Customising Intentional Relationships

Taking an intentional approach to relationships is easier said than done – especially when trying to customise the relationship elements we share with each of the people in our lives.

One reason for this difficulty is the dominance of default expectation about relationship configurations. These defaults function as pre-packaged expectations about which types of relationship elements we can share with which people in our lives. These defaults add to the challenge of articulating what we want in any relationship, let alone asking someone what they might want to share with us.

These defults are relevant to both the opt-in relationships we form (such as friendships, parternships, collaborations, etc.,), as well as to those relationships formed within the context of external contratints that require us to interact with people we might not otherwise have chosen to relate to (team work, educational institutions, community groups, etc.,)

Fortunately, a wide range resources are available for challenging default assumptions about relationships, communicating within specific kinds of relationships, and forming intentional communities.

By collecting these resources into thematic sets, I aim to amplify a wide range of intentional approaches to relationships. In addition, I hope to demonstrate how these resources can help in exploring the pragmatic details of taking intentional approaches to relationships.

This page provide an overview of these resource sets and positions them within the broader context of this project. For a simple bullet-list of the resource sets collected for this project, see the List of Contents

Context

Exploring what approaches you bring to your relationships in general can help clarify those boundaries and expectations that need to be clarified within specific relationships. In this context, a relationship can be defined as a connection between two or more people, in whatever form that takes. This wide variety of ways in which we form these connections is one reason it can be so difficult to identify and articulate the characteristic elements present or wanted in any given relationship. Given this, it can be tempting to simply adopt the relevant default approach to relationships. However, there are many different approaches to relationships, and exploring these can help articulate the approaches you can take to one or more aspects of connecting within other people. For example, in contrast to the priority given to intimate relationships within the default approach, intentional approaches to relationships often highlight that friendships are equally important relationships. Likewise, there is value to paying more attention to the various ways we relate to our co-workers. While taking an intentional approach to customising relationships can be challenging, there are lot of resources available to help. These include meta-communication practices that can help to clarify shared understandings about the content, form, and frequency of communication that each person can reasonably expect from the other when navigating specific types of interactions.

For more context, see:

• What are Default Relationships? for more on the limits of default approaches to relationships.
• Friendships are Relationships for more on why friendships should be considered as important as romantic relationships.
• Customising Intentional Approaches to All Relationships for more on the practice of taking intentional approaches to customising the elements within each of our relationships.
• Ways of Relating while Working Together for more on the challenges and benefits of introducing intentional practices into the ways we relate with those we work with.
• Meta-Communication Tools for resources on how to facilitate the individual reflection and discussion practices required for co-creating relationships

Relationship Elements

Relationship elements refer to the wide range of basic building blocks from which two or more people might choose to relate to each other. To facilitate individual reflection and iterative discussions of which elements are relevant for any given relationship, I've compiled a non-exhaustive list of example relationship elements. See:

• Introduction to Relationship Elements
• Identifying Attractions - examples of the a wide range of different ways to experience attraction
• Maintaining Connections - examples of the basic building blocks from which two or more people may choose to connect with each other, focusing on:
  – Forms of Intimacy
  – Forms of Reciprocity
  – Forms of Mutual Support
• Expectation Agreements - examples of the use of agreements to explicitly describe if/when/how a relationship incorporates various relationship elements.
• Structural Dynamics - examples of descriptive terms for articulating how a given relationship is (or might be) structured, with notes on how these can both reflect and contribute to the broader structures within our communities

Further Resources

Complementary resources sets that facilitate open communication practices, cultivate consent culture, and/or interrogate normative assumptions across any and all aspect of individual and shared experiences.

• Meta-Communication Tools for Reflection & Conversation
• Resources on Relationship Elements & Related Concepts
• Additional Resources on Intentional Relationships – Resources on Couple Privilege
• Relationship Philosophies for examples of a range of different approaches to relationships and how these differences have been articulated.

In recognition of the inaccessibility of long-form textual content, I hope to make additional formats available once this initial version is complete. Please get in contact if there is a particular more-accessible format you would like to see available and/or a particular context you would like specific resources tailored towards.

Acknowledgements:

• Acknowledgement of Country
• Incidental Contributors & Influences
  (Note: An update of this resource-set is planned and recommendations for new resources to add are very welcome.)

Notes for Attribution:

The format of these in-progress resource sets was first created in 2020 as part of a broader project that started in 2018; they have been heavily influenced by many people.

In acknowledgement of the histories I am part of, and to provide the space for me to create while allowing for the critical engagement and further development of these resources by others, this is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.