Preserving relationships

As part of a personal development program that I was following, I had to interview my mum and one of the questions was about regrets. She said she felt saddened and disappointed about how relationships often perish for no real reason. It took me a while to fully process this – she wasn’t necessarily talking about romantic relationships I don’t think – after all she has been married to my father for 40 years this week (eeek!!!)  – but more generally, relationships with people who cross our path, either at work or in other settings, and that become significant enough for us to spend time with them, admire them and above all, care about them.

So it made me think about my own story so far and the number of people I have “lost” along the way for – as far as I’m aware – no real reason. Whilst I accept that often things change in life and people move on for a reason or another, what I struggle with a bit more is that sudden change or cut in communication that can happen, often without notice, and the intended or unintended consequences that that generates.

Let’s face it, one of the reasons why we don’t act when something like this happens is because we feel hurt, we think we are right (I wrote about this subject here) and yet we can’t stop but wonder why this is happening.

On reflection perhaps there are a few simple steps that one could consider to avoid getting to that stage in the first place, which I have tried to summarise here:

1. Talk about your feelings. If something has changed, talk about it before it is too late.
2. Listen before you speak. Yes, we might feel hurt but conflict is a game of parts and so – intended or not – we must have played ours.
3. Try to solve the problem, not to fix the person. If you want to reconcile, let go of the right vs wrong argument.
4. If it matters to you, then take the initiative and make the first move. If it doesn’t, then just let it go.

As for my story, I think I have some more processing to do before I can fully reach step 4 – at least in some cases – but I am glad something is happening.

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash