This is a repost from an article I came across this past weekend. It gives a lot of insight to the main problem areas in relationships today. Or, its simply another view on things...
Communication - it gets blamed for everything. For generations, in survey after survey, couples have rated communication as the number one problem in relationships and marriage...it's not.
Relationship communication is getting a bad rap. It's like the kid who fights back on the playground. The playground supervisors hear a commotion and turn their heads just in time to see his retaliation. He didn't create the problem; he was reacting to the problem. But he's the one who gets caught, so he's sent off to the principal's office.
In relationship communication, everyone gangs up on him, when the truth is, on the playground of relationships, he's just reacting to one of the other troublemakers who started the fight:
1. We date and marry people because we like who they are.
People change. Plan on it. Don't be with someone because of who they are, or who you want them to become. Be with them because of who they are determined to become. And then spend a lifetime joining them in their becoming, as they join you in yours.
2. Relationships and marriage do not take away our loneliness.
To be alive is to be lonely. It's the human condition. Relationships and marriages don't change the human condition. It can't make us completely unlonely. And when it doesn't, we blame our partner for doing something wrong, or we go searching for companionship elsewhere. Relationships and marriage are intended for 2 humans to share the experience of loneliness and, in the sharing, create moments in which the loneliness dissipates. For a little while.
3. Shame baggage. Yes, we all carry it.
We spend most of our adolescence and early adulthood trying to pretend our shame doesn't exist so, when the person we love triggers it in us, we blame them for creating it. And then we demand they fix it. But the truth is, they didn't create it, and they can't fix it. Sometimes the best relationship therapy is individual therapy, in which we work to heal our own shame. So we can stop transferring it to the ones we love.
4. Ego wins.
We've all got one. We came by it honestly. Probably sometime around the fourth grade when kids started to be jerks to us. Maybe earlier if our family members were jerks first. The ego was a good thing. It kept us safe from the emotional slings and arrows. But now that we are grown, the ego is the very wall that separates us. It's time for it to come down. By practicing openness instead of defensiveness, forgiveness instead of vengeance, apology instead of blame, vulnerability instead of strength and grace instead of power.
5. Life is messy and relationships are life.
So relationships are messy, too. But when things stop working perfectly, we start blaming our partner for the snags. We add unnecessary mess to the already inescapable mess of life and love. We must stop pointing fingers and start intertwining them. And then we can we walk into, and through, the mess of life together. Blameless and shameless.
6. Empathy is hard.
By its very nature, empathy cannot happen simultaneously between two people. One partner must always go first, and there's no guarantee of reciprocation. It takes risk. It's a sacrifice. So most of us wait for our partner to go first. A lifelong empathy of standoff. And when one partner actually does take the empathy plunge, it's almost always a belly flop. The truth is, the people we love are fallible human beings and they will never be the perfect mirror we desire. Can we love them anyway, by taking the empathy plunge ourselves?
7. The hidden power struggle.
Most conflict in relationships is at least in part a negotiation around the level of interconnectedness between lovers. Men usually want less. Women usually want more. Sometimes, those roles are reversed. Regardless, when you read between the lines of most fights, this is the question you find: Who gets to decided how much distance we keep between us? If we don't ask that question explicitly, we'll fight about it implicitly. Forever.
8. We don't know how to maintain interest in one thing or one person anymore.
We live in a world pulling our attention in a million different directions. The practice of meditation--attending to one thing and then returning our attention to it when we become distracted, over and over and over again--is an essential art. When we are constantly encouraged to attend to the shiny surface of things and to move on when we get a little bored, making our life a meditation upon the person we love is a revolutionary act. And it is absolutely essential if any relationship or marriage is to survive and thrive.
People can be taught to communicate in just an hour. It's not complicated. But dealing with the troublemakers who started the fight? Well, that takes an entire lifetime. And yet, it's a lifetime that forms us into people who are becoming ever more loving versions of ourselves, who can bear the weight of loneliness, who have released the weight of shame, who have traded in walls for bridges, who have embraced the mess of being alive, who risk empathy and forgive disappointments, who love everyone with equal fervor, who give and take and compromise, and who have dedicated themselves to a lifetime of presence and awareness and attentiveness.
And that is a lifetime worth fighting for.
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:24-25
--Kelly M. Flanagan
