“If you’re trying to find ways to lead a more fulfilling life, at some point your focus will fall on your various relationships: with family, lovers, friends and colleagues,” said Take Control of Your Life, one from the series in Time-Life Books.
The relationship can bring great pleasure and satisfaction where they work and unhappiness when they don’t. While some bless the day they meet their partners, others curse the day. Understanding when your relationships are working well and taking steps to improve them when they are not is an important way to take control of your life.
Let’s go back to basics. Before embarking on a relationship, relationship experts, clinical psychologists, spiritual counselors, and modest but wise people who have found peace within themselves in the course of their existence deeply emphasize one very important factor. ‘Love yourself, discover yourself and love that person you are’. You cannot give or receive love if first of all you do not love who you are. Those who are unable to release love cannot obtain love. That is the law.
“To become someone else’s soul mate, you must first be yours,” say Drs. Derek Hopson and Darlene Powell Hopson in their book Friends, Lovers & Soul-mate. ‘If you don’t care about yourself, how can you develop a relationship where someone else cares about you? Unless you agree that you’re worthy of a good deal, why should anyone else believe you? If you don’t love yourself, you discover yourself and know what you want out of life and in a relationship, instead of you being a partner or a player, you will be played like a ball. This is the truth and nothing but the truth.
A relationship doesn’t have to be perfect to work. However, all good relationships have the same ingredients: common interest, good communication, and compatibility value sets go a long way in a relationship. The most important thing is that in a good and happy relationship you can be who you really are, not the way you should or could be. And you allow the other person to be the same. This means that you are comfortable talking openly about the things that are important to you, and you are clear about how you want to be treated. It also means that you respect that the person is different from you and that you do not seek to change them.
Loving a person the way that person wants to be loved is another basic ingredient of a good relationship. I once attended a seminar on advanced relationships in New York led by Dr. John Gray, an internationally renowned relationship expert and author of the 5 million-copy best-seller, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. . Dr. Gray (us) told participants that one of the most common questions he is asked when a new acquaintance finds out that he is a relationship expert is: “What is the secret to making a relationship work?” Here it is in 10 words, he said, “Love your partner the way they need to be loved.”
A fundamental way in which your relationship exhibits these basic ingredients is your ability to communicate effectively with each other. That’s the key to unlocking almost any relationship problem, no matter how serious. Communicate more, partners are told, and things will get better.
Communication involves both speaking honestly and listening carefully. This means expressing your appreciation for your partner in terms of your love and affection. It also means finding a way to vent your difficulties, frustrations and needs, difficult as it may be. And, of course, it also means listening to and respecting your partner’s thoughts and feelings.
While women communicate in a relationship, men do not. Instead, men prefer to open up their fears and frustrations to ‘guys’. Don’t blame us, that’s how we were raised. My advice to women is: be nice to us whenever possible. Soften us to open up. Convince us that we can trust you with our emotions and we will open up.
According to Drs. Lonie Barbach and Linda Levine in their book Shared Intimacy, “Good communication in a relationship is similar to a strong foundation for a home. If a home is built on a strong foundation, it will be able to withstand the stresses of disasters.” such as hurricanes or tornadoes. Even if the rest of the house is damaged or destroyed, if the foundation is solid, the house can be rebuilt.” The relationship is like a flower. If it is well cared for and fed, it will grow well.
This requires effort and commitment from both parties involved because it takes two to tango and it takes two hands to clap. Problems that arise are inevitable because problems are a part of life. In fact, the more problems, the more you are a part of life. The only place I’ve been where the people who reside there don’t have a problem is the cemetery and they’re all dead!