HOW IS MY RELATIONSHIP GROWING?

When you choose your partner and commence a full-time
relationship, you look forward to a future of love, support,
encouragement, communication and intimacy. Right? After all, you
are in love and you're both on your best behaviour--so how could
there be any problems?

Learning how to establish and maintain a loving, supportive
relationship is much like creating a beautiful garden. It takes
information, planning, thought, skill, time, and most of all,
attention. Like many gardeners, you learn your skills and styles
from your parents, close friends and relatives. You watch them
from the time you are little. They teach you both your roles in a
relationship, and how to play them, through their example. This
happens in every family and much of the teaching is unintentional
and unconscious. Many of you did not like what you saw and, yet,
in your poorest moments, you may behave just that way. In angry,
tense times, you revert to the ways you learned in those early
days! No wonder your relationships provide you with challenges
that cause you to forget the "honeymoon" period sometimes!

The good news is that you can learn how to have a full, rich,
loving relationship that allows each partner to express his/her
thoughts, feelings, wants, needs and vulnerabilities AND FEEL
COMPLETELY SAFE!! You can learn to be assertive (not aggressive)
and to collaborate with your partners. You can learn to listen
with your minds and hearts. You can learn to fight fair and
resolve conflicts equitably and sanely. You can learn to value
and acknowledge both yourself and your partner. You can learn to
speak from your hearts and be safe. You can learn to ask for what
you need and want. You can learn to love more fully. You can
learn to DEEPEN your love. It may take some unlearning, releasing
habits, fears and beliefs that are blocks to experiencing and
expressing love but YOU’RE WORTH IT!

Remember, too, that you are teaching your children how to have a
relationship by the way you are conducting yours. What would you
like them to learn? What are you showing them every day?

Healthy relationships allow you to fully express yourself and
fully expand your capacity to love. Remember, most of your
relationship skills are caught, not taught. So, if your
relationship is not what you know it could be, there IS a remedy.
You can learn new ways--if you are willing and you really want
to. What is it worth to you?

If love, acceptance, approval, respect, safety, trust, honesty,
integrity, and wholeness are what you want in your life, begin by
giving these things to yourself now so that you will have those
gifts to bring to your relationships. You cannot give a gift you
do not have, can you?