Healthy relationships enrich lives

Jackie Jones
GCN Columnist

01/25/2007 - As I write this, Bill and I are celebrating our 42^nd wedding anniversary. It’s been a work in progress. However, in my opinion, there are few things in life that are more important than establishing and maintaining healthy relationships. Yet, healthy relationships in marriage are on the endangered list. Divorce and failed relationships are very common in today’s world. There are times when there just seems to be no other course except to cut our losses and divorce. That does not mean that anyone who gets a divorce is a failure as a person. However, there is a lot to be said for trying to figure out how to make a relationship work.

  Building any good and lasting relationship is incredibly difficult and complex. All relationships go through cycles, and sometimes we have to have a lot of perseverance to get through those awful times when we just want to give up and move on. Sometimes when a marriage fails, it seems like we do better with friendships. That’s probably because most friendships are less demanding and they often allow us to form relationships around certain aspects of our lives instead of that all-encompassing complex togetherness required in marriage. Sometimes we even have problems with healthy friendships. No matter how successful we are in other areas of our lives, if we don’t have good relationships somewhere, we can feel lonely and that can sometimes lead to depression.

  I’d like to talk about one of the major building blocks for a healthy relationship: mutual respect. It’s almost a miracle if two individuals find each other and are able to develop in their individual and personal growth cycles in a completely harmonious pattern. Personal growth tends to happen in spurts. Relationships sometimes suffer when one partner is in a personal growth spurt and the other is between personal triumphs. It makes life seem complicated when we stop to reflect about how many times those spurts of triumph are intertwined with spurts of, “Am I ever going to get this right?” For two people to stop and reflect about how their individual cycles of growth ebb and flow with the cycles of their partners, well, it’s really interesting and many times that ebb and flow is the bane of a lasting relationship.

  I like the Rudyard Kipling line, “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.” Instead, we tend to personalize and make assumptions about personal worth as if it is somehow based on temporary glitches in the cycles of life. Mutual respect, it’s so important.

  Almost everyone is fragile at times in their lives. Try to maintain a respectful interchange that will honor each other, especially during the fragile times. It goes back to basic needs: "Do people care about me?" Build the person up in difficult times. Be careful to avoid tapping into their fragile feelings with criticism. Ask that they do the same for you.

  It’s like a dance. Get into each other’s rhythms. When two people are in rhythm together on the dance floor, they seem to flow across the floor without awkward attempts to control one another. The dance of relationship is like that. It requires paying attention to the rhythm and moving with the flow.

  Be gentle with each other. A gentle and caring demeanor is contagious over time. Encourage more. Criticize less. If you do this, the dance will improve with time.