Living Well: Relationships

By Katherine Hegemann (kittyhegemann@embarqmail.com)

I’ve met people who are hermits or otherwise choose to live with few or no human relationships. Because there were mitigating circumstances or because it was his/her choice, these people lived a fairly contented life. Most of us aren’t like that. We need healthy, happy and productive relationships with others.

We all know many people. Most of these relations require nothing more than saying hello, conducting business, and inquiring about a person’s life. These are dealings that are fairly superficial and may include your favorite waitress, cashier, a neighbor, or even a relative who lives on the other side of the country. They don’t require much effort.

When we decide to begin and build a relationship with another person, there is more required of each person involved. More important is the deepening knowledge, acceptance, respect, trust, and love for each other.

Healthy human relationships provide mental and emotional well-being; improve health, happiness and success; and help us grow as members of a community and as an individual.

The question is what makes a healthy, long-term, successful relationship? There are five key components to building and maintaining strong connections with others.

Commitment

A commitment is a pledge to do something or fulfill an obligation or promise. I’m not writing about keeping a commitment to meet for lunch once a month, although that is important too. Opening up and sharing yourself with another person is the vital promise in relationships. Whether it’s your spouse, child, pastor, best friend, or doctor, you have to share the real you with them. That means the good parts as well as the not so good.

Another aspect of commitment is to stay with the relationship even when the going gets rough. None of us agree with another person all the time, but learning to agree to disagree is important in building a good relationship.

One of the best things about a healthy relationship is learning how others think and feel. It’s really about opening up to new ideas, paradigms, ways of living, and how to do things.

Of course, commitment is a two-way pledge. It is important to be realistic about just how much you and the other person are willing to share of yourselves. The depth of the relationship depends on that sharing and commitment.

Compassion

Did you know compassion is the cornerstone of all types of love? Compassion is when you connect with others to share their joy, suffering, good times, and bad times. It, basically, is when you want for others what you have.

Empathy is part of compassion. You are able to recognize and share other’s feelings, such as happiness and sadness. Another piece to the compassion puzzle is sympathy, which is to understand another’s feelings. Recognizing another’s feelings is not the same as understanding them. To show compassion, you have to do both.

When you share and care about another’s feelings, you go beyond the superficial. It’s a skill that can be developed and is essential to having stable and long-lasting relationships.

Generosity

Generosity is giving freely to others without expecting anything in return. It may involve offering your time, assets or talents to aid someone else during their time of need. Generosity is often equated with giving to others and is seen as a virtue.

It’s a funny thing, but sometimes we do something generous then later wonder at our motives. I’m still learning not to second guess myself and you should also.

A good relationship is dependent on being generous. If you always expect something in return for doing something generous, then you’re not being generous at all. Just giving with no expectations will bring you joy and a closer relationship.

One year at Christmas, my husband and I adopted a family with a disabled single mother. The kids were teens. We worked with the apartment manager to anonymously give them Christmas dinner and a few presents for each person. We insisted the manager NOT let the family know who did this. This will always stay in my memory as one of the best Christmases ever.

Tolerance

No matter how great a relationship you have with another person, there will be times when you don’t see things the same way and you’ll disagree. Being tolerant doesn’t mean changing your views, but it does mean listening and trying to understand.

Tolerance also means knowing we all make mistakes and hold different views but being open-minded enough to listen and not judge the other person.

It is important in a relationship for each person to be tolerance, which helps us feel safe and trusted. This allows us to gain great fulfillment and increases personal growth.

Kindness

A desire to help others, express goodwill and be considerate of others is what kindness is all about. We like to think of ourselves as being kind, but in a relationship it is absolutely necessary. Without kindness, there will be no relationship.

Psychological research has shown kindness to have a measurable benefit on a person’s happiness and life-satisfaction. Not only that, but kindness given by you and shown to others benefits your health.

A nice gesture, doing favors for others, simply treating others with respect, and doing what we can to show we care about them as a human being are all acts of kindness. When you have a loving heart and feel affection and warmth for others, you are more likely to show kindness.

Most people would agree that it is a good thing to show kindness to everyone. In a relationship, it helps to bind you together, build intimacy, and affirm the other person as worthy of love.

I remember a bumper sticker that said ‘Commit random acts of kindness.’ Unexpected and unsolicited kindness benefits everyone in a relationship.

Humans need deep and abiding relationships to be fulfilled. Include these five components into current, new and future relationships. Everyone involved will greatly benefit and experience personal affirmation.

© 2011, Katherine Hegemann