A friend recently got married and asked me about what my recipe is for my marriage. I can definitely say that the question became a HUGE conversation stimulator at home! (Which is good)
The obvious fact that everyone is different and different people combinations have different outcomes makes it impossible to have one recipe. What works for me might not even work for the other person in the relationship!
I will add that important long-term relationships for me include our parents, children, siblings, some friends, other family members, our life-partner and more. Heavens, even some co-workers make the mark! Come to think of it, even our medical professionals might be in our life for decades!!!
I’ve been thinking about each of my relationships with my loved ones as our years move forward and some of them have reached the 20 year+ milestones, the kids are getting all grown up, some relationships have faded out, those who have passed, some great friends moved away and changes the dynamic… My goodness! Needless to say that the question about long-term relationships has been on my mind and I decided to share.
My great-grandmother gave me a Peanuts book when I was 5 which was about 50 tips on “a friend is someone who”. Sure, some are pretty stupid, like doing their homework (don’t do that! Well… actually, I’ve done it… that book really had an impact on me I guess…), but some are pretty darn great! Especially those about listening and respecting what others like might be different than what you like.
Today, I’d like to be able to share a book that is loving and uplifting to a friend who told me that they are truly invested in a great relationship.
Let’s do this!
I need to start by saying that I have very little regard for any specialist who says that they have the answers to making strong relationships. Ironic, isn’t it?!?! I am not a therapist, counselor or anything of the sort. But, for everything that I am not, the only thing I can truly say is that everyone is different and we change and grow. With those two concepts, relationships cannot be “recipied”. There are simply too many variables.
But you know I believe and I have hope! So let’s do our best to make something cool!
ONE: PEOPLE ARE NOT PERMANENT!
OUCH!!!! MAN! THAT HURT! But it’s an unfortunate truth. We don’t live forever and neither does our loved one.
Sidenote: I’d like to make a friendly reminder that I’m trying to address all our long-term relationships here, not just the romantic ones.
I don’t love the approach that we need to appreciate what can go away, but we all know that it’s true. Nothing is permanent, especially life. Life is so precious, unique, special, alive and passes REALLY FAST!
Simply knowing that we are precious and temporary makes every relationship so much more special.
Not only are our lives temporary, but we may or may not change and grow through our days and years. There is zero guarantee in which direction our internal seed will grow, how high or in which direction. Expecting anyone to grow or expecting that they stay the same is not going to work.
The happenings of our life, the people, our perception and so much more comes into our growth and embracing our basic standards.
Personal growth, or not…
We ourselves are not permanent in who we are, what we like and what makes us tick. Or, we might be 😉 Some of us are in constant flow and grow and others are-were-and always shall be the same. I think we fall into this trap of thinking people are frozen in the past as much as we do towards our parents. Somehow, we seem to forget that they are humans who might change through the years.
I believe that we all have the potential for change as we did as children, regardless of our age. It depends on how much we want to.
TWO: We are not meant to be mirror images of one another
I was watching a dating show and I could have turned it into a drinking game! Every time someone said “We don’t have the same interests” and follow it up with a dumping, I could have been very well served!
Even if we did want someone to be just like us, they might change, we might change. So, then what?!?! If your whole relationship is based on similar interests, that poor baby of a relationship might not be able to handle growth.
THREE: People have a whole private world in their mind and heart
Just a quick Google search says that we have about 70,000 thoughts a day! CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE IT!?!?!? Who took the time to count it!??! That’s a heavy job!
What defines “private” in this case? I think it’s important to highlight that there’s “private” and “private”. There are somethings that are completely private and for our minds and heart only and I fully respect that. The second “private” is what we just simply think and feel and don’t know that we’re thinking and feeling it or even think of sharing it because we’re so used to it.
We can’t share our 70,000 thoughts with anyone because we’d go nuts! They’d go nuts!
Then just think of how many feelings we have in a day!
We have our own private worries, some are ready for the spot light, some are still incubating, then there are the worries we shove as hard as possible into the deep cave of our thoughts and feelings… and again there are those we might not even realize we have.
One of my favorite quotes I’ve heard on this subject is “EVERYTHING IS NOT ABOUT YOU!”.
FOUR: APPRECIATION & GRATITUDE
Yes, that deserves to be in upper-case!
Sidenote: There is no order to the importance of these points. I often find that Appreciation and Gratitude are two of the most important things in life and relationships.
Appreciate the silly
FIVE: Listen & speak
I wrote a MiniBook about feeling seen and heard.
SIX: It’s not about gifts
SEVEN: Dump the baggage and the garbage
We all had a past and that past consists of thousands of days! THOUSANDS! And we all did something in those thousands of days. Some things were great, some things were not so much. We got our hearts broken, we got hurt, we felt shame and all sorts of stuff that created the grossest baggage you can think of! Frankly, most baggage we carry becomes garbage.
Overshare: I don’t particularly love having messed up in the past and knowing that I will mess up again. What about you?
I think it’s pretty safe to assume that no one likes their mistakes to be slapped back in their faces over and over again. We all dislike screwing up!
The past made us who we are. The past made our loved one who they are.
EIGHT: Daily grind
No one is responsible for how we feel, but Ourself.
We will have good days and bad days, good moments and bad ones. Ultimately, it’s not the fault of anyone really probably. No one can just take all the crap of the dumping of our daily grind of everything that’s happened.
Our loved ones are not to be dumped on.
Yes, they are there, ready to hear and hold our hand, give us a hug and give us encouraging words, but that doesn’t mean that they are punching bags to replace a bitchy coworker!
NINE: Trust, Respect and Admiration
Sidenote: If you’ve read my MiniBooks, you know that I put a lot of weight on the infamous words of Oprah in 1997. She said every relationship needs trust, respect and admiration. I was home sick and had a fever, so I hope I heard her right…
TEN: Keeping a light heart
I love light-heartedness.
Life can be very challenging, but do you want to go through challenges with someone who is negative and serious or someone who can balance light-heartedness and seriousness?
This isn’t really about fun, it’s about how dramatic and negative a person can be and how encouraging and supportive we can be.
ELEVEN: FUN and a good sense of humor
And now, let’s talk about FUN!
We do not have fun the same way when we meet someone and 20 years down the line! Consider how we had fun with our BFF at 6 years-old and how we have fun with them at 16, 26 and 46! Tag and Barbies can only go so far!
Jokes and mocking are not the same thing. There’s friendly roasting and there’s being mean.
Overshare: I was at a bachelorette party about 20 years ago and we ran into a couple who were out on the town after 20-ish years of marriage. The bride asked them what their secret was and they replied that going out together like they used to on a regular basis was key for them. Basically, they remembered to have fun together.
Overshare: A few years ago, I was in car-versation (you know when you’re trapped in a car and someone corners you in a conversation that’s a little too pointed?). I was faced with the question about what the most important trait a life-partner should have. Before I could even answer, I was slapped with their answer: HUMOR!!
TWELVE: Others
Oh, others… soooooo scary!
Do we need to love our loved one’s loved ones? Do we need to like them?
Overshare: I once had a friend who became a very close friend who I love very much. They had a pretty rough family life and had a LOT of issues that were rooted in the home they grew up in. Ma and Pa were still in the picture and still made their life difficult well into this friend’s 30’s. As much as this friend was trying to grow, improve, heal and move forward, this kind of relationship with their parents was hard to be supportive about. (As I re-read myself here, I realize that this applies to a few friends actually…) Anyhoo, being such a close friend and being a listener to this friend made it very hard to be positive about this parent-child relationship. I admit that though I was 100% on Team Friend, I lost a friend.
More 🙂
Turns out that I have way more things to say than 12 points and I’ve completely defeated the point of a MiniBook if I keep going! So, let’s do a rapid bullet-point list of what else I’ve got to add:
- Expectations! OY!
- We are human. Sorry to spoil the surprise.
- Forgive what deserves to be forgiven. But remember that a grudge hurts us more than the other. And if they are indeed in our heart, we may need to look at things from another lens.
- The gardener and the flower makes ZERO sense! That’s a recipe for abuse and taking for granted!
- No one wants to feel like you’re not giving them your attention. PUT THE PHONE DOWN WHEN YOU’RE WITH SOMEONE! This also applies to taking the time to sit down when you’re talking to someone on the phone.
- Does the other know why you are with them and feel heard and seen? Do you know why they are with you?
- Nagging sucks.
- A willingness to share our interests, perhaps teach and definitely learn.
- Follow-through. This one is tough, but it’s an essential ingredient to trust and just saying that we’ll do something is not doing it, but digging a hole that the relationship trips on.
- Being interested even if we’re not really interested. We are interested in our loved one! And that deserves us to be interested in them and their interests.
- Check-in for no other reason than to see how our loved one is doing! NO AGENDA!
- Memories of the past are great, but MAKE NEW MEMORIES!!! Just living in the memories of Once Upon A Time is keeping us from so much!
- Each of our relationships will be different. There is no measuring or comparing.
- Careful about the spirit squashing. There’s a difference between being honest and killing one’s spirit! On the flip-side, if a loved-one squashes your spirit, it’s probably not on purpose. It probably took a lot of courage to be honest and maybe they don’t know the roots and story of your idea or whatever it is.
Role Models and Heroes
Sidenote: This whole section is going to be an Overshare.
As a kid, I always loved seeing two (or more) fun people in an unlikely die-hard relationship. I loved Three’s Company, The Odd Couple, Lavern & Shirley, Bert & Ernie, The Golden Girls, Married with Children, 2 Broke Girls and soooooo much more!
I LOVE the unlikely combos!!!!!!
These characters were an important part of the foundation of what I was looking for in life: The unlikely, funny and caring combo!
We always learn a lot from the homes and neighborhood we were raised in and I am very grateful for all the lessons and love I got in mine, but I can’t deny the power TV had on me and where I wanted to be in my relationships.
The magic of the unlikely combo is something that keeps my heart beating! You just know that if you put Ernie with any other partner than Bert, things would not be as fun, interesting and worth tuning in 😉
And that’s my point: Making it worth tuning in into our relationships.
I love loving my relationships!
When we have to walk away
A quick Google search shows that we meet on average 80,000 people in our life.
Sidenote: There are a LOT of variables about this number, but the most important one to consider is the depth of the relationships. We do not have 80,000 full relationships in our life.
I think we need to discuss when a long-term relationship simply isn’t working and it’s time to walk away.
It’s not possible to keep all of our relationships. Some people have more relationships than others and
Let’s wrap it up!
WOW! I had A LOT to say about this!!! I love relationships!
Relationships can be incredible precious and wonderful. I’m blessed to have had wonderful family relationships, friend relationships and life-partner relationship. I have my fair share of cuts and bruises of family, friend and love relationships that really knocked me out too.
I still love everyone I have loved, I wish each Soul who is no longer with me all the best, I am truly grateful and truly love the loved ones in my life today and I look forward to all the new relationships coming in life 🙂
Let’s keep the good stuff alive and the relationships that have evaporated the respect they deserve 🙂
Karine