Healthy Relationships

Man is a knot into which relationships are tied.                            

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

At least 90% of our problems in life - and I mean health problems, emotional problems, cognitive problems, financial problems - are rooted in some type of relationship challenge. Worst than that, overcoming relationship challenges is quite difficult because the problem comes from early life when confusion in relationship became suspended in your mind and acted like a tree branch in the river, gradually snagging more and more jetsom of subsequent confusiong relationship situations... until it reached such a proportion that this snag has come close to filling much of your consciousness.

There is redemption; you leave the all the rubbish behind when you overcome your root relationship problem(s) and you will never regret it. When you get over that obstruction in the river of your life, you'll be floating downstream again, and you'll be filled with joy at the landscape that surrounds you. Life really is a joy.

The only regret you'll have is not having overcome your relationship problems sooner. But I urge you to set this down now. My greatest regret (slowly fading) is that when I became a teenager stopped asserting myself and started worrying about what others thought of me. I lived in a very disfunctional family in which nobody understood how to assert their own personal rights or how to respect others. I succumbed to that and tolerated disrespect, violations of privacy, and other abuses... just because it was less embarrassing than confronting the situation or getting out. Besides, it wasn't that bad.

Sticking around, going with the flow, putting up with humiliation, tolerating the intolerable. It wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth it for me, and it wasn't worth it for anyone in my family because none of them had the experience of what it is like to be trusted and treated with respect. What they experienced - with my support - was that bullying and playing victim are the ways to get what you want from others.

Being "nice" doesn't fix things for anyone. The longer we allow ourselves to avoid confronting attacks against our self-esteem, no matter how well-intentioned, the further eroded our self-esteem becomes. There comes a point when not only you, but all your loved ones and eventually everyone you encounter, will all see you as someone who isn't to be trusted or respected. Then you've validated your belief that your life isn't worth much.

I did stand up to my family eventually, and it was very difficult. Most of them no longer speak to me because they're convinced I'm on drugs (true story!). As painful as this has been, my only regret is not having done it a lot sooner. I regret every single encounter I've had with anyone in my adult life in which I allowed them to believe that it's okay to abuse others in order to get your own needs met, because many of the people I've loved over the years now do not know how to relate to anyone any other way.

This is why it's so important to take a square look at the monster in the river. Like with all problems in life, the only way past relationship problems is through them.