Relationship Help & Advice

How to Have Healthy Relationships

Life is a movement in relationships.  They are the source of our greatest joys and our greatest sorrows.  Love, hate, jealousy, joy, anger, respect, adoration, disgust, apathy and other big and small emotions all live and die in the playground of relationships.  This is life. 

In this article today, I want to share with you a very interesting technique that I have found to be very helpful in dealing with relationships, helping make them a positive, interesting and transforming experience.  A technique which should go a long way in helping you have fun, healthy relationships.

Technique for Healthy Relationships:

Humans are dynamic!

Yes that is it.  This is a fact and applying this truth, changes the whole complexion of relationships.  What do I mean by this statement, that people are dynamic?  I mean that people are never the same from year to year, day to day or even moment to moment.  Everything changes and people change too.  So what does this mean with regard to relationships?  It means to approach the other person without your past image of them.

Try this and you will realize what an eye-opening change it will bring.  Just forget about what you know about the other and look at them with fresh, new eyes.  Like you are meeting them for the very first time.  It will refresh and rejuvenate your whole relationship.  Here’s how…

As a result of such an approach you will not meet the image you have of the person in your mind, but you will meet the real person instead.  Interacting with the image and having it color your experience of the other, becomes a habit over time.  This habit from both sides, then puts into place patterns of behavior and pretty soon, there is really just interaction between two mental images taking place and we call it a relationship.  It is not.

A relationship is between two living breathing dynamic people, and for that, the image has to be put aside.  When you do this, you will start to pay attention again to the other person.  Paying attention to who they actually are at that moment.  And most importantly you will be open to all possibilities.  The relationship will be an adventure, as you will not be following an old pattern of behavioral interaction.  By taking this approach you will open the door to a whole new way of relating to and interacting with the other.  You will not be acting along old, known, safe lines of cause and affect.

What this does require from you though is energy, awareness and courage.  You will have to be on guard to not react in typical, stale, old ways.  You will have to be alive to the present and attentive to the being in your presence.  I especially suggest this technique for parents and married couples.

Often irritations come into such relationships as a result of over exposure.  Mothers tending to their children all day, start to expect resistance for certain activities and get stressed out even before the trouble starts.  In seeing the child anew, without expecting the worst, the whole situation can take on a new look and feel, and often this newness produces creative ways to move forward together.  Just maybe, little Jonny will eat his veggies, take a bath and go to bed without World War III this time…. or maybe not .  Who knows, that’s why we live.  But, if you allow yourself to be in the creative presence of your child, creative solutions will reveal themselves.

The same goes for how you view and respond to your partner.  Don’t look at them with the emotional baggage of the past, i.e. the image.  Look at them with innocent eyes.  Yes, this also means being vulnerable to getting hurt, as you are not going to walk on tried and tested safe paths, but this also means you are encountering the other person for real.  Such an approach will certainly bring your relationship to life and bless it with abundant spontaneity, freshness and newness.

People are immensely complex.  They are mysterious, fascinating and unique.  Each one of us is.  You are, your children are and yes, your life partner is too .  If you drop your image, relating to others will become an adventure.  You will be embracing the unknown.  You will be entering the present, where all the magic of life truly happens.

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