Last update: 24 March, 2022
When you take care of something, when you pay attention to the small details and are fascinated day after day, relationships become better, more fulfilling and profound. Our care avoids that something breaks easily and that scars and wounds are too often present. But how to take care of relationships?
There are people who come into our life to give us light, but we will keep them with us only if our interactions help us to bond, to sustain that bond in a noble, sincere and strong way.
We easily forget that in order to keep the flame of friendship, love and any other relationship alive, we need to keep some basic principles in mind in our actions.
It is important to reflect on this why the following golden rules go beyond the relationship skills that guide our daily life and our being.
Rules for taking care of relationships
1. The tongue is strong enough to break a heart
Words are not carried away by the wind. These nest in the heart and are able to build or destroy, calm or feed, grow or diminish. Bad words, bad manners, or wrong opinions can permanently break a heart.
The way we communicate with others speaks volumes about the respect we have for them, we cannot think that everything is lawful just because there is trust. It is therefore essential to take care of the forms and contents of what we express.
We must communicate unpleasant news with delicacy and that means with affection, concern or discomfort. The best way to do this is to hint at behaviors and avoid labeling the person based on a bad deed.
Our words must overcome Socrates' three sieves: that of truth, usefulness and kindness. If something is not true, it is not useful and it is not good for those who say it, it is better to avoid it.
2. Take care of relationships by avoiding lying and untruth
The truth hurts once, but the lie always hurts. Nothing undermines a relationship on par with lies and untruth. Both are capable of destroying everything in their path, devastating the thickest forests and bringing down the tallest towers.
The lie leads us to question a thousand truths, even the most frank experiences. There are different types of lies, of course, but a healthy relationship cannot be sustained by them.
Recall that the trust is a luxury item that is not given to anyone, and when an important feeling like trust is broken, something inside of us dies.
3. The greatest distance between two people is due to a misunderstanding
The sentence that best illustrates this reflection is the following: "Between what we think, what we want to say, what we think we say, what we say, what we want to hear, listen, think we understand and understand, there are nine possibilities of not understand each other ".
Wanting to understand each other is not the problem, the problem is knowing how to meet despite the emotional state of each one, despite the priorities and although on many occasions it is difficult to find a common point.
The difference is that we listen to understand and not to respond, we talk about the discomfort caused by attitudes or words, we communicate without words that make us understand.
This is true not only in moments of conversation, but also afterwards, when we find ourselves reflecting alone. It is important to reflect on this, because many times the heat of the moment does not allow us to think clearly, which favors harmful and proud conduct.
Making mistakes is common and human, but we also need to know how to give sincere forgiveness.
4. Fewer questions to a sad pair of eyes and more hugs
Validating the emotions of others is essential to be able to base a relationship on acceptance. Understanding emotions and conveying understanding makes a difference.
With this maxim we intend to affirm the importance of not judging and not falling into "I warned you" or "you have no reason to repent of everything".
Each person wages their own war and although total cognitive and emotional empathy is somewhat utopian, we cannot stop trying to make the best possible emotional reading of the other.
Being supportive in difficult times in the right way lays the foundation for a strong relationship; it is especially important to pay attention to how we handle the negative emotions of others.
5. Taking time, the best gift, to take care of relationships
It is equally important being by the side of the people we love in difficult times as much as it is in good times. Accompaniment provides psychological oxygen and sharing means living.
Surrounding yourself with people we love and who love us, living with them in the good times and having smiles to remember makes all the difference. On the other hand, begging for attention is not an option. Neither for us nor for others.
No matter how busy we are, we can always take a short phone call or text to let others know they are on our mind. Not doing so contributes to generating a distance that over time becomes very difficult to bridge.
Conclusions
It is important to build styles of communication and behavior that add up and do not subtract. So let's not miss the opportunity to improve as partners, friends, children, parents, siblings, colleagues, etc.
Making an effort to properly manage these 5 golden rules for taking care of relationships will undoubtedly make the world more noble, sincere and constructive.
Main illustration by Anne Soline
