Relational Integrity concerns how people come close without coercion, fusion or self-erasure. Boundaries help us know where we are. Consent governs what we voluntarily allow. Trust develops through experience. Vulnerability lets something real become visible.
Trust is the capacity to extend reliance proportionately on the basis of experience, evidence, consistency and repair.
Boundaries are the capacity to recognize, communicate and maintain distinctions concerning access, responsibility, time, touch, emotional labor and obligation.
Consent is the capacity to sense, communicate, negotiate and revise voluntary agreement.
Vulnerability is the capacity to allow meaningful exposure while retaining agency and discernment.
Intimacy is the capacity to remain in close, reciprocal contact without either disappearing into another person or remaining unreachable.
The capacities do not operate in isolation. These relationship entries describe important feedback loops, tensions and forms of mutual support between them.