We are not on this Earth to have "relationships" with people. We are here to love and fight others. The simplicity of this has been shattered by the subtle elevation of fear to the status of final arbiter of all public good. These two dissimulations: relationships as a goal and fear as a justification, need to be examined carefully in order to understand the damage they do to the trusting mind.
If someone says "I need a relationship" you know they are an idiot. They might be nice or dangerous, but they are an idiot. You have a relationship with everything and everyone. You don't know it until it becomes conscious, but the word "relationship" or "relation" simply means that two things exert some kind of mutual influence on each other. To say you need a relationship, or are in a relationship, or have a good or bad relationship with another person, begs the question of whether you love them or want to fight them or both.
Learn to discriminate the quality of affection and respect you have for others. Learn to develop your skills so you may act spontaneously and well in all settings. Then the "relationship" will take care of itself.
Now, if someone says "We did this because we were afraid of blah blah blah" you know they are an idiot. No one acts because of fear. They act out of desire. The term "fight or flight" became popular in the last century in the campaign to dehumanize choice and reduce us all to absurd bundles of reflexes. It implies that we follow, and don't lead, our impulses.
If you want to understand your behavior, figure out what it is that you desire. Admit what you want. Then you will understand why you do what you do. If you think about fear, it is like trying to figure out what the darkness looks like. We have elevated an absence to a place of pride in our cultural life, with the worship of ideas like terror and evil. The "scare" tactics of free-lance political guerillas are actually designed to outrage people and reveal the weakness of politicians. Fear is not really the issue, and its extreme form of "terror" simply becomes the trademark used to brand a whole industry of selfish behavior ranging from rudeness and lying to theft and murder. The average person is outraged by theft and murder and wants to stand up to the perpetrators. You don't want to cower behind some uniformed figure who takes your son out to be killed in battle while handing you a picture of a flag.
Try taking my stuff. Try hurting me or my family and I will show you what I mean.
In the meantime, figure out what you really want. And admit it to yourself.
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