Relationships
I've been thinking about relationships between people for a long time.
How individuals build, form, and maintain relationships between each other is the basis of all interaction.
When considering all of an individuals relationships one can think about breath and depth. Breath - the number of relationships a person has. Depth - how deep those individual relationships are.
It's difficult to lump relationships into categories, since each person and each relationship is different. Some examples: friend is a broad category that includes a wide range of relationships, partner appears to be a narrower category and yet also includes many different kinds of relationships.
When it comes to relationships judgement is often applied using words like healthy and unhealthy or toxic or other words. These words reveal hidden assumptions about how relationships ought to be.
There are many articles and books on relationship 1, with different views.
It's a challenge to succinctly and precisely describe relationships. We often use a few words to describe them and we apply assumptions about what the relationship is or ought to look like. Rarely do we describe in detail to others the specific context and meaning of the relationship.