Relationship Page

ENEMY OF INTIMACY  -

In romantic relationships, especially after marriage, increased intimacy is an implicit and explicit goal. Physical and sexual intimacies are only part of the story. What really binds a couple together is emotional and spiritual intimacy. As relationships develop, stories are shared, more and more of the past is laid bare, preferences, values, and aspirations for the future are set out. When two people experience a lot of overlap in these areas, a strong bond grows between them...  Read the whole article...

COMPETITIVENESS  - Competitiveness shows up under all kinds of circumstances and makes its presence known in different ways.  It is common in relationships of all sorts - marriage, family, school, workplace, in fact, any time you have two or more individuals working together with limited time and resources. While we all live with some degree of competition, a competitive approach to life will often affect your relationships negatively.  I would go so far as to say that an unhealthy inclination toward competitiveness is  deadly to relationships...  Read the whole article...

ANGER and EMOTIONAL CONTROL  -  For a few months our family had some memorable neighbours in the apartment above us.  Shortly after they moved in, we awoke one Saturday morning to unfamiliar sounds, loud, muffled voices and heavy foot stomping as an obviously agitated person paced back and forth above.  After sometime of wondering just what was going on up there and whether we should intervene, we heard a piece of crockery bounce off the wall and shatter on the floor...  Read the whole article...

I DON'T KNOW  -  Thomas Gray’s famous quotation "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to by wise." is often shortened to “ignorance isbliss.”  This betrays a particularly shortsighted view of life.  But even the full version of the quotation only tells part of the story.  Certainly, when there’s nothing we can do about a situation, not knowing about some aspect of it can save us some needless fretting.  However, we can affect the outcomes of many circumstances in our lives, and ignorance in such cases can lead to disaster...  Read the whole article...

LOVE and RESPECT  -  Sometimes, we experience tension between love and respect.  Love, at its best, is a giving of oneself to another.  Part of that giving will involve honour.  So we can safely say that there is some crossover between love and respect, though they are not the same.  Read the whole article...

LOVE and POWER  -  Think of your most intimate relationship.  Would you say you love each other the same amount?  Does one love the other more?  How does this affect the way you relate?   We seldom contemplate these issues consciously, yet behind the scenes, they have a powerful impact on the way we interact with each other.  Love and power - a combination which should have the warning label: “Handle with care.”  Read the whole article...

GETTING ALONG  -  Relationships with those closest to us can be the most stressful. You'd think that years of exposure to the others' idiosyncrasies would make it easier to deal with them. It turns out that often the opposite is true - they just irritate us more and more.  We’re devoting this page to compiling your best ideas for getting along. I’ll start with one of my own.  Read the whole article...

WAITING TO BE CHANGED  -  One thing is sure: the first lesson of life is learning to wait.  Even attentive parents fail to anticipate their new infant’s every need, so babies learn to wait to be fed, to be changed, to be cuddled and comforted.  While we have no memory of this, the lesson stays with us.  Our early experience with waiting shapes how we feel about waiting as grown-ups.  Read the whole article...

YOU, ME, US  -  Whenever two people come together we can think of the relationship, itself, as a third independent entity.  Some counsellors take this approach with clients suffering with relationship issues.  I believe it is a beneficial concept, particularly regarding marriage, though it is useful in other kinds of relationships as well. Read the whole article...

LOVE IS A GIFT  -  It doesn't matter what kind of relationship you're talking about, if love is involved, it is a gift.  Parents and children, between siblings, among friends, love is a gift.  Our human intellect rebels at the concept of unconditional, self-giving love.  Such love makes us nervous, but a brand new baby, just hours old has the capacity to receive it without having a clue about what is going on.  Love defies our minds, but it can be experienced. Read the whole article...

YOUR PRIMARY RELATIONSHIP -

Television rating services have discovered something they call the “LOP.”  That is the "Least Objectionable Program."  When there’s nothing worth watching on the tube, TV addicts flip around the dial until they find the LOP. In relationships, we tend to look for the one that causes us the least pain and hang our hopes on it.  Read the whole article...

DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIPS  -  There are some people in your life with whom you have a “difficult” relationship.  These dear souls deplete you.  After spending a bit of time with them you feel empty.  It doesn’t take much reflection to identify “easy” and “difficult” relationships.  Obviously we’d like to change the difficult ones into easy ones.  We’d like all of our relationships to build us up and make us stronger as opposed to weakening us and drawing energy from us.  So the question we are looking at today is “Does the Bible have any advice about turning difficult relationships into easy ones?”  Yes it does...  Read the whole article...