relationship issues

But these are not all of relationship. We have relationship, as I said, with everyone we come into contact with; the postman who delivers your mail every morning, the person you buy the paper from at your corner shop, the man who cuts your hair and brings you all the local gossip, the lady who brings you your coffee in the afternoon. Our whole lives revolve around a series of interconnecting relationships. Very often though, so many of them pass without our knowing it, and an opportunity for intimacy is lost.

Do you ever think about relationships? Not only the big ones, but those passing, everyday, invisible relationships? Let us treat each of these as if they were important. How often do we talk about casual relationships. They may be fleeting but they are never casual. They are a meeting of two minds, two beings of light. Treat all your relationships with dignity, as if they were unique, even if the time you spent with that person was only a second at a bus stop. In all our relationships we encounter God. Appreciate them, and that moment that you got to spend together. Appreciation is really gratitude.

Isn’t it a beautiful thing that you can meet someone on a crowded highway, exchange a smile, although knowing you will never meet that person again? That one brief encounter contains all the relationships of the universe. All of life is there, the love, the knowing, or the not knowing, because it all happens in - whooosh - one second. After all, the eternal now is in every second, and a relationship that lasts 20 years is, in the grand scheme of things, no longer. Learn to deepen relationship when you’re in someone’s presence. This can be simply acknowledging them, their light, their energy. It doesn’t always have to be interaction. Although it can be that too. I love chatting to people even if I don’t know them very well. But interaction can also be intrusion. Too often today we feel we must be ‘doing’, when in fact there is often no need.

In relationship issues be mindful about how you treat the so called casual. How do you behave in these passing moments? How do you treat these relationship issues? Are you numb? Do you sometimes wonder what kind of a life a stranger has, how they’d cope with a similar problem that you might have? Or, instead, do you find yourself wondering what they’re thinking of you? People hold it as a huge concern what others think of them. And yet, it’s something that we can never really know. And it’s so unimportant. But it pains some, it’s an obsession fuelled by today’s paranoia that seeks, insidiously, to bring everything back to the self.

How can we treat all our relationships with dignity? One way is to acknowledge the other person, this can be with a nod or a smile, or to say hello. But it doesn’t mean you always have to engage in conversation with them. Sometimes conversation can be a way of avoiding relationship. Of course if it’s someone providing a service, say in a shop, remember to thank them. Sadly, too often people seem to forget. I know it’s not intentional, they’re just busy. Being busy is another way of going unconscious. Also if it's a financial transaction, no matter how small, silently bless them and in your mind’s eye see them prospering. This is very important if you’re giving someone money. Too often people give money with resentment. Trust me, the penny short mentality that creates the resentment will come back to them. But if you give with love and prosperity that too returns.

Recently I was walking down a busy street going to a restaurant I frequently visit. For some reason this time I missed it (unusual). Then suddenly I saw two people with walking canes struggling to get across the road. I went over and helped them safely to the other footpath. Retracing my steps to the restaurant, I began thinking how glad I was that I missed the restaurant in the first place, as it gave me the opportunity to do a kindness to someone. I was glad I didn’t ‘see’ it.

When we do a kindness we do it for the light, the benefit it accrues to another (and to ourselves) is really incidental. There really is no helper, because that would make somebody important, and there certainly is no “helpee”, as that would make another a victim. We are all playing out the dance of the light. The light brings us all together, in a particular incident, and allows some to appear to help and others to appear to be helped. At another time the roles are reversed. We give help and receive help in turns. Or we can refuse. That’s fine, but when we do we are temporarily withdrawing our light, somewhat, we can’t actually do that no more than the sun can NOT shine. But we can do it in the moment and when we do we block our natural joy.

Honour relationships - understand relationship issues

Hold each person in honour when you’re in their company. Then when you leave allow them to go. Do you sometimes carry people around in your head after you’ve both moved on? If so, consider this as a habit you might want to change.

You’ve probably noticed you do this both with people you’re fond of and you’ve a problem with. This is because the two are really part of the same relationship pool, in that they involve attachment. Attachment is often seen as a bad thing today, but like everything else it is a learning tool. When we feel attachment we know that we have some unfinished business with that person, or with the topic that has us engaged. There is something here that is telling us we still have unresolved relationship issues. This knowing then affords us the opportunity to examine that issue and see how it can be put to right, see what it is we need to learn. It may pertain to a different area of your life than the one in which it has manifested. Sometimes people or situations trigger stuff from our past. And it’s all good. It’s a sign that it is now time to heal this situation, that’s why it has come to the surface.

Check to see if there are any ‘hooks’ here. By hooks I mean, are you taking more from this relationship/person than you’re giving? Or are you enabling that person in a way that may not be healthy for either of you, simply because you like having them around? You’ve become used to someone, or a situation being the way it is. There is something in that relationship that serves a need for you, that fills a space, a want, a vacuum. Ask yourself what you need to learn from this? Am I out of integrity in this relationship? Is there something else going on here which I’m not acknowledging? Have you made the relationship special? Have you decided that some people rank higher in your order of preference than others? First become aware that you’re doing this. Awareness is key. And don’t judge yourself for doing it. Next ask yourself are you really honouring that relationship by acting thus? What about your other relationships, are you honouring them by making one more special?

Often relationships that we elect as ‘special’ eventually unravel. We select one person to be our best friend, and decide they are more trustworthy than anyone else, smarter too, kind of on our way of thinking, we may even think they’re better looking than our other friends! (Sounds funny, I know, but tests have shown that people ascribe physically beauty to those they look up to, in addition to whatever other qualities first attracted them). We invest a certain power in this person, and then one day we suddenly realize they don’t meet this unrealistic expectation. They disappoint. Often the act of making someone special can drive them away. We are putting too many demands on them and they wish we’d back off. It can be hard work being someone’s special friend, say if they’ve put you on a pedestal. When someone does this they’ve defined you in a particular light, one that may serve a purpose for them, but which you find uncomfortable. They are merely hiding their own brilliance from themselves and projecting it onto you. This is the obverse of projecting nasty traits onto others. The latter contains vitriol, but the former can have a smothering effect equally as damaging. You want to develop into your own brilliance, someone’s else’s will not rest easily on you.

In dealing with relationship issues, it is often easier to see these traits in others than in our own relationships. This is just human nature.

Let’s use an illustration. There’s someone you know who just can’t seem to get enough of a particular person, they practically jump through hoops to be with them. Then next thing you hear they’ve had a falling out. You meet your friend for coffee and they can’t wait to tell you how awful the other person treated them. ‘She did this, she did that’, they go on, ‘and now she’s not speaking to me. And you know how much I did for her, remember when she was sick and I stayed with her all the time. Oh my god how can anyone can be so mean?’ But you could see it coming. This friendship was going to crash.

Now apply this to your own life, is there anyone you’re overly attached to, say, you feel you couldn’t do without? If the answer is yes then ask yourself why? What does this relationship do for you? Is there anything in your past it reminds you of? Often we rework relationship issues we’ve had with our parents and early significant others into our present coterie of friends, for more on this see God and the myth we created of the parent (part 1). But don’t judge yourself for doing it. Just see if you can make them less important while still honouring them. View the person and the relationship you have with them in the context of your entire body of friends, and your relationships in general.

This is process. It is a clearing. It is not about condemning yourself for how you form relationships. Too many people talk to themselves in a depreciating way, even when doing work on themselves. I’ve had people come to me in coaching sessions who say things like, ‘I have such an addictive personality’, or ‘I’m glad you pointed that out to me because I always attract the wrong kind of relationships.’ But that’s missing the point. Simply by thinking like that they’re creating or reinforcing those very situations. So you see relationship issues can be tricky.

All relationships are precious, dear beyond measure, but to make some ‘special’ is to afford it entitlement. All relationships are unique. Unique is not special. And, of course, by considering the failed opportunities for relationship with people we don’t know, I’m not dismissing the “important” ones, you know, wife, husband, parents. These relationships are very deep and complex, and are the playground where issues that are crucial to us on a soul level get played out. These, familial relationships were preselected before we chose to reincarnate.

But your stuff comes up in every relationship you have. And if you start becoming mindful of those relationships, no matter how fleeting they appear, you will learn so much about yourself.

I try to make this a habit, every night before going to sleep I scan the day and see what I leaned, particularly with relationship. And I try not to do this in a casual way, but to recall any salient details, what I said, how I reacted, what I was thinking (secretly) and where there’s work to do. It’s a beautiful exercise and will reap huge rewards if you practice it regularly. Then I give thanks for all my relationships and let it go. This letting go is very important. Don’t dwell on something that you feel didn’t go well that day, and then go to sleep on it. Trust that it will work out perfectly. Trust and let it go. You’re not suppressing it when you do this.

And speaking of relationship issues, the person you have the longest, most intimate relationship with is yourself! This is a relationship what has to last you all your life. So make sure that it’s right. That’s actually why it’s beneficial to observe how we treat other relationships, all of them, including the ones we label as passing. Because those relationships are really a mirror of how you hold yourself. Hold yourself with love, with dignity, with esteem, and all your relationships will be harmonious.

return from relationship issues to the home page