Saturday, July 1, 2017

Relationships Grow with Construction, Not Through Destruction

For some reason, when you enter into relationships, you often believe that they will last forever. However, there are many relationships that don’t and won’t last as long as you hoped that they would last. The reality is, how you start your relationships will determine their longevity. And if you aren’t continuously building upon the positives that you and your mate brought into your relationship from the onset, it is guaranteed that your relationship will not grow stronger, and it most certainly will not last through time.

We’ve had some very unpredictable weather for some time now. However, many times your relationships are just as unpredictable as the weather. The difference is, you can’t and you don’t control the weather, but you can control your relationships, without trying to control the people with whom you engage in relationships. It is a given fact that if you and your mate engage in relationship checkups at least every six months, you both will know what is lacking, what is striking, what is positive, and what is negative. If the relationship checkups are completed with honesty and without blame, you and your mate will have the greatest levels of predictability as to the longevity of the relationship.

It’s amazing that we have plans for building houses, plans for the day and the evening, plans for our wardrobes, plans for dinner, as well as plans for vacations, our careers, and our retirement. But we often fall short with no plans to keep the relationships we claim to cherish, growing and flourishing.

Just imagine if you and your mate both entered into your relationship with a plan in mind for love, commitment, longevity, and overall success of your relationship. The plan has to be a written plan that is agreed upon by you and your mate. The plan should include your goals, and your expectations for your individual selves, as well as your relationship, not just for the day, but also for tomorrow and beyond.

You must recognize that the growth and success of your relationship involves WORK! If you believe that you can sit on your laurels and do nothing to build upon and expand your relationship, it will suffer, not thrive, weaken, and eventually die. It is imperative that you don’t allow your relationship to lack the love, commitment, trust, respect, communication, lovemaking, sharing, and caring that it needs. Yes, sometimes you can breathe fresh air into your broken and limp relationship, but if by chance the neglect has gone on for an indefinite period of time, your relationship might need to be placed on life support. And you are aware that many times there is no survival while on life support.

Just as you build your wardrobe, your shoe collection, your memories and other things that matter to you, you must continue to build on your relationship, if it truly matters to you. You cannot engage in destructive behaviors if you desire to stay with the man or the woman with whom you chose to love and engage in a relationship. Having affairs, cheating, lying, cursing, name-calling, physical and emotional attacks, any form of abuse, engaging in addictive behaviors, and other destructive acts will chip and chip at your relationship until it is either rendered helpless, hopeless, or dead.

And the craziness that some of you engage in to make your mate jealous and/or love you more, if at all; is just that…CRAZINESS!! There will be times in your relationship when communication breaks down, times when you feel disrespected, you are angry, or you are fearful about your present and future life direction. However, these times are not the time for you or your mate to engage in destructive behaviors. Warfare is never fair in relationships!

There should never be times in your relationship that you or your mate decide to engage in emotional, psychological, physical, financial, and/or materially destructive behaviors. Why are you keying or breaking the windows of his/her car? Why are you calling his/her job or the IRS with destructive accusations? Why are you calling, his/her phone, or family members to harass them? Why are you stalking him/her? Why would you want to go after him/her with a gun or other weapon? These are all destructive behaviors. If you are engaging in them, STOP THE MADNESS TODAY! Destruction does not build healthy and positive relationships!

And it’s amazing that some of you seem to flourish in situations (that are really not relationships) that are tumultuous and life draining on a daily basis. However, true relationships thrive and survive because they are being fed healthy doses of love, healthy touches or love, healthy comments of love, healthy looks of love, as well as healthy acts of love each and every day. These healthy acts are truly a part of the construction process that keeps your relationship from falling into a coma, needing life support, without the possibility of survival.    

No matter how strong and how long you have been in your relationship, it cannot and will not flourish or grow when it’s under destruction. Your relationship cannot and will not thrive, nor will it survive under the weight of continuous anger, fighting, hatred, lying, animosity, and overall destruction. Further, when your relationship is in destruction mode, too many of you believe one of you has to win and the other has to lose; and you will believe that you must emerge as the winner and your mate must fall as the loser.

During the destruction process in what used to be your relationship, which has become a situation, you and your mate are now in a competition and no longer a part of a coalition. You have abandoned the ‘we’ and  ‘us’ mindset and have taken on the ‘I’ and ‘me’ syndrome. You seem to nurture intense efforts to not only win against your mate, but for you to also waste precious time in ‘getting back’ at him/her, ‘getting over’ on him/her, or taking steps to bring physical, emotional, social, psychological, and/or material harm to him/her. Just because you are hurting, doesn’t mean that everyone has to hurt with you or be hurt by you! These are acts of destruction, not only to your relationship, but also to your mate, your children, your family members, friends, and yourself.

You and your mate must decide whether you will be a part of the construction process in building and expanding your relationship, or whether you all are a part of the destruction process that is and will lead to the demise of your relationship. If the two of you have decided that you want to build your relationship and make it stronger, it is time for the construction process to begin or continue in your relationship. This must start with a solid foundation, which entails what both of you bring into the relationship.

Your attitude about each other and your relationship, as well as your belief that you and your mate are on a winning team TOGETHER, makes the difference as you continue to construct and build on your relationship. It’s having a win-win attitude, living together, while envisioning and speaking positivity each and everyday. It’s thinking positively and expecting positivity. What you think, speak, believe, and expect is what you will get and what you will have in your relationship.

Along with the regular relationship checkups, it is imperative that you all learn to focus on the positive attributes and characteristics that brought the two of you together. One of you has to take a stand for what’s right! Somebody has to be man enough and/or woman enough to admit wrong without shame and take responsibility for the roles played in the relationship. It might as well be you! An honest and sincere apology can be the first step to you and your mate starting or continuing with the construction process. It’s going back to the basics of any healthy relationship, ensuring open, honest, and positive communication, mutual respect, unconditional positive regard, commitment, and dedication, to and with each other. It’s you and your mate also evaluating your spiritual walk and taking responsibility for where it is lacking. It really makes a difference to have spiritual strength in your relationship; it gives you all an anchor when unwanted destruction tries to enter.

There is always a light at the end of the tunnel and God can show you and your mate the light to continue to move forward. You must first trust Him, trust yourselves, and trust each other. Always keep your relationship plan with goals and expectations close at hand so that it can be reviewed during your six months relationship check up. It is also important during the construction process of your relationship that you keep inferior situations and people out of the relationship. I call them infiltrators. If they are not assets, they are liabilities. The bottom line is, keep people out of your business, unless the two of you have consented to the involvement of a spiritual guide, a professional relationship therapist, or other trained expert.

Listening is always an important asset to help your relationship grow. You don’t have to have the last say, just hear the last word and move on! Choose your battles wisely and make time for and with each other. And remember, intimacy is more than sexual intercourse. Take time to have intimate conversations, intimate spiritual journeys, intimate walks, intimate projects, etc. A weekly date is always healthy and helpful, as well as allowing individual time with yourself during the construction process of your relationship.

You and your mate must remember that relationships grow with construction, and not through destruction! The two of you already have the blueprint plans for your present and your future relationship. Now its time to gather the tools provided above and get to building. But remember, any construction is a process and not an event. You can never stop the construction process, especially if you want your relationship to continue. Get up, and get going…you have some building to do!


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