There are many ways to build relationships.

We can come in fully trusting and respectful of the other person. The danger is that our respect and trust may be ill-founded and the other person disappoints us, destroying the relationship. A few experiences like that and the second approach to relationships may be used:

We can come into the relationship having been burned many times before, willing to give the person the benefit of the doubt. In this situation, we may be watching to see if that person will, through his actions, gain or trust and respect. That’s coming into the relationship with a bias against relationships.

Paradoxically, the first approach to relationship building seems to work best, whatever the individual’s experience. People can approach each relationship as if it were unique, whatever their past experience. As Daniel S. Hanson says, in his Cultivating Common Ground: Releasing the Power of Relationships at Work, “When we build relationships with each other based on an unconditional respect for the individual and trust in each other, we move from being individuals to being part of a greater whole without losing our unique identities. We go from I to we without losing me."JSperry