Leaders my leaders, welcome back!
Last week we talked about how even if you have worked hard to get healthy, family of origin issues created by dysfunctional family members can still trip us up. Today we’re going to talk about relationships / marriage. The person with whom you share your life has more of an impact on you than anyone. Your future is intertwined with them. This relationship deserves special care, and an investment of your time, effort, and energy. Getting this relationship right is one of the best gifts you can ever give yourself. Your personal and professional life can quite literally depend on it. Setting boundaries with them is essential too, but it is extraordinarily difficult not to be heavily impacted by what they choose to do. But it remains true that the healthier you are, the healthier the relationship becomes. Just like with your family of origin, it is absolutely not ok to allow them to rob you of your health or well-being in any area of your life. If you are being abused, reach out for help. You deserve better than a life of fear and pain.
Your relationship is as unique as a fingerprint. It is a living, breathing entity all its own. When you treat it as a sacred treasure, you maximize your chances of success. The examples of loving relationships we’ve seen in our lives greatly impacts how we view relationships in general, and how we act in specific situations. The good news is that we can make healthier choices about how we define relationships and how we love within them. If we are listening, our partner is telling us how to be successful with them. When we pay attention and honor them, we have successful interactions. When we don’t, we have trouble. If our partner is making a reasonable request of us, based on healthy needs, then there probably isn’t a healthy reason for opposing or defying that request. Perhaps the details will need to be negotiated, but the request itself is not objectionable. The more requests you can fulfill for each other, the happier you are going to be.
Even the strongest couples can be stressed to a breaking point if the events in their life overwhelm their coping resources. Work to build up your ability to weather any storm that comes. Learning how to provide for and protect the relationship are vital tasks for building a lifetime of success together. A major part of having a successful relationship is having the ability and the willingness to negotiate how to handle whatever life brings your way, then honoring those agreements. When you provide for and invest in your life together, you stockpile resources that can be used when life gets rough. When you put protections in place, you create a buffer zone around the relationship to help it withstand anything that arises. Then the two of you can rely on finding shelter and staying strongly connected inside that protected zone.
Until next time, work on getting things right with the one you love, or at least making some good progress for yourself!
