What is all this Stuff about Relationships?

Famous psychologist Abraham Maslow said that love and a sense of belonging is an essential need for human beings. As much as we need food and water for nourishment of body, we need love to nourish our heart.  Relationship with family and friends is a great source of love, but its a double edge sword. Sometime it can also cause us a lot of pain when it does not work out.

Naturally we all wish to keep our relationships in a healthy state, but inter-personal relationship is such a complex subject that the delicate relationship may go haywire within no time if we are not careful. How do we maintain our relationships healthy? I have been searching for an answer to this question for many years and have written several posts on this topic based on my readings and experiences. This post is a collection of all the ideas that I gathered along the way.

When we talk about relationships, most of us imagine only marriage or love relationships, and we tend to take for granted our relationship with parents, siblings, relatives, or co-workers; but we need to put in equal amount of care with these as well else these too carry the risk of becoming defunct.
Here are the suggestions for keeping your relationships in a good shape:

Keep good Balance in Emotional Bank Account

Emotional Bank Account represents the trust between the two of you. Simply put, when you show love, care, and understanding, you make a deposit in the Emotional Bank Account, and when you make the other person unhappy with your actions, it causes a withdrawal. If you maintain a healthy balance in this account, you will have enough trust to withstand minor breaches. So, take time to regularly make small deposits and soon you will accumulate a good balance.

Take time to Understand

Most often we complain that the other person does not understand us, and spend a lot of effort in making ourselves understood. Do we also take pain to understand him too? Try your best to understand first, then work on making yourself understood. Don’t rely on your assumptions about the other person. Make a habit to listen and observe carefully to develop a sound understanding about him.   

Control your Anger

Leave the Angry Young Man for the movies. Anger does funny things to you. It makes you behave in ways that you really don’t want to and results in a damage to a relationship that cannot be undone. Learning to recognize your anger and control it is the most important skill you need to work on. This is also useful in increasing your effectiveness in many other areas of your day-to-day life.

Learn to sort out Differences

No two persons think alike and you are bound to have differences. We need to know how to handle such differences constructively, free of excess emotions. A useful tip for the ‘brainy’ people who like to argue with people to prove themselves right - Avoid doing it; you may win the argument but lose a friend. 

Behave well when Hurt

Once-in-a-while you may lend up getting hurt and feeling bad. It is important to control your emotions in such a case and handle it in a constructive manner. Above all be ready to let it go by forgiving the person who has caused the hurt, since forgiveness is for your own good. Similarly, recognize when you have hurt someone and apologize sincerely.

CRTL-ALT-DEL

In spite of our best efforts, a relationship may get so much entangled that it looks beyond repair. What to do in such a case? Do we bailout and end the relationship, put up with the messy situation, or take pains to discuss and resolve the issue? The answer depends on the situation. First of all ask yourself, “Is this relationship important for me?” If the answer is yes, take time to discuss, understand and resolve. However, at times the best strategy is to reboot the relationship, erase the past memories of painful interaction, and start a new chapter. This can give you the quickest and most effective way to bring back a derailed relationship on track. However, remember that it will work only if you have forgiven the person, are willing to forget the painful episode, and let go of the emotion of hurt associated with it.

How do you know that all this is practical wisdom and not an armchair prescription? Look around you and you will find these ideas in everyday use. Let me narrate an experience I went through as an example.

My relationship with a close relative Hritik (name changed) had not been going too well. I believe some of my bad actions must have made him upset with me and then he did something equally bad that made me see red. I do not know if it was in retaliation, but I fear the worst in the absence of any information. Now here were the two of us, nursing strong emotions against each other in our hearts, and hoping that someone will set the matter right for us. We did not talk much about it, and held on to our grudges silently. I knew that if we apologize or have a dialog, it will easily set the matter right, but we did not care to do it since both of us were equally angry.

The situation was not really good since this was a kind of constant load that we were carrying in our hearts. The passage of time also helped in blunting the sharp edge of our emotions. We do not live in the same city, so we did not have to be face-to-face often, still I really wished that we could get over it somehow, and Hritik must have shared the same sentiment too. Given this background, when we got an opportunity to meet in person again, I decided not to waste any time in discussing my past grudges, but apply a CRTL-ALT-DEL to reboot our relationship. As I went about it, to my surprise, I sensed an equal willingness on Hritik’s part to go along. We made a fresh beginning successfully on that occasion and it lifted a huge load from my mind. Did we get back to the same level of closeness as we had before? Maybe not, but the most important gain was that we got back a working relationship from its defunct status, and I felt really happy about it afterwards.

Inter-personal relationship is too involved a topic to be covered in just a few bullets, and there are many more aspects to it. However, you need not be inundated with all this complexity. Be sincere, follow your heart, and have empathy – it should generally be enough to help sail through it smoothly. Above all, take time to experience the wonderful feelings of love when the going is good. It will give you motivation for restoring a derailed relationship.