1: Nature of the Relationship

During my childhood, I grew up knowing only my close family members. As the youngest son in our family, my father was quite protective of me. This created a huge barrier with the external relationship environment.  Upon starting school at a tender age of ten, I immediately found myself in the wilderness, knowing no one despite majority of my classmates hailing from my immediate neighborhood. On one of those initial schooldays I was teamed up with a certain blonde boy named Michael Smith. We were required to perform some minor physical exercise which involved competing with other pairs of boys and girls in short distance sprinting.

On that day I reluctantly initiated a limited chat with my new acquaintance not knowing he will eventually end up to be my long time on-school and off-school companion. On that day as I was alighting from the school bus on my way home, I realized that he was living in the next apartment. Michael and I were now inseparable and for many years we have developed a strong personal relation that is anchored on our common education background. After our first encounter we happened to join the same elementary school and this boosted our relationship as we developed academic similarities.

At home, smith was living with his uncle who was a military officer, and due to our relationship my parents ended up knowing his guardians and ultimately effectively developing a close relationship. Our relationship is basically based on a casual interaction with no definite expectation but due to the many days that we have lived together we have ended up fully understanding desires and the needs of each other and the obvious expectation is to respect and honor of each other’s aspiration and concerns.

Right now we are past our teenage years and still the relationship is growing stronger and stronger perhaps due to closeness that we have naturally maintained. We attended the same high school and now we are in the same campus although back at home we bow reside in different cities. This has made our relationship not to have definite time duration. There are occasions when we fail to see each other for months for instance since we undertake diverse professional courses at the university, during attachments we often spent that vacation in different locations, however we continuously communicate through cell phones and emails.

2: Important Rules that Govern and Define our Relationship

Just like any kind of relationship, our relationship is based more on one’s input rather than what you get receive the tie. There is no definite cut- out rules that define our relationship. They have been gradually developed in each other’s mentally over a long period of togetherness. Over that long duration we have stuck to a number of self defined canonical rules. This includes:

Never Command

This being a mutual personal relationship, everyone detests being hulled and ordered around. In such cases ones ends up getting more resistance rather than cooperation expected. For instance if you expect some favor it is important first to request the other’s persons availability and then fitting into his schedule rather than the reverse.

Never contradict

In any relationship it is almost impossible to concur with each other on every issue raised. This has been the case in our relationship as well despite our long period of existence. However any minor difference should not always degenerate into a full blown disagreement. In our relationship, we have developing a sense of not openly contradicting with the other person for instance through interrupting. We often adopt a rather “flattery and invitational”talk and remarks. This involves acknowledging the point raised but still requesting for a more insightful and productive response.