His Point of View

So far this year (its currently only day 5 of 2012) I have been a party in two discussions about how to make a relationship work.   Its pretty simple… communicate effectively, and compromise.  A relationship is nothing more than a description of how multiple people interact with each other. For a relationship to exist long term and to grow stronger all parties must give and take.

With regard to healthy romantic relationships, no one person should be doing significantly more taking than the other.  Each person can give in their own way, but it should be in a way that adds value to the other person’s life.  If one person gives and feels that they are not being taken care of they will become unhappy, and that will lead to any number of dysfunctional actions.    Often people feel as if they are giving a lot, while their mate does not agree, because what is being given is not seen as valuable by the person receiving.  We should learn what things we can do to add value and or comfort to our mate’s life so that we can show them that we are considering their feelings in a way that they will recognize.   Along those lines each party has a duty to communicate effectively and at the proper time when they feel that the scales are tilted too far in one direction.  If you can your mate can’t have a calm discussion about how each of you feel then effective communication is not in practice within your relationship.  No one should be afraid to raise an issue to their mate, but we must always consider the timing and the other life events before we decide to raise certain issues.  I am sure it won’t make things any better if you decide to talk about why you are not happy on the day your mate just lost a major contract or they just left traffic court.  Its only 15% about what you have to say and 85% about how & when you say it.

We all have to know when its ok to not have it our own way… especially if it will help the relationship or help the person you are in the relationship with.  Folks these days are very quick to dismiss our mate because of a single issue or a single problem, instead of investing time and effort into communication and finding a workable compromise that will allow you to get past that particular issue.  Sure you risk spending time talking to come to a resolution that you are not 100% satisfied with at the moment but in the grand scheme of things the resolution should be in the best interest of all parties involved.

To keep it simple and not waste much more of my regular reader’s time with things I have written in other posts, it all boils down to EFFECTIVE communication and willingness to compromise to ensure that both your mate and yourself can maintain a level of comfort with regard to things you don’t both agree on 100%.  You must remember that the other person is viewing each issue through a different lens formed by a whole different set of life experiences.  Those different life experiences cause each of us to see and understand things differently.  We must take the time to develop a vocabulary and use that vocabulary to discuss issues as logical mature beings.