Relationships…Make them stick or kick them Forever!

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Relationships are Simple, Relationships are Complex!Relationships can make our existence worthwhile. Relationships can also make our lives hell! It’s our relationships that take us on a roller coaster ride of emotional excesses and detachment periods. It’s those good ones and  also the suffocating ones that together make a package deal that helps  us appreciate life.

Relationships with our chidlren, with our pets, our parents, our siblings ,our in laws, our bosses, our mentors and our followers,our friends, our belief system and above all with our own self… make us who we are. It is puzzling to see how our relationships change so drastically with different people, as if we were not one whole but parts of many differnt personas.

What is it that makes us react in different ways in our relationships?…. Does it have anything to do with the level of bonding – with blood- with love? Difference I guess  is in the set of expectations we have from different people in our life. Our kids can get away with murder, our pets can get away with more than murder, our spouses… we allow them to get away with anything short of murder, our parents are our parents and nothing can change that and our siblings are our partners in crime, who we might fight with forever , but won’t let anyone else say anything else negative about.Our relationship with our own self is the most cruel , we judge and  keep judging ourselves and the sweetest with our own reality and belief system, we love what we believe in and  our reality and our opinions are always right. Relationships with our friends, our in- laws and our bosses are complex because these are full of unknown expectations and sets of rules that sway like a pendulum in different directions at different times.We live our lives fulfilling these expectations of others and ourselves and life moves on… And it’s these zillion expectations and how we manage them is what make relationships tick and also relationships break!

Talking about and modelling well balanced relationships for our children is a big part of parenting them well. Hope we are not telling our children that unrealistic expectations of people in their lives, have to be met…its ok to let people walk over them to keep making realtionships stick. Let’s instead teach our children to include love in all their relationships, uncomplicate them and always remember good relationships are a two way street, under contruction forever.

My relationships with my children and all the other people in my life aren’t perfect, I oscillate between sometimes complicating them and sometimes doing a pretty good job with them. Balancing and managing our own and other people’s expectations is a process we all continuously struggle with. Hope we keep working at getting better at it and keep learning and working and nurturing our relationships to make them work. And if they aren’t simple , aren’t workable or are making us people that we and others don’t like.We should also find the courage to kick them out of our life. May that be  our relationship be with a person or a belief. But with a promise to ourself , that we will follow a small rule.  A rule that can’t be broken , a rule that says that we can  kick them out only after giving them our best shot.

Summed up in a few simple sentences for my children and yours..

"Keep the expectations low, judgements minimal and give your 
relationships space and energy. Good relationships grow, 
glow and are full of love.Good Relationships are a 
two way street that is under construction forever!"