Advice on Relationships

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Author:
Dr. Robert A. Eubanks


“It’s all about relationships!” proclaimed my father during our recent holiday visit with my parents. Santa Claus coffee cup in one hand and a wagging finger toward my wife, Elizabeth, with the other. “When you retire, that’s what you realize is most important in life” (okay, so that’s not him in the photo).

Dad recently retired from 30+ years as an orthopedic surgeon and the major shift in lifestyle seems to have brought about a significant shift in his outlook on life. For me, his statement about relationships became much broader and more profound than I thought such a simple and reasonable statement could ever become.

At first look, it makes sense that relationships are vital to our lives. Whether it is friendship, dating, marriage, family or community, relationships with others are a part of our everyday life. They give us belonging, meaning, companionship, intimacy and love. But, pulling back from this view and taking a broad gander at the subject I realized that relationships are more than just meaningful interactions with people. When we “relate” or interact with something we are, in fact, in relationship with it. For instance, our relationship with work, our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with our health and our relationship with our spirituality. By defining relationships from this broader perspective, our relationship list becomes almost endless.

You see, when we look at our relationships, we look at our interaction with every part of our lives; people, places, things, and events. So, what is our relationship to our work, ourselves, our environment, our health, our spirituality? How do we relate to these things? Or, better yet, if it is “all about relationships” how are our most important relationships?

Coming from the psychotherapy world, I often helped couples, families and individuals improve personal relationships by working through a series of 5 questions. Once I broadened my definition of relationships, I found that these questions are applicable to all types of relationships. The questions go something like this:

1. What relationships do you value most?

Be clear about what you value and which relationships are truly priorities to you.

2. Why do you value them?

Understanding the value these relationships have for you underscores the importance of the relationship and clarifies why a relationship “feels” important.

3. How do you nourish each relationship?

Now that you’ve identified how and why a relationship is important, you must define what it is that you do to keep that relationship alive and growing.

4. How do you maintain your commitment through the tough times?

Are the divorce stats really any different from the number of other relationships that end in our own lives (i.e., dropping the diet, “forgetting” exercise, leaving job after job, putting personal goals and dreams on hold, getting around to the God/spiritual thing when you have more time, etc)? These relationships may not necessarily be a marriage but like a marriage these relationships have their challenging times. Similar to a marital relationship, we must work through the difficult times in our other relationships rather than set them aside until a better time or just plain hope the struggles go away. This is often the point at which my coaching clients seek my assistance.

You will inevitably find that nurturing these relationships is often like a juggling act. Though, once we identify the key relationships in our lives and begin relating with them rather than leaving them on our “To Do” list, we will soon find that balance in life is an attainable goal and that, in fact, life truly is all about relationships.


Robert A. Eubanks, Ph.D. is a personal coach whose mission is to help others balance their lives, achieve personal goals and begin living their passions. For a complimentary coaching session or more information about coaching, go to www.bridgetosolutions.com or call 561-385-9184.

bridgetosolutions@yahoo.com

A Quick Note From The Publisher... If you like the article above, you may be interested in the following article which is also related to Improve Relationships... Tips On How To Handle Abusive Relationships A Relationship is a very valuable aspect in our life. It must be unique and something to be enjoyed by everyone. We all dream of having a very healthy relationship especially with our friends, family members and loved ones. It is a relationship wherein we enjoy each others company. We do things together like watching a basketball game or sometimes with the company of some friends. We are honest about our feelings with each other. There is mutual respect and sincerity between the two of us. It means we pay attention to each others opinion or thoughts. Always trying to reach out to each other to strengthen the bonds of the relationship. On the other hand, to have an unhealthy or abusive relationship is to experience the exact opposite when we are having a healthy relationship. We usually feel bad about ourselves. We do not verbalize our feelings. We take each other for granted. It could be in the form of hurting the other person verbally, abusing the person physically, emotional abuse and sexual abuse. Sometimes, both of them will be violent or be abusive to each other. There are situations wherein only one is abusive to the other. Most often, the abusive relationship does not happen immediately only after sometime. That will be the manifestation of the real self of the person you promised to live with. If we are experiencing an abusive relationship, then how are we to get out from such relationship? First and foremost, we need to talk to somebody we could trust, like for example our parents, a friend , guardian, counselor, teacher or a doctor. We should relate to them that we are having an unhealthy relationship and what the other person did so as to abuse us. If we are afraid to tell our parents, then we should approach somebody whom we trust...