UNDERSTANDING RELATIONSHIPS

Most of the challenges anybody ever faces have to do with their relationships with other people: parents, siblings, friends, enemies, strangers, suppliers, clients, spouses, children, supporters, opponents, bosses, employees, bank managers, teachers, doctors, counselors, patients, priests, idols, heroes, competitors. The list seems endless.

Countless millions and entire lifetimes are spent trying to make, break, change, fix and understand relationships. 

Despite more probably having already been written on relationships between people than any other topic newspapers and magazines are dominated by stories about relationships gone wrong and new books punting the next-best-one-size-fits-all instant remedy for fixing them reach the top of the best-seller lists all the time.  

This is strange because the most difficult thing about relationships is realizing how simple they really are:

• There are only two roles in any relationship: “screwer” and “screwee”.

 

• Everybody in every relationship is destined to spend time in each of these positions.

 

• In a healthy relationship everybody spends more or less equal time in each of these positions.

If you find yourself at the bottom most of the time the relationship is in trouble, but no more so than if you were always on top … and this applies to every relationship you or anyone else will ever have.

At first blush this may sound simplistic and gimmicky. It isn’t – as Tom Robbins had occasion to point out, being light hearted is not the same as being light weight.

When you are having or are afraid of a relationship-related hiccup on any scale – and they can range from the mundane to the monumental – it is often sobering, enlightening and surprising to draw up a quick balance sheet of who was where, when and for how long in the relationship. 

Don’t be surprised to find that things have gone awry not because of anything the other person has done but because you have been getting your way too often and for too long.

 

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[drbonniejacobson]

The core knowledge that allows long term love relationships to last is to understand the importance of personal boundaries yours and your partner's. When we miss this education we react during stressful moments and build barriers which leads to isolation and eventual disinterest or disreagrd of the other. check out my blog drbonniejacbson.com for more information on this subject.