Our relationships can be a baffling mix of thrilling attraction and bored indifference, total trust and complete caution, deep satisfaction and even deeper pain. How can one relationship produce such extreme, such dramatically different emotions?

One answer certainly is the dual reality that exists in all of us. We are all both “light” and “darkness” . And when our partner is in “light” mode, we tend to feel great. But when our partner is in “darkness”, we feel awful. However, this doesn’t completely explain why we feel so good or so bad during our partner’s emotional changes. There’s something more fundamental going on here.

Of the five P.E.R.M.A. happiness guidelines (Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement), Relationships contribute the most to our happiness. But why is that? A clue to the power of relationships, to why they are able to produce such extreme emotions, comes from the many crucial roles that relationships play in our lives.

First, we do not exist as a psychological human without an ongoing, caring relationship. A one-night-stand, hardly a relationship, may produce a biological human. But the development of a full psychological human, a person with a sense of self, and an inner conversation with that self, requires an invested caretaker.

Infants who are given only the barest minimum of care (food and cleaning) often “fail to thrive”, fail to develop a separate, independent identity. They may even die.

To thrive, we must feel that we matter vitally to someone. We must feel that someone cares enough about us to ensure our survival-even beyond our totally helpless infant stage. Such a strong connection relieves the totally helpless infant’s anxiety and gives it the confidence necessary to explore the world and grow. And it gives adults a secure sense of importance.

We learn how to be human-to speak, think, relate, understand ourselves and others, to know what’s expected of us and what we can expect from others-only in a caring, nurturing relationship.

Our caretakers teach us “who” we are: smart, funny, pretty/handsome, capable, loveable, etc. If we are fortunate enough to have such parents, they bless us with a positive identity and a strong sense of worth to carry us through life’s challenges.

If we were unfortunate enough to have that other kind of parents (the kind that tell us that we are stupid, worthless, etc), we can be cursed with a life-long negative self-image and low worth-leaving us more vulnerable in relationships and life.

We are born with a certain type of body and health profile, but we must learn the IDEAS about who we are, how the world works, and our place in it.. And we can only learn these ideas, this “life GPS” system in relationships with others. Even during our peak years as independent, capable professionals and parents, we need others to confirm and validate our ideas about ourselves.

For example, some of our characteristics are fixed and objective. I used my “right” hand to write this column. Culture gives us the word “right” and how to correctly apply it. But I don’t need others to confirm the dominance of my right hand. I DO need others to confirm my idea that I’m a “pretty good writer”. There’s no objective test for that.

Others help us feel REAL! Feel that the ideas that we have about who we are and how the world works are indeed correct-that I AM correctly seeing reality. Others also keep us from getting lost in the loosey-goosey, random association nature of our minds. Have you ever followed the train of your thoughts? Notice how chaotic and meandering your thoughts are? Just conveying our thoughts to others helps us evaluate the accuracy of our thinking and keeps us on track.

Remember Tom Hanks in “Cast Away”? Marooned on a tiny island after a plane crash, he eventually works out ways to feed himself and survive. His choices may be very limited, but he has everything he needs to live for 4 years totally alone. Everything except someone to talk to, someone to care about him and what he’s feeling. Someone to CARE FOR! So he creates a “companion” out of a face painted on a volleyball and names “him” Wilson. That companion helps him think through his options (suicide? try to escape by sea?) and keeps him sane. He decides that isolation is so unbearable that he’d rather risk death at sea seeking help, than dying alone. So strong is our need for others-real others.

Relationships, then, are absolutely essential for our very existence as biological and psychological beings-not only during infancy, our period of total helplessness-but throughout our lives. It’s our nature as a species to be “social animals”. We have evolved to depend on others for our survival. And at the most basic, biological foundation of our being, we are “built” to connect.

Feel good hormones flood parents-especially mothers-to bond us to our children and protect their well-being like our own. The mother is biochemically rewarded for bonding to her infant. And do you recall those other feel good hormones that flooded parents during the romance/rapture stage of their relationship? Again, relationships are rewarded at a biological-not just social or psychological level. Rewarding the connection between two adults who will (if everything goes according to nature’s plan) produce more of our species.

Furthermore, it seems that isolation is “punished” by anxiety and depression-to encourage connecting. To encourage relationships.

Like air, we need relationships to survive and thrive and, without that “air”, we barely survive when we are alone.

So relationships are central to who we are, to our overall well-being. They are not a secondary element in our lives, like the car we drive. They are vital, essential, and therefore capable of producing extreme emotions.

I recall counseling a newlywed student couple who were having violent arguments over the color of kitchen utensils!! I am not making this up!

How could something so seemingly trivial threaten the survival of their new marriage?

As you surely know, the argument was about something deeper. Upon marrying, the woman moved into the man’s apartment. He had lived there for quite a while and became very used to doing things his way in his apartment. She now wanted to make her “mark” on their home, make herself feel that it was her home, too. So she suggested new, yellow kitchen tools. He was perfectly satisfied with his black utensils and saw no reason for a change.

That’s when the arguments started and escalated into “nuclear exchange”. Each “launched” their deadliest “nuclear missile” at each other and their relationship lay in waste when they came in for counseling.

Now a superficial “solution” to this conflict might be to suggest a third color for their kitchen tools: green! Or a compromise: half black, and half yellow. Would these ideas have resolved the conflict and saved the marriage? It might have saved a counselor from having to listen to these two scream at each other by moving them along and out of the office. But it would not have saved the marriage.

That required going to the deeper MEANING of the color of kitchen items: the wife needed to feel fully included in the apartment and the husband needed to feel that he still had some say over their living quarters.

SHE needed to feel that he would allow her to contribute to their home, to be trusted to make it her home as well. . And HE needed to feel that she wasn’t going to totally take over their lives.

But even then it went to something deeper. Each was asking themselves “Do I MATTER enough to the other that my feelings and concerns will be heard and taken seriously??”

If he had refused her input, she would feel not completely welcomed, but also not important enough to have her feelings matter to him. If she insisted on throwing out his stuff and replacing it with hers, he would feel that she didn’t respect his choices and that his feelings didn’t matter to her.

Both needed to feel that they were essential, vital, indispensable to the other. Neither gave the other that necessary feeling when both dug in their heels about kitchen utensils. “If I don’t matter enough for (him/her) to work with me on this, do I really matter?”

So relationships are central to our survival and development as growing children. And they remain central to us as adults, vigilant to our importance in the eyes of our partner. We are happiest in good relationships because we are fulfilling our innate nature as a social species, and because we have the assurance that our existence matters deeply to someone.

The next time you get really upset about something your partner does, asks your self, “What’s the MESSAGE I’m hearing about my importance in that behavior?” Then, “Is that REALLY the message being sent?”

For example, my partner is late again for a meeting with me. Does that REALLY mean “I don’t matter at all to them?” Or could there be some other explanation? Don’t confuse IMPACT with INTENT. I may feel “unimportant” (IMPACT). But is that what my partner really feels (INTENT)?

And that student couple? They calmed down about kitchen stuff, but went on to fight about other things as they began the ongoing process of learning to live and love together.

Relationships produce such intense emotions because something vitally important is always at stake: our importance to our partner.

It’s important to me that these ideas make sense to you and are in some ways helpful. So write your thoughts about this column to me HERE

Happy New Year and happier relationships!

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Written by Tony Johnson is a retired university mental health center psychologist. He has lived, learned and enlarged his happiness in the Costa Ballena for over three years. He has the curiosity of a coati about all things life! These articles are his best shot at answering those “Life Questions”. Hopefully, you will find them informative and useful.