Work On Relationships?

Usually A Bad Idea

It's common to hear that you have work on relationships, especially in tough times, if you want them to prosper and grow.

How it's likely to happen is that one person wants to do it and the other person doesn't. One pushes and the other backs away and in the end things get worse not better.

Why?


There are lots of reasons for this, some of which I think I can see and understand. Just a few of these include -

• that there often is an implication that we should work on relationships that aren't going well for whatever reason. Shoulds are usually deadly, pushing us into guilt and defensiveness, not proactive moving ahead.



• Working on relationships often involves being on our best behavior, no matter how we're really feeling. In other words, phony. Not too effective.



• It often implies efforts to find middle ground, compromise. At best you end up with two people who are only getting half of what they really want and is best for them. And, it will be likely that they both feel like they only got a quarter or less.



• It can come out as an effort to make the other person happy. We can't actually make other people happy. And, we can get pretty weird ourselves by trying. We can only act in integrity to ourselves and our own standards of loving and truth.



• It acts as though the relationship is a thing that can be worked on. In fact there is no such entity as a relationship until two individuals interact in a commitment to move forward in their lives together.

Return from Work On Relationships to Conscious Relationships