This book is about the study and understanding of intimate relationships i.e. friends and lovers. Intimate relationships are different from casual relationships in that they involve the following qualities:Knowledge: Intimate partners share secrets, gaining an extensive personal knowledge of each other.Caring: Intimate partners are affectionate, and relationships are closer when that respect and appreciation is reciprocal.Interdependence: Intimate partners need each other – they influence each other a great deal, in many different ways, often, and enduringly over time. Goals and struggles are shared, as are consequences.Mutuality: Intimate partners see themselves as a coupling, an us, instead of two separate individuals. This change, becoming us, is often an important moment of bonding in their relationships (The Inclusion of the Other in the Self Scale, figure 1.1).Trust: Trust is the...