A commitment to healthy relationships will lead to heartache

The world is dysfunctional.  Families are dysfunctional.  Workplaces are dysfunctional.  Churches are dysfunctional.  Sporting clubs are dysfunctional.  And yes, we ourselves, as mortal human beings, are dysfunctional.

But it’s not all bad news.  It just resets our expectations.

A commitment to healthy relationships will lead us to heartache, and these are some reasons:

§     instigating healthy relationships will cause conflict because it means boundaries and change for others

§     having healthy relationships means you’ll need to discern and establish healthy boundaries for most of the people in your life—some of whom will punish you because they think you’re being unfair

§     some of the relationships we really value will end simply because you’re changing

§     because you’re changing, some will think (consciously or unconsciously) that you’re judging and punishing them, and that will lead them to judge and punish you

§     family roles will be challenged where there are dysfunctions, and upsetting more than one family member will not be uncommon

§     instigating a healthy relationship with someone who prefers something more toxic requires them to change

§     relating with people in healthy ways is peacemaking, not peacekeeping, the distinction of which; peacemakers speak the truth, in love for sure, but the truth nonetheless—very many people cannot handle the truth

§     a commitment to healthy relationships will also mean you might hear home truths that are hard to hear, but to hear them and absorb their truth is essential

§     healthy relationships are rewarding but they can be harder to maintain—they take mental, emotional, spiritual strength

§     loss tests the health of our relationships, and relationships are often a source of loss, so if we’re committed to healthy relationships, it will be really difficult in times of hardship

§     being committed to the truth means you won’t go with the pack or with groupthink, and it will upset some when you can’t (on principle for integrity) go with the party line—i.e., when you’re required to compromise important ethical standards

§     to be committed to healthy relationships necessitates that we accept certain dysfunctions, learning to live with the ones we can’t change, and that’s hard

§     Then finally there’s the challenge to every single one of us to meet every relational situation we can with kindness, gentleness, patience, grace, compassion and self-control

What qualities of heartache for healthy relationships have I missed?

The important matter that situates all the foregoing in its correct context is we cannot afford not to strive for healthy relationships.  Toxic relationships are not a viable option.

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The domestic perils of which we do not know

As someone who regularly works with those struggling with addiction, I was actually a little surprised to find out recently how many people are secretly addicted to methamphetamine.  There was one story shared with me of a middle-aged professional who kept his meth habit a secret for 30 years.  Even his wife had no idea until he was busted.

Just the same, there are many people—wives, children, husbands—who bear the terrible secret of domestic abuse; physical, emotional, verbal, spiritual, social, financial, etc., and the usual combinations of the types of abuse, because abuse is so often variegated.

When I worked as a school chaplain, it was hard for me to imagine that, statistically, there were at least a few girls (1-in-4) and boys (1-in-6) in each class I went into that either have seen or have been or will be abused.  It’s sobering.  And it’s trauma.

The trauma that comes from secret domestic abuse, whether you’re the direct target or it’s someone else you care about, is devastating.

For those of us in averagely dysfunctional families (for all families have their dysfunctions!) it can seem a far stretch to even imagine what persons next door or just down the road a bit suffer.

We may work with sufferers and perpetrators of domestic abuse, and the fact is, we all do.

For those we do interact with who may return to toxic unsafe homes, we’re not so much called to do anything other than be aware and be ready to believe.

If we’re ever trusted with an adult person’s deadly secret—that they or others they love suffer or are in mortal danger—we can be ready to hold that information and hold and contain them.

Simply being believed is a huge relief for the person ‘coming out’, reporting their pain as they trust another person.

Believing another person’s account of what they’re suffering is not about judging the person perpetrating the abuse—it’s about providing support for the abused.  Judge the perpetrator and suddenly we’re less effective and less safe to the victim.  They ought to be afforded a little space from the stress of managing another emotional person.

Supporting the person who is beginning to open up is about ensuring they’re as much in control of the process as they can be.

Remember, they’re probably not accustomed to being in control, so opening space for them, being nonjudgmental, is a gift we can give them.  We do them no favours in being angry toward their oppressor, but we can hold and contain them in their anger, neither being effusively positive or negative about it.

Our role in journeying with a person who is suffering abuse is more a case of coming alongside as someone without a strong opinion who is prepared for anger, tears, nothingness, moodiness, aloneness, guilt, shame, denial, and many emotions between.

We cannot solve many of our own problems, so why do we place ourselves in a position of pressure to solve others’ problems?  Just walk with them.

Seek not to solve anything, just be an advocate of belief in them, prepared to support them whether they want change or not.

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You can’t have a relationship with someone who refuses to relate

We’ve all been in those situations in certain relationships where it doesn’t matter what you think, you can’t say what you want.  By their aggressive behaviour, the other person shows they simply don’t permit it.  If you value peace, you don’t present your views.

Such a person presents their own views incessantly, of course.  It’s their prerogative to impart their views which are presumed correct, and can never be corrected, there’s just no correspondence to be entered into.

You might have a face pop to mind.  At this point it’s good to check if anyone might view us this way.

We have relationships with people we can relate with.  But some people refuse that equal part that’s supposed to be shared.

There’s power in relationships, and those who take power are those who refuse to relate.  Relating must be done on their terms and that’s no relationship.

Here are some dynamics that indicate toxicity or a blockage to relating:

§     Their right is to do most of the talking and your role is always to listen—they consume the vocal bandwidth and allow no space for you to say much

§     Or, they insist you do the talking and when you can’t, they accuse you of keeping secrets or holding back—not the power in pressure

§     They correct you routinely; they’re always right and you’re always wrong

§     If you do have a point, they dismiss it and move on quickly; to where the next conquest is

§     When they ‘help you’ it’s always presented as such a favour, but the heart and action behind their help is manipulation and self-aggrandisation

§     There is absolutely zero vulnerability in the one upon whom refuses to relate, and what that translates to is power for their gain as the relationship exists to make you vulnerable

§     At all times the game that the relationship is gets played on their terms, and anytime they seem to relinquish power is a deception.  They know that keeping their power relies on them staying in relationship with you—they always retain a hold of their power

§     When they’re around others they wish to deceive, they’ll treat you differently, better.  But as soon as you’re alone with them again, they revert to the simmering tyrant

§     Everything is a drama or on the cusp of being a drama, but you, who don’t get the freedom to use the coercive control they use routinely, are the only one accused of being ‘the drama queen’

§     Everything is on their terms and with such a person there’s no way of relating

Whatever we do when we’re in relationship with the one whom refuses to relate, we maintain our emotional equilibrium.  There is only satisfaction for the toxic one when we lose our cool—it’s one of their objectives, so don’t give them that satisfaction.

What do we do?  The fruit of the Spirit of patience helps us to know we can only win by refusing to win.  The fruit of the Spirit of kindness helps us to be gracious toward ourselves when we feel temptations rise to right the situation.  Kindness overcomes evil by doing good.  The fruit of the Spirit of gentleness helps us to be gentle with ourselves, knowing we’re goaded toward anger.

When we demonstrate patience, kindness and gentleness THEN we have won the battle—and not just for ourselves.

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Happiness is not where you’d expect it to be

While there are no guaranteed ways of assuring happiness in life, the best advice is simply to accept our responsibility for what life dishes out to us—that is, neither blaming others for what you’re responsible for, nor taking too much of others’ responsibility.

But understand this, your responsibility and mine is usually a farther stretch than we think.

To illustrate this point, imagine feeling dissatisfied about someone’s attitude.  It rubs you up the wrong way.  But your happiness is actually linked to theirs.  If you rebuke them for their attitude, opinion or otherwise, they’ll neither listen to you nor respect you.

Our responsibility first and foremost is to dignify the person and see the world from their viewpoint enough to engage.  Nothing’s achieved in concert with others unless there’s a trusting rapport.  Our responsibility is to nurture partnership with all the people we encounter.  The psychology agrees.  People don’t listen to your logos (logic) unless you show them you care about what they care about (your pathos)—that’s about finding a place of agreement, even if it’s small.

Happiness within is about taking the blows that life delivers and warding against bitterness.

This is harder to achieve than most of us think.  It’s about achieving acceptance, which again is harder to achieve than we think.  Essentially, it’s doing what only we ourselves can do, nobody else can do this for us.  We can’t export the work to others to do.  It must be done by us alone—it’s our responsibility.

We can’t control a lot of what happens, but we can control our responses to what happens.  Again, although this sounds easy, it’s a lot harder to do in practice.

Your happiness is closer than you think it is, but it’s also not where you think it is.

Happiness is as close as accepting your responsibility.  It’s hard but there’s no other way.

All of what I’ve discussed above is part of the psychological principle of internal and external locus of control.

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Conflict is like getting bogged in the sand

Today I was involved in the testing of eight prototype firefighting trucks that were being trialled in off-road conditions.  As we intentionally pushed every vehicle beyond its limits, the inevitable outcome was that these powerful trucks would get bogged in the soft sand.  While the recoveries were both fun and hard work, I couldn’t help but muse with one of the firefighters with me just how much getting bogged in the sand resembles conflict.

Conflict is like getting bogged in the sand.

Getting bogged in conflict can happen suddenly, but it can also have been predicted.  It’s like a vehicle that was moving well through the sand, but then slows as it begins to lose traction (the warning), and tyres sink into the sand instantly.  But getting bogged in the soft sand could always have been predictable—just the same, conflict is inevitable in relationships.  And just like becoming bogged in the sand, conflict can descend into indifference and anger quickly.

When you suddenly find your wheels are spinning and your vehicle is getting further and further bogged into the sand, the more you press the accelerator pedal, the worse it becomes.  This is like the response of anger or indifference toward those we’re in conflict with.  When we react emotionally and without thought, the relationship descends further into the bog.  Once you’re bogged, spinning your wheels achieves nothing or even harm.

While you’re bogged in conflict, communication is stilted and dysfunctional.  Like the vehicle is at a standstill, so is hope in the relationship stagnant.  You can try rocking back and forth, to get the vehicle going again, but without getting in and digging the sand out, or being recovered by another vehicle, nothing will be resolved.

The mode of recovering a bogged vehicle faces the truth of the immobile vehicle, and just the same, relationships bogged in conflict cannot recover unless the parties to the conflict face the difficulties.

Sometimes the recovery method fails; the recovery vehicle itself gets bogged, so you can end up with two or more vehicles all bogged in the sand.  This is like getting help that doesn’t help.  It can mean people who are helping may possibly be drawn into the conflict.  They may prove ineffective, or they may make the impasse worse.  Just being committed to the recovery of the bogged relationship isn’t enough.  It takes a lot of care and attention to learning to achieve a successful recovery.  And even when a recovery method fails, if we keep trying, we can still succeed.  We just can’t give up.

These aren’t all the connections between getting bogged in the sand and becoming bogged in conflict.  Just a few.

Conflict isn’t usually much fun, and most of the time it’s painful.  If only we can get in there, amid the bog and do what we can to recover the relationship.

The best prevention for not getting bogged in the soft sand to begin with, of course, is to use your speed to keep you rolling.  Like all good relationships, communication must be kept moving.  Problems need to be resolved proactively by facing them as they come up.

The ‘ansioner’ and the relational problems they cause

You know the person who asks you a question, you answer thinking they’re interested in what you think, but then they capitalise on your answer to either correct you or tell you a long-winded story that’s more about them than anything.  That’s what this article is about.

I call them ‘ansioners’ – or answer-ners.  They’re questioners with their own answers.  They ask you a question simply to start a conversation with you so they can take over.

They don’t need you.  They fill every void of verbal space with their own words.  They consume verbal bandwidth.  It’s either their display of wisdom (i.e., their opinion based on their observed truth) or it’s a display of their copious life experience through a narrative that’s bound to edify you (not!).

In other words, they’re showing off.  Quickly you find that in being asked a question—being invited to offer your thoughts—they’ve simply given you license to speak for a minimal period before they use their ‘communication skill’ to shut you down so they can take over.

Notice that an ansioner is adept at doing it with such consistency that they do it at every opportunity.  Your role is listener.  In other words, what they’re saying is you either don’t have as much wisdom or life experience as they do, or you’re boring and they’re a lot more interesting than you are.

Be attuned to how much attention they give to what you’re saying and how genuinely curious they are.  If they appear disinterested and are easily distracted onto whatever else is going on—bingo.

How do we deal with people who are constantly consuming the verbal bandwidth?

First and foremost, we can tell that a show-off ironically has a very fragile self-concept that they have to rail-road every conversation and make it about themselves.

Relating with such a person is never a true relationship where reciprocation runs freely between two.  You serve them and they never serve you.  It’s frustrating and toxic over the longer term.  Small doses are the order of the day.

These people invite you to be more assertive, to compete for the verbal bandwidth if you’ve got the energy for it.

My experience with these people is even the body language of appearing disinterested in what they’re saying doesn’t work.  They love the sound of their own voice.

Communications with these people—anyone who manipulates conversations for their own ends—always requires effort.  It’s good to accept this.  It will never be easy to communicate with this one.

One thing you can do, if you’re reading this, is NOT be an ansioner.  Don’t invite people into dialogue to kick them off the podium so you can monopolise their time.  People that do that demonstrate that they have no real interest in others or empathy, particularly when they start with a question of concern (“How are you?”) only as an opportunity to speak incessantly for the next fifteen minutes.

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Crisis and adversity forge the strongest bonds

“My friend, office parties, church picnics, and family holidays are great. However they don’t have the desired effect of creating a team atmosphere and bonding the different individuals to one another. It usually takes a crisis for that. Hardship. Shared pain.” 
—Anonymous

I simply googled “how bonds strengthen in adversity” and came up with the above written only a few hundred miles from where I live.

You can’t manufacture intimacy; but intimacy, of real tried and tested trust and mateship, comes into its own when individuals suffer together, when they’re called upon, often against their will, to share experiences of adversity, and to overcome together.

Those we go into battle with, those we stood back-to-back with when the pressure rose, those who had our back as we had theirs; these are the ones we develop bonds with that tie us together as one.

Since joining the fire and emergency services as an employee, I’ve been fascinated about the bonds between certain individuals and groups.  During the Wooroloo bushfires where 86 homes were razed yet many more were valiantly saved, and after Tropical Cyclone Seroja—which to this day still has people deployed to it—there were bonds built and strengthened within those communities and between those communities and those who responded and helped clean up.

As people suffer together, bonds form and people merge.  Like superglue.

There’s something about work that is inherently heroic in an environment where you do it together and can’t get out of it—mutual crisis, shared pain, united test, joint goal... risk of catastrophic failure... collective success against the odds.

And even in cataclysmic loss, together there’s shared empathy, which overwhelms our capacity to fake it.  Makes us raw together and permission to be ourselves because we’ve been seen at our weakest and yet accepted.

Life is beautiful when we break the shackles of our fear of being vulnerable.

When we’re no longer afraid of showing others who we really are.

It’s only when we step into the Arena with another or others, where the stakes for failure are enormous, that we realise we can’t get through without sticking together and finding a way through.

I’ll never forget doing a Working Together course in December 1993 where for four full days and nights we were placed in impossible situations as teams of six.  Each and every time we overcame the impossible odds to overcome together, and something forged within us that helped us drop the façade with each other to just be our best selves.

Think about your own life; the bonds of strength that exist in many of your relationships that together with individuals or others you’ve been through trial and snare, and come out of it to tell of a story or a season of triumph through anguish.

Here is a quote to finish I’m sure you’ve read:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

— Theodore Roosevelt, April 23, 1910

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