THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP

I know you must be wondering, “ahh! why this heading?’. I know many things came to your mind on seeing this topic, right? Dear reader, relax let’s first see the meaning of that word.

A relationship is any kind of connection between people. It could be intimate, platonic, positive or negative.

Then when people say they are “I’m a relationship”, what do they really mean? This statement refers to a specific type of romantic relationship involving both emotional and physical intimacy. I believe that makes sense.

That being said, let’s look at the different types of romantic relationship, now you need to read with great interest.

People in relationships use many names or labels to define their relationship. And thankfully, we were able to come up with those labels which happens to be the basic types of romantic relationship.

Read carefully, you might be able to find yours;

• Dating: Majority of us are in this romantic relationship, but what exactly is dating? When can someone say he/she is dating? But, before we go ahead to explain dating, it might interest you to know that dating can either be romantic or casual, so by the end of this article, you should be able to distinguish between the two.

Dating is the process of intentionally spending time with someone to have fun, get to know them betterr, see if there is potential for a long-term relationship and have a feeling of romance, as in romantic dating. It can equally involve two people, who just want to have fun without expectations for the future, as in casual dating.

• Then we have the”committed relationship”: this type is typically seen among married couples. Though two people in what we call a “serious relationship” can actually be said to be in a committed relationship.

A committed relationship is one in which the two parties involved, agrees to continue being in the relationship for the future. They agreed to spend time together, work on growing their relationship with each other and to continue nurturing and growing their connection.

Before you conclude that you are in this relationship, look at this; those in this kind of relationship will be romantically and emotionally exclusive, that is to say that, they won’t be sexually or romantically involved with another person other than each other.

You can now go ahead to decide.

• Casual sex: you mist have heard of -friends with benefits – right? They are in this type of relationship. Many people are in this type of relationship and mistake it to be a committed relationship or dating. But we will break that misconception now.

People in this kind of relationship, primarily spend time with each other just to have sex. Either they see each other regularly for sex, or they have sex once and never see each other again.

More so, people here are not usually interested in a romantic relationship, though they may like each other. I believe that’s cleared, let’s move on.

• Situationship: sounds weird right? Well not to my BBN (Big Brother Naija) fans, they should be familiar with this type of romantic relationship. Yes, because that’s the type of relationship that usually happens there.

People involved here, tend to just develop feelings for each other but finds it hard to agree that they are in a relationship. They are still figuring out what they really want from each other and they don’t want to make things complicated so they just leave it the way it is.

But as funny as it may sound, this relationship usually have more emotional involvement than the ‘friends with benefits’ kind of relationship.

In psychology, Robert Sternberg, a psychologist, identifies three main components of love: passion, intimacy, and commitment.

Passion referring to feelings of excitement and attraction. Intimacy being the feeling of closeness and connection, and Commitment referring to the ongoing decision to stay in and nurture the relationship.

So, depending on which of these three elements are present, couples can say which type of relationship they are into.

Now, you have seen the different types of relationships people go into, were you able to identify yours? Or are you having difficulties in defining your relationship? Watch out

for our next article on How to define a relationship.