How Can You Have More and Longer Lasting Relationships?

Join with me and let’s try to take better care with the people that are in our circle.  Whether it’s the coworker in the next office, the one’s who share our home, or the people we interact with in our community, let’s make it our mission to build lasting relationships.  We can if:

• We realize that relationships are fragile.
• We have realistic expectations.
• We apologize immediately.
• We avoid over familiarity.
• We value people.
• We invest our time and attention.
• We listen and feel.

When others are at their worst, we need to be at our best.  The reward will be very satisfying with more intact and lasting relationships.  By the way, there is some good news on the relationship front.  After years of separation the football team owner and the Head Coach mentioned at the beginning of this article are once again good friends who respect and admire each other.  There is hope!

I Feel Your Pain

Former President Bill Clinton was very effective with his “I feel your pain” word track during his bid for the presidency.  Many people were in economic distress at that time and they responded to his claim of empathy. 

Our first job with a hurting associate, friend or neighbor is not to solve their problem.  The job is instead to listen and feel.  But before we can show empathy we need to have enough intimacy to know what is going on in their lives.  Feeling someone’s pain means being in it with them.  The well known Bible verse on “love” states that real love “bears all things… (and) endures all things.”  Bearing and enduring are the heavy lifting of relationships.  Yes, it is hard work but it is well worth the effort. 

People in pain first and foremost need us to be a friend to them.  James Taylor penned the words to a song this way: “When you’re down and troubled - and you need a helping hand - and nothing, no nothing is going right - call my name and think of me - and soon I will be there to brighten up you’re your darkest hour.”  Cheesy? No, true.

(To be continued.)

Pay the Man

Another reason our relationships fail is that we fail to invest time and attention.  A relationship is like an investment.  When we put money into a stock we expect we will receive a dividend.  In relationships it is time and attention that are the funding source.  When we take time and pay attention the relationship grows and we receive a benefit.  If we do not invest there is no possibility of reaping a dividend.   

(To be continued.)

You’ve lost that Lovin' Feeling

When I was a little kid growing up in the 60’s all of the other neighborhood children were much older than me.  They were all playing rock and roll on their radios and record players.  One of my favorite songs of that era was by the Righteous Brothers entitled “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.”   Being casual with a relationship will definatly cause that “lovin feeling to wane.  To protect our relationships we need to remember that people are valuable and we should treat them with care.  We take care of our homes and our cars so why not our relationships?   Like Coach Walsh said, carelessness is always at the center of relationship problems.

(To be continued.)

Too Close for Comfort

We have all heard Aesop’s fable, “familiarity breeds contempt.”  I especially like the way French novelist George Sand puts it, “Admiration and familiarity are strangers.”  When we act in an over familiar manner in a relationship we fail to recognize the natural boundary lines that all people have.  When we become relationally presumptuous we violate the individual autonomy of those in our work, home and social lives.  We must resist our tendency to manipulate and control others.  These and other actions of over familiarity will set back our relationships and send people running for the hills for safety.

 

(To be continued.)

You’ve done Me Wrong

Google this title and you will see a list of the top 75 country songs about broken relationships.  Whether you like country, jazz or popular music you have heard hundreds of songs that describe being out of relationship.  Without exception these songs lack one common theme...an apology.  So what is the first thing we should do when we fail in a relationship?  We need to fess up, take responsibility and apologize immediately. Just do it!  Don’t wait as every minute will cause the damage we have caused to go deeper and deeper and will make the recovery more difficult.    

(To be continued.)

Great Expectations

One relationship killer is the unrealistic expectations we put on others.  Consider the kind of behavior we expect of others and then take a hard look at the way we sometimes act.  Other people are just like us.  They make mistakes and can be insensitive.  Their wrong actions hurt us and our’s hurt them.  But just like we want to be given a break by others when we blow it, we need to extend that same grace to them as well.  Most relationship fopas are not calculated but are just sloppy behavior.  Let’s agree to give people more room, be less sensitive and not expect perfection.   

(To be continued.)

How Can You Have More and Longer Lasting Relationships?

Humpty Dumpy Had a Great Fall

The other morning as I made breakfast one of the eggs didn’t make it from the refrigerator to the frying pan.  As it is with eggs, it didn’t bounce and come to rest intact but instead went everywhere on the kitchen floor.  Relationships are the same way – very fragile.  As we strive to make our relationships last, the first thing to come to grips with is that relationships are easily broken.  Like my egg, they lack resilience.

(To be continued.)

How You Can Avoid Fractured Relationships

I was watching an interview with Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson.  To my surprise, the subject was not football but relationship.  If you know the history of this owner of the Dallas Cowboys (Jones) and the coach who won two back-to-back Super Bowls for him, (Johnson) you may remember the sparks that often flew between these two strong personalities.  Eventually, Jones and Johnson were exchanging jabs at one another in the press.  Their relationship was in decline and finally they separated.  Their relationship had failed.

In the interview, Johnson spoke of a time when he discussed the situation with the legendary San Francisco 49er’s coach Bill Walsh.  In an attempt to provide perspective on their fracture, Walsh commented, “You got careless with your relationship.”

That simple yet profound statement caused me to reflect on my, too numerous, lost relationships.  People came to mind who I worked for, people that worked for me, people that I knew through church and community involvement all the way to the guy next store.  I realized that I was the culprit in some of the fractures, in others instances that the other person did the severing and in some cases I really couldn’t identify what had happened.  My reflection made me determined to make my existing and future relationships last the test of time.

(To be continued.)