Circles of Interaction

The circles of interaction model here comes largely from social worker, Terrance T. Gorski, known mostly for his work in substance use disorder and relapse prevention. He was an author and writer in the area of addictions for many years. And it was many years ago that I heard a cassette recording (I told you it was many years ago) in which he presented this circles of interaction model. The model has been of great help to me. He presents the model in his book, Addictive Relationships. I depart from his conceptual frame, particularly with regard to the two inner circles. Life is made up of several kinds of relationships. We’ll represent each kind by a circle. I’ll talk about five circles of interaction.

Acquaintances

The largest circle is for Acquaintances. Largest because it contains the most people. Acquaintances are people who share the same time and space with us. That is really the only reason they are in our lives. They are the people who live in the same community in which we live. They are the people we see at the grocery store. Many of the people we work with may be acquaintances. We may not even know their names.But we recognize them. Or maybe we just happen to run into them because our paths cross frequently.

Sometimes we know a fair amount about our acquaintances; the names of their children and something about what they do. But, in general, our communication with them is superficial. We may talk with them about the weather, current events, sports, or some other topic of common interest. But that is about it. If you stop sharing the same time and space with these people, you won’t ever see or hear from them.

You may have a lot of acquaintances. How many depends on the size of your community and how much you move through it. But you could easily have 100 or more acquaintances.

Activity friends

The second in the circles of interaction is made up of activity friends. Activity friends are those people who share common activities with us. The number of your activity friends depends on how active you are, but they probably number less than 100. If you are on a softball league, then they are the people on your team. If you are in a book club, they are the other people in the club. If you drink a lot, they are other people who frequent the same drinking establishment. They are the people who cross your path because they do what you do in a social way.

Communication with activity friends probably isn’t too much different from the communication with acquaintances. It’s generally superficial. But you do know a little more about your activity friends, partly because you now know they like to do what you like to do. But you may also know more about them because you spend more time with them. You can observe how they carry themselves, how they deal with frustrations, how they interact with others. If you are observant, you can learn a lot about your activity friends without them telling you anything. AND you may talk with them a bit more than you would talk to an acquaintance.

But the focus remains on the activity. If you stop doing that activity, you probably won’t see these people any more.

Friends

One definition of a friend is someone you know very well and like very much. Your friends make up a much smaller group than your activity friends in your circles of interaction. That is because more effort and time is needed to know someone very well. AND you may just not like very many people very much. You may have 15 to 20 friends, but that would be a very big circle of friends for most people. If you had just 1 to 5 close friends you wouldn’t be that unusual.

To someone looking in from the outside the interaction you have with your friends may not look much different than the interaction you have with your activity friends. But there is a very big difference.

For one thing, the reason you get together with a friend is VERY different than the reason you get together with an activity friend. Let’s say I like to play racket ball and Joe also likes to play racket ball. We play together often. So, I call Joe on a Saturday morning and say, “Hey Joe, how about some racket ball?” Joe says, “No, I’m kind of burned out on racket ball. Think I’d rather do something else today.”/p>

Now if Joe is one of my activity friends, I’ll probably say, “Okay, I’ll catch you at another time.” That’s because the main reason for getting together with Joe is because of the activity.

BUT if Joe is a friend I would probably say, “Not up for racket ball, huh? Well, what would you rather do?” Because I’m more interested in getting together with Joe than I am in playing racket ball. The activity is just the way we engage in the relationship. The main focus is on the relationship.

A second difference between an activity friend and a friend is the communication. Remember that the communication in an activity friendship is more or less superficial. We would talk about things outside of ourselves like the weather, sports, or current events. In friendship we talk about those things too. But there are times in a friendship when the communication is about us. It wouldn’t be strange to say to Joe, my friend, “Joe, I don’t know how I would have made it through this year without you. You’ve been there for me through some tough times. My life is better because you are in it.”

Now that is a pretty deep level of communication. If I were to walk up to and acquaintance, a person in my community who I don’t really know, and say, “My life is better because you’re in it,” that person would likely think me weird. We set clear relationship boundaries by the kind of interactions we allow.

We could call communication with our acquaintances and activity friends, “outside” communication because we keep the topic mostly about things outside us personally. With our friends we engage in “inside” and “between” communication. We talk about “inside” things like our feelings. And we talk about our feelings about each other, the things “between” us.

Significant Relationship

The smallest of your circles of interaction is for your most significant relationship. This is a circle of two people, you and your significant other. You spend the most time with this person and may have spent many years with him or her. This person probably knows more about you than anyone else. This is your most vulnerable relationship. The vulnerability can be comfortable or really scary. When the relationship is healthy, you say things to each other and do things together that you keep just for this relationship. This is most likely your marriage. And so, for example, you keep sexual intimacy just for this relationship. You set clear boundaries between this and other relationships.

Divine Relationship

We might add one more circle to the circles of interaction that isn’t in Gorski’s model. For Christians there is a relationship with the Divine, with God. When this relationship is healthy, there are similarities with the significant relationship. In fact, the Bible talks about the marriage relationship as an example of the relationship between Christ and the Church. Relationship with God need not have the same kind of vulnerability as the significant relationship of marriage,. This is mainly because God’s love is perfect and complete, leaving no need for fear. Awesome, but not scary. This relationship can be carried into all other relationships and, in fact, can make all other relationships better. And nothing can separate us from it. Neither death nor life and nothing in life can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8).

As we think about our relationships, how to improve them, how to set boundaries, and how to overcome our personal barriers to healthy living, we’ll refer back to this model. So, please keep reading, or come back whenever you can.

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