Prominence and Identity
How we come to care
Primary group: personal relations that are direct, face-to-face, relatively permanent, and intimate, such as the relations in a family, a group of close friends, and the like.
Secondary group: all other person-to-person relations but especially to those groups or associations, such as work groups, in which the individual is related to others through formal, often legalistic or contractual ties.
"Social group." Encyclopædia Britannica, 6 Aug. 2026, www.britannica.com/topic/social-group
If care consists of both a feeling and an action, interamory requires us to describe both how we feel about people and how we treat them. Succeeding here begins by making two observations: first, that our feelings and actions can often contradict each other; and second, that we rarely feel about and treat any two people in precisely the same way. Describing these differences starts with the concept of relationship prominence.
If you have heard the words “primary partner” or “best friend,” you have already encountered the idea of prominence. But while these words point to particular roles or functions in your life, prominence is a broader concept that captures why someone is important to you. Sociology can help us to describe prominence in at least two categories: “primary group,” which includes people who help shape our identity and values, and “secondary group,” which includes people we undertake tasks and goals with. If we adapt these terms to describe individual connections instead of groups, we can take them to describe prominence as follows (with an added category to capture what the others leave out):
Primary prominence: intentional, relatively permanent, intimate connections such as family, close friends, and the like.
Secondary prominence: direct connections sustained through shared groups or tasks, whose permanence depends on the continuation of the associated groups or tasks.
Tertiary prominence: loose and impermanent connections sustained by circumstance rather than direct or intentional engagements.
Of course, many accidental meetings (tertiary connections) can turn into close friendships or partnerships (primary connections), as feelings of all sorts can deepen over time. A well-studied example of this development is the sensation of “falling in love,” in which we increasingly desire someone to become a more integrated part of our world. Aron and Aron call this self-expansion: an experience in which our knowledge, skills, abilities, and identity grow by viewing the other’s world as part of our own (Aron & Aron, 1997). Although this theory developed from studies of explicitly romantic connections, my project's research strongly supports the idea that this experience is not limited to romance. Meaningful self-expansion can be felt in the development of any close connection.
Taken together then, prominence and self-expansion theory can go a long way in describing how and why we feel about someone. In a general sense, the more we feel that an accidental or functional connection has become a part of our internal world, the more motivated we might be to care for them as a primary part of our own identity. This would also explain why we might have strong feelings when we are affirmed or dismissed by people close to us, either confirming that our internal worlds look the same or revealing a difference that surprises us. Sustaining curiosity through those surprises, trying to understand each others’ worlds, thus becomes an important skill in sustaining long-term primary relationships. Conversely, finding that you no longer care to understand your differences might indicate that a relationship is moving from primary to secondary prominence.
The tool linked at the bottom of this page can help you visualize the idea of prominence in your own relationships. While conventional use of the word “primary partner” indicates a sort of pinnacle relationship, primary prominence is more of a plateau: a range of people who are important to who you are and who you are becoming. A secondary partner then is someone with whom you share a project, even a marriage; and someone with whom you would no longer connect if that project ended.