The importance of Relationships

Relationships

What do you know about relationships?. You hear, the word relationships a lot these davs. It seems that many people are writing about relationships and the different things the word seems to imply: roles, sexuality, love, life styles, sex, commitments, intimacy, self-fulfilment.

Many people are interested in these subjects, in fact. Recently a bookstore manager wondered what topics took up the most shelf, space in his store. So he measured the shelf space devoted to each one, and found that the subject of hurnan growth and relationships "Won" by twenty feet. Translated into human terms, that measure tells us that large numbers of people are asking questions about relationships - how they should live with other persons in their lives, Growing to maturity, for many people, means discovering new questions about themselves and their relationships.

Have you noticed this in your own life? As you have changed in the past few years. have you noticed that your relationships have changed as well.

Think of the people who are important to you: your partner, wife, husband, children, your brothers or sisters, parents, friends, classmates, co-workers, teachers. Are some of these relationships much more important to you now than when you now than a few years ago? Are some of these relationships less important to you now?

Relationships are a vital part of our lives at any age. As children we related to other people in loving ways. We had close friendships. Perhaps we had older brothers and sisters we admired. We loved our parents without question. We could be affectionate, open, generous, loyal to others. As children, it seemed easy and natural to love the important people in our lives, our primary relationships. In turn, their love for us seemed easy, uncomplicated. We often took these relationships for granted.

But in high school, relationships began to take on a new meaning. As we approached physical and mental maturity, it became important to put relationships on a more mature basis. With sexual maturity, it was even more important to relate to others in ways that made sense of being male or female in these more mature relationships. Growth and change meant discovering new questions about ourselves and our lives, such as:

What does it mean to be an adult? a man? a woman? How should men and women relate to each other? What is a good friendship and good relationships? Where does sex belong in a relationship? Can someone remain single and still be a sexual person? When should I marry? Should I marry at all? What do I want out of life? What part do my relationships play in my life?

No one person can answer all these questions on relationships, but whatever we think our thoughts and attitudes are based on certain beliefs about ourselves and our lives:

1) We need other people in our lives in relationships that are close and lasting.

2) We can learn things about ourselves, about friendships, and about the world today, which help us find happiness in the relationships we form with others.

3) We can discover tools or skills for living, which help us make our relationships stronger and more lasting.

But none of these statements makes sense unless we understand the part other persons play in our lives, especially in our relationships. And nowhere can we find more convincing answers than in our own in our own lives and from persons with whom we have had relationships.

Each one of us comes to relationships with an extensive "history," a unique past which wields a strong influence on what we expect in our close relationships. Yet we seldom realize how much our relationships are affected by our personal histories.

At no time is the influence of our personal history on our relationships more obvious than when we approach marriage. For example, supposing you loved someone very much and decided to marry. The two of you would talk endlessly, absorbed in planning a shared future.

You would have disagreements now and then, but you would try to be objective in settling them fairly and lovingly. And the more each of you understood your own past, the more honest and accepting you could be with one other.

Any time we begin to understand how we came to be the persons we are, it is much easier to accept the differences, and to admire the goodness, in others.

The 'time machine' is not an entirely imaginary thing. Life itself is a kind of time machine. We carry our past relationships into each new day, a past we have made from all that others have given us, in either a negative or positive way. With it we each build our future.What kind of relationships will we choose? Can we build our relationships to be close, loving and lasting?

And what if our past has been full of hurt because of the relationships we have experienced? What if it seems hard to get close to others, or to expect another person to care deeply about us in our new relationships? What kind of future can we look forward to?

Answers do not come easily to these questions on relationships. But it is important to remember that unless a person has experienced an early and total lack of affection in their relationships, it seems that it is never too late to become loving, sharing persons.

After years of studying human behavior, psychotherapist Carl Rogers believed strongly that persons, if given the opportunity, have an almost undeniable ability to grow toward healthy maturity and the relationships we experience a decisive in this quest.

In many ways as we get older and experience more of life, our choices and our values either support or undermine our attempts to form strong, lasting, and loving relationships.

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