5 Advanced Ways To Have Close Relationships That Others Envy

Article updated 2020

âHe left me. I suddenly broke down in tears. I told him I was so hurt that he didnât call me after we had sex for the first time. We werenât even on a date when I burst out crying; I just bumped into him at college.â Kristy said to Gianna.

Gianna raised her eyebrows and stopped breathing for one minute. âWow. Ouch.â

âWhat? Thatâs all you gonna say?â

No no, Iâm just processing all of what you said right now, Gianna said while letting out a big puff of cigarette smoke slowly.

Oh, OK.

âI canât believe you burst out crying. Just like that.â

âWell shit, what the hell was I supposed to do!! I couldnât help it!â

âNo, you just donât show a guy that youâre hurt like that. Theyâre dicks, they donât listen. They get happy that youâre upset because suddenly they get an ego trip from knowing that you are really into them.â

âAre you serious? Thanks for the support, geez! And, no, thatâs not true, not all men are like that.â

âHey! Iâm just telling the truth! And plus, look at the way you just got treated. THATâS why I am not trusting any man anymore. Youâre just rubbing salt in your own wounds by bursting out crying in front of him like that.â

âUh…no. Iâm not rubbing salt in my wounds. Iâm letting my shit come up. Maybe you should try it one day, instead of stuffing yourself full of tobacco smoke every 30 minutes to avoid feeling anything difficult.â

Gianna rolled her eyes and puffed out another mouthful of cigarette smoke.

âI canât tell you anything, Gianna!â Kristy couldnât control the tear that began running down slowly from her eye. She tasted its saltiness as it rolled over her top lip. Her heart was pounding, she was beginning to sweat and feeling even more stressed to be telling this to a âfriendâ who couldnât even listen and support her.

âI shouldâve known, you canât tolerate my choices just because theyâre different to yoursâ, Kristy said.

âI just…I just canât relate, you know. I canât relate to letting yourself cry in front of a guy like that, on random. At college.â

âUgh!â and with that, Kristy walked off on her supposed friend.

Fast forward 10 years. Kristy is married with her first child on the way; her husband had moved to the country to be with her, so they could all be closer to her parents. He even buys her thingsâ¦.things that matter. Like a gym membership and a new car because hers was 20 years old and kept breaking down.

Kristyâs husband is there for her. But can you imagine what happened to Gianna? Well, she was still single, just as she was sure she should be.

Her patterns lead her to a mediocre life of safety. She has cats, but she was sitting on the couch smoking cigarettes and eating potato chips every weekend, trying desperately to drown out the feelings of regret and loneliness.

As Gianna was a very slim girl all her life, it was shocking for her to have to accept that she had also put on 30 lbs in 10 years. She was feeling desperate, after having stuffed down so many emotions with the cigarettes for all those years.

But…cigarettes. They will always be there for her.

Cigarettes equal friends in Giannaâs world.

A man, though? He wonât always be there for her. Men leave. They leave for younger women, kinder women, sexier women…who knows what they leave for. But they leave, right?

I donât know about you, but Iâve witnessed many people claiming that they have really close relationships in their lives, but these people do not sound very convincing.

Itâs not hard to see if a person is the type of person to withhold themselves emotionally (be emotionally stingy)…and when someone does withhold themselves emotionally; not wanting to be seen for who they are deep down…it becomes difficult or them to have close relationships.

Thatâs just how it works. The more we avoid, the less close any of our relationships will be.

We humans are all unique, but we are also all the same in many ways. A lot of us are afraid of being revealed. We donât want to be seen…we are afraid of being seen for who we are. So sometimes, some people keep others at armâs length. Even the closest people in their life canât fully be let âinâ.

What IS a close relationship, anyway?

Itâs when the other person knows your soul. (Freaky, I know)

Itâs where you can lay bare naked in front of that person, and feel totally accepted. And itâs where you can do the same for them.

A close relationship is where there is total trust – trust for each otherâs intent. Trust that you both donât need to avoid conflict with another because both of you will be willing to take responsibility for the success of the relationship.

Close is definitely not about talking on the phone for hours every day. Why? Just because that could be entertainment; not closeness. (Of course, talking on the phone for hours can be an indicator of depth and closeness, just not always).

(There Are Exactly 7 Signs That A Woman is Perceived as Low Value to Men. Do You Know What They Are? (& How to Avoid Them Like the Plague)? Click here to find out right now…)

Being close is about not tolerating it when you know the other person is lying to themselves.

Close relationships above all, require a kind of humility, donât you think? I say this because in the past I was a loser and I had to try to unlearn being a loser, so I could be a better person. I hope Iâve been successful.

Close relationships melt defensiveness and make vulnerability okay.

Close relationships make crying ok.

Close relationships make asking for something from the other person a non-stressful event (although it always takes time and show of high value before you can get to that place with someone)

Close relationships mostly have no blaming.

Close relationships treat each other like family. Not like an enemy.

Give and take doesnât exist in close relationships. Give and take is for friendships and relationships that havenât made it to the close relationship stage. Close relationships are about giving without calculating what youâre getting back. If you canât do that – then you might be friends, or housemates, or husband and wife, but you are not close.

To have really close relationships, one must, at some point in their life, fully felt the depths and pain of loneliness. (We are all lonely. Many of us just try to keep that loneliness at bay). If one has to have an excess of acquaintances to hang out with to avoid feeling the loneliness, then that person isnât âpracticingâ what is necessary for having true close relationships.

TV is another distraction from oneâs feelings. Just like Gianna and her cigarettes. We all cope somehow.

But coping mechanisms are there to avoid closeness. Closeness with ourselves. Closeness with others. Nobody wants to be close because itâs hard work and icky but at the same time we all want to be close. So we are walking around like frauds. Pretending everything is okay and that we are close to the people in our lives.

But in reality?

The reality is that many of us arenât even emotionally close to our children, because of our stressful lives, our patterns of conserving energy and even patterns of perpetuating distance. We donât employ the right strategies and environment for valuing closeness first; and so 20 years go by and we realise that while we were off making money, it came at the cost of closeness and trust in our relationships.

Here are the 5 secret ways to have exceptionally close relationships…

1: Reduce the number of people you âneedâ to have in your life. The more you spread your eggs, the less close you will be with the people you truly like and respect. Itâs okay to have no close relationships. By acknowledging that you donât have that, and acknowledging the pain and loneliness, at least for some time (say, weeks or months), you can then come out of that difficult place with something more valuable than the comfort of avoiding pain; which is: appreciation and gratitude and depth of character. Suddenly, you are strong, and you donât âneedâ lots of people around to shield you from the emotional depth of life.

2: Love and appreciate the parts of you that you donât want to reveal to people. The more you try to hide any part of you; the less closeness you can have with someone; especially men, as they arenât always easily able to want to get close to you unless you are visibly feeling your feelings; or showing vulnerability.

What does it mean to love and appreciate the parts of you that you want to hide?

For example, I find that takers, (people who want to take value from other humans rather than have an emotionally close relationship), often want to hide the fact that theyâre a taker. They are defensive of their Tina Taker or try to avoid being revealed. However, love that there is a part of you that is a taker. Love Tina Taker. Why? Because you need to love and appreciate that she is there for a reason – ask her why she showed up in the first place. Sheâs probably there because sheâs afraid of dying. She needs resources, she needs to feel in control, and she perhaps needs popularity and certainty to survive for the short term.

Yet in the long term, she doesnât serve you well – another part of you, perhaps Alison Appreciation needs to come into the picture and let Tina Taker rest. Alison Appreciation appreciates whatever she has; and she appreciates that we all have to suffer – and itâs okay. Take pride in your pain; take pride in the courage and the grit and the character and the vulnerability and the confidence you will build by surrendering to what little you have and what pain you have not allowed yourself to feel.

3: Understand that at the core, relationships are about resources – whether they are close or not. We enter all relationship and fake relationships for the sake of resources. Fear can often make us choose to have lots of not so real friends or sexual partners (put our eggs in lots of baskets), but inspiration, vulnerability and courage can make us choose to invest in just a tiny portion of people.

Neither strategy is wrong. Itâs a risk to invest 110% emotionally in only one person. Yet itâs also a risk to give only 10% emotionally in 50 relationships. Which one do you think is riskier? Investing 10% in 50 people? Or investing 110% in one person? (Or maybe two or three, maximum).

We all have to decide if a truly close relationship is worth the risk and loss. Nobody is more right or more wrong with their choices – their choices will just either make their relationships thrive or die.

What I feel is that we have to give up ego, we have to potentially give up other friendships, other suitorsâ¦.all for the sake of investing heavily in one or two or three people. Itâs scary, but itâs brave. And – itâs loyal.

People who think they can have lots of lovers or lots of friends usually canât be loyal to a tiny portion of people. Donât you think that is true? Because their energy and time will just go to the highest bidder.

By the way, if you want to know if your relationship is healthy, here’s a guide I created for you on the 10 Ultimate Signs of A Healthy Relationship.

4: Be a safe place for the people that you care about. This requires being able to meet your own needs in a proper (and superior way). Watching reality TV for example, is not meeting oneâs needs well. It doesnât fill you up, it just distracts you. If you cannot meet your own needs through high quality avenues, then you aren’t really fulfilled and then become only able to worry about yourself (and canât even dream of being a safe place for somebody else).

How do you show that youâre a safe place for another? Let them know that you accept and love all of them. Better still, do actually show that you love and accept all of them…every single part of them, without question.

How do you do that? Love and accept every part of yourself first. Every part of you, even the parts that you judge, no matter how bad, stupid, embarrassing or ditsy is there for a reason…and every part of you belongs somewhere.

When you accept all of yourself, then you can accept all of others, with humour and love. The reason this is important is so that you donât sabotage emotional closeness with rules about how you *should* be or how others *should* be. Rules arenât always bad, and rules are important…but we should at least be aware of when they might be sabotaging connection with others.

Close relationships are not meant to be easy. I know some people make you think that they should be easy, but they are only easy when you choose the hard path.

As someone much smarter than me once said…life is easy when you do it the hard way. The hard way begins with taking the 4 secret steps Iâve shared with you in this article.

(By the way, I’ve just published my brand new DVD titled “Becoming His One & Only!”… and right now it’s FREE for you to get a copy. Click HERE to find out more details and how you can get your man to fall deeper in love with you and beg you to be his one and only)

5: Try to learn to appreciate/embrace conflict instead of avoiding it. Without appreciation for the role of conflict in your life, you can easily become a pleaser. And as you know, pleasers always lose out. Conflict and arguments (or serious discussions) will always be a part of closeness. Close relationships require conflict and vulnerability to grow!

No conflict equals no growth. If you are not growing, then you are dying (said Tony Robbins).

One thing is for sure: we canât build a close relationships when our first and foremost desire is to have control/certainty. Neither can we be close with another if our number one need is to maintain a feeling of self importance. We have to value closeness and vulnerability more than we value ourselves.

In the name of helping you create closer relationships, we have a report called, “How to love without being used” when you buy our program, How to Stay High Value When He Pulls Away. 

We’ve had tremendously positive feedback and responses from women after they’ve gone through these two guides and I think you will find many ah-hah moments and profound insights too!

I would love to hear from you – your comments will always be read and they add a lot of value to other women in the world.  Leave me a comment if you have discoveries, thoughts and opinions to share.

Lots of love to you,

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