Acknowledging the cost of unequally yoked relationships

Every good relationship is equally yoked, in that, as oxen teams were selected according to weight and strength to plough a field, relationships need that same characteristic.  With oxen, a stronger/weaker unequal yoking would see inefficient ploughing and poor results.  With relationships, it’s about both parties pulling their weight.  One can’t do the work of two.

Those who bear little or no responsibility for their impact on others do affect us.

They live unaccountable lives in that, for a variety of reasons, they either can’t be or won’t be called to account.  This is because it’s either not worth it or it’s a risk to do it—or both.

Many years ago now, I recall a manager in a workplace who was as slippery and manipulative as you can get.  I recall the executive that I reported to saying, “One of these days he’s going to slip up.”  And it did happen.  And it wasn’t just dismissal from the job role he had.  He ended up in jail.

In another situation, again twenty years ago now, a customer service officer had embezzled a high six-figure sum, and I had the role of assisting forensic auditors, and it was summary dismissal and criminal charges and jail time for her.

But there are so many times in all our lives where those who won’t live accountable lives impact us and we may get to a point where we need to remove them from their impact on us.

Anyone who constantly requires the accommodations of others is living on borrowed time.

I can think of individuals right now who always coerce the ‘favour’ of others—in that it isn’t real favour, it’s a coercive control of, “You better accommodate me with a smile, or else!”  And the only response we can mete out at the time is one of fawning—of giving them what they subtly or not-so-subtly demand.  It’s worse when they feign that THEY are the ones being kind, and THEY are the ones who are putting up with us, not the other way around as is the reality.

Unequally yoked relationships occur in marriages—a lot—but they also occur in the workplace, in church, and in community settings.  Anywhere there’s accountability for one and little or none for the other.

The final accountability for the one who absolutely refuses to live a responsible life is the accountability of separation—of, “It’s over, for your own sake, so you can learn the consequences of your actions.”

In this life, we learn the easy way or the hard way.  We should not want to save a person from the learning they’re destined to need to do.  If time and again, a person keeps proving they’re squandering grace, the loving thing to do is to direct them toward the consequences of their actions—they’ll not learn otherwise.

Think of those others we love who watch on as we constantly accommodate abysmal attitudes and behaviour of those who care nothing for others or their own attitudes and behaviour.  Little wonder that there’s vicarious trauma and anger resultant of ONE person wreaking all this harm.

Acknowledging the cost of unequally yoked relationships is the catalyst of reflection.  It is the right thing to do to give every adult person the opportunity to grow up if they haven’t already.

Therefore, it’s a loving thing to call people to account for their attitudes and behaviour.  And, ideally, people call themselves to account—that is true adult behaviour.  A person who readily calls themselves to account is more equally yoked with another who calls themselves to account.

In emotional intelligence terms, self-awareness creates self-action, often leading from social awareness which ultimately creates social action (apologies, for instance, where required).

The emotionally intelligent are equally yoked with another who is emotionally intelligent.