Without mutual respect, there is no true relationship going on.
If your mental health is a little rocky these days, stop to consider how effectively your relationships are working.
You can continually feel off balance, if you don’t manage relationships well.
For example, a young teacher whom we’ll call Karen, says she’s trying to love her boyfriend “unconditionally.”
We tried to tell Karen this: “Girl, you are in a lot of trouble! Adult love relationships don’t call for unconditional love.”
Karen, who is very religious, is a lovely person. She is physically and emotionally beautiful. But, her take on relationships is way off.
Karen’s boyfriend keeps trying to break up with her. Karen keeps hanging in there with “unconditional love.”
Here are a few rules to help you understand relationship savvy:
n Know how respect works. Both people must honor the feelings of the other. In Karen’s case, mentioned above, she is not honoring her boyfriend’s feelings. She’s blanketing them with “unconditional love.”
n Don’t be too “needy” for relationships. Have hobbies and activities that sustain you. This way, you won’t depend on people for all of your good feelings. Practice healthy “closeness” with other people. For every person in your circle, try to figure out how close you can be to this person and still feel good about yourself. Decide how much to give of yourself. Then stop.
n Practice healthy “distance” with other people. Require breathing room. In every relationship, it pays to establish solid boundaries. A boundary says, “This is where you end, and I begin. Don’t invade my space.”
Obviously, the best relationships in our lives happen when we “click” with people who think as we do.
It’s comforting to be around people who value what we value.
Or, we can get a “high” being around people whose goals are similar to ours.
Conflict with other people can result from differing needs, goals, values. Or, poor communication can cause others to rub us the wrong way.
By asking in every case, “How close can I be to you and still feel good about myself?” we establish power over our relationships.
We might choose to spend 10 minutes per week with some individuals. With others, we might spend 10 hours per day.
By knowing how close or how far to stay from someone, we keep our own sense of a “healthy self” intact.
If your relationships aren’t working so well, ask yourself these questions:
n Am I trying to build friendships with people who are too different than I?
n Am I trying to remake someone into my version of him or her?
n Do I try to stay close to someone who is emotionally unavailable – perhaps someone who is rejecting me outright?
For example, in Karen’s case of trying to love her boyfriend unconditionally, Karen is not honoring herself.
She believes, in essence, that she is unworthy of finding a love partner who values her.
Relationships that really work for us don’t require bending ourselves out of shape. If you have to cripple yourself to get love, it isn’t love that you’re getting.
Relationships that do not nurture, value, and sustain you – just as you are – are too painful to endure. Back away from them to establish healthy distance. End them, if necessary.
Life is too short to waste on painful, rocky, unromantic relationships. While you don’t have to suddenly abandon relationships, you can move yourself away from cold, rejecting, or inappropriate people.
You must determine a comfortable place with each person in your life. You must be in control of that place and the “space” that lives between the two of you.
To gain supportive healthy relationships, start to connect with people who enjoy the same type of activities that you do. It’s through shared interests that we all make the best friends and build the strongest relationships.
Stop courting people who aren’t thinking, living, working and feeling as you do. Only like-minded people can build a system of mutual support.
When your back is against the wall, your supportive relationships will give you power that nothing else will. Make sure you choose relationships wisely and nurture those people.
If you aren’t requiring enough of relationships, stop to evaluate what’s going on. Then change something to find support in your life.
For example, remind yourself that unconditional love between two adults is a dangerous road to travel. That road will inevitably have a cliff at the end of it.
When the road ends and that cliff is staring you in the face, your choices will be painful.
Ultimately in a situation such as this, you will be angry with yourself that you did not wake up in time to make better choices.
Time wasted on rocky relationships is time you cannot recapture.
Judi Hopson and Emma Hopson are authors of a stress management book for paramedics, firefighters and police, “Burnout To Balance: EMS Stress,” published by Prentice Hall/Brady Books. Ted Hagen is a family psychologist. You can contact the authors through the Web site www.judi-light-hopson.com.
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