The other day, I received a letter from a young man who had gotten back together with his girlfriend after a difficult conflict and a terrible fight. Eric had been working through some things at our counseling centers, and it apparently had helped him and his girlfriend, and they got back together. Eric’s closing sentence was, “Sometimes I feel that I can’t live with her, and yet I know I can’t live without her.”
How often do we hear that said? Well, there’s a reason for that. It’s the DNA: You are made to need relationships. Even when they are hard, difficult, or just plain frustrating, you need relationships. It’s the way you are wired. You have a longing to belong to someone, to be wanted and cherished for the valued person you are.
Relationships are not an option. From the moment you’re born, you’re in relationship to parents. Soon you’re in relationship with other children. Later you have relationships in the workplace, and you develop relationships with close friends. And eventually most develop a relationship with someone in marriage.
When a relationship becomes difficult or painful, we tend to dismiss the relationship and maybe for a while try to abandon all relationships. But eventually we come back and seek connection once again.
While we can choose how we will participate in relationships, we have no choice about whether we will participate in them. This is a critical point. Your only real choice is whether you will work to make your relationships healthy, whether you will do things that hinder or enhance them.
Let’s look more closely at the components of the first strand of the DNA of relationships. Encoded in the Adam and Eve story is the same relationship truth given by Christ as the greatest commandment: Love God and others like yourself. Similarly, we have found that when you actively develop the same three relationships, you lay the foundation to a healthier you in every way. Our DNA is that you are hardwired for three kinds of relationships—with others, with yourself, and with God. This design feature is true for all of us—whether or not we recognize it and whether or not we act in line with it. It just is.
Most people understand how they’re in relationship to others. Many people don’t really understand how they’re in relationship to themselves (and this is a key problem in making sense of all relationships). And some people don’t want to admit they’re in relationship to God. But they are.
You are made for three kinds of relationships: with others, with yourself, and with God.
As we will see, each of these relationships is not only important, but each is intricately interrelated. If one relationship is out of balance, the others will be affected.
What’s exciting is that we can unravel the secrets of this DNA code, and by doing so discover the answers to our relationship problems.
You Have a Relationship with Others
You are created for relationship with others. That seems like a no-brainer. We all have relationships—with family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, teammates, and others. What are your relationships like? Are they strong, satisfying, nurturing, respectful, and exciting? Or are they disappointing, strained, distant, painful, and frustrating? You probably have some of both. If you accept the DNA truth that you are made for relationships with others, every chapter in this book will help you build more loving and satisfying relationships. But it’s a life time of necessary and satisfying work.
Not long ago I was on a plane to San Francisco for a relationship conference and a woman recognized me, introduced herself, and mentioned that she had used some of the videotapes I did some years back. Sarah thanked me for helping her though a difficult time. Expecting to hear a success story, I asked her how the relationship was going now.
Sarah hesitated, then simply said, “Well, that relationship ended awhile ago.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “What was the problem?”
This time she didn’t hesitate: “The problem was him. He didn’t really respect me.”
“I see,” I responded.
“I’m in another relationship now. This one’s better.” Sarah laughed. “He’s got problems too, but this one’s better.”
Sarah’s story is really not that remarkable. And that’s the point. Her situation is a common one, repeated in many lives over and over: “The problem was him.”
Does this sound at all familiar? Things haven’t changed much through the millennia. It’s the same blame game that Adam and Eve played, pointing to the other person as the source of the problem.
What about your troubled relationships? Do you hear yourself making similar statements about the other people? Do you see the problems as their fault?
Most psychologists and counselors recognize this basic relationship truth: It’s never just about the other person. If the problem were always the other person, then we wouldn’t have counselors and therapists. We’d hire a “relationship repairperson” and send him or her over to the other person’s house!
It’s never just about the other person.
I want you to think about this: The problem you have with another person is often a problem you have with yourself. Now, you may be talking back at me, saying, “No, Gary, I have to tell you, this other person really bad and did me wrong.”
Maybe so. But I’m guessing that there’s more to it than that. Because usually there is.
Usually the pain that another person causes you is coming out of a fear or insecurity you have about yourself. Think about it: If someone says something about you that you know isn’t true, then it’s not really a problem. You are hurt by what people say or do only when something rings true.
Let me use a simple and obvious example. Let’s say you’re six feet two inches tall. By most standards, you’re considered a tall person. Let’s say that at a party a friend calls you “Shorty.” Now, there’s no reason for you to take offense, and you probably wouldn’t. In fact, other people would look at your friend oddly because she was saying something that was obviously not true about you. You aren’t particularly offended because you are confident inside yourself that what was said wasn’t true.
But let’s say that at the same party, your friend calls you “Skyscraper.” Now this bothers you. Why? Perhaps because you’re insecure about being too tall. What she said pushes a button inside you. You’re thinking, It might be true. I’m too tall. I’m faulty as a person.
At that point, you assume your friend was doing you wrong, was making fun of you. Yet, for all you know, maybe she was saying it as friendly teasing, or even perhaps she (being on the short side) admired you for being taller. And yes, it’s possible she was being mean. But even then, the real problem isn’t really what she said. The problem is how you see yourself. You reacted to what she said based on some inner fear of not being normal or feeling somehow defective. How many times in relationships are you blinded by what others say? You’re offended by someone else, and that, then, becomes a relationship problem. Instead you need to take a look at yourself, clearly and objectively. You need to point the camera at yourself through the right lens.
Note that I’m not saying that the problem here is that you are too tall. You may not be. Many times the statement that offends us isn’t true at all. The problem is how we react to what others do or say. Any accurate snapshot of a relationship problem never focuses just on the other person—the picture must also include you.
You can probably see the third DNA strand—You are made for responsibility for yourself—weaving itself through this discussion. When you violate that DNA and blame other people, you are placing the responsibility for the relationship problems on them. Only when you recognize your own responsibility will you begin to find a way out of the problem. I call this the Power of One, and because it is so important, I’ll discuss it fully in chapter 4.
You Have a Relationship with Yourself
Does it surprise you to think about having a relationship with yourself? Somehow this simple relationship truth escapes so many of us so much of the time. But this understanding is critical to successful relationships.
Part of your resistance to paying attention to your relationship to yourself may be that it sounds, well, self-centered. And it is to some extent. But as with all relationships, it’s all about balance. It is unhealthy to be too focused on your relationship to yourself; it can lead to what psychologists call narcissism. However, it is just as unhealthy to belittle, dismiss, or ignore yourself.
Do you have a healthy, dynamic relationship with yourself? Are you on good terms? Do you think of yourself as important? Do you like yourself? Do you accept yourself? Do you forgive yourself? Do you take care of yourself?
One of the things I see so clearly in our intensive center is the difference between people who don’t have a healthy relationship with themselves and those who do.
One of the women who came to see us is Mary and she had been dealing with alcoholism. It’s quite a struggle. Besides the problem of her dependency on alcohol, her addiction affects all the relationships in her life. She had become distant from her husband and neglectful of her children. She has good days when she was more communicative, but other days she dropped out of sight for hours on end. She barely spoke to her husband Tom, and she often forgot to pick up her kids at school.
Mary is unaware of what she does to the people in her life, unaware of how her behaviors affect relationships. When asked why she does what she does, she mutters, “I dunno” and had a blank look on her face. She looked and sounded helpless about herself. She consistently seemed unable to see her own behaviors, to understand anything about she affected others, or ultimately to have any perspective about herself in the world.
Now, addictions are very hard to overcome, no question. I don’t minimize the difficulties that Mary faced on a daily basis. But we helped her see that she’ll never climb out of her situation until she sees herself honestly and objectively which is the starting place for her developing a healthy relationship with herself.
Susan also struggles with alcoholism. She was much like Mary, helpless in the face of her addiction and unaware of herself. But then she gave birth to a baby girl. Once the baby was born it caused her to see how her addiction could hurt her child in a major way. She wasn’t as motivated to change because the addiction was hurting just her, but when the baby came and with it the potential of hurting her child, then she made major changes.
She was able to step apart from herself and see herself objectively as if “she” were another person. It was as if she saw herself through a camera lens with her daughter in the picture. She didn’t like everything she saw—an addicted woman who thought she had no choices—but facing that reality helped her begin the process of change. Once she saw her own actions and how they affected others, she could take personal responsibility for those actions.
Soon Susan started making changes in her lifestyle and fighting the addiction that had controlled her. (Do you see the third strand here again? You are made for responsibility for yourself.) She started taking care of herself. She got into AA, which has been immensely helpful.
All of this started when Susan saw herself through the camera lens and started developing a healthy relationship with herself.
People who do have a healthy relationship with themselves—who take responsibility and take care of themselves—are better positioned to deal with relationship problems because they can see themselves objectively.
The relationship truth is this: Put yourself in the picture. When you master this skill—seeing a picture image of both the other person and yourself in the same frame—you suddenly have a perspective on yourself with others. You can see the consequence of your own actions and the effect they have on the feelings of your friends and family. And you can adjust your words and behaviors accordingly.
Put yourself in the picture.
One of the things you immediately notice about people who have a healthy relationship with themselves is that they take care of themselves—their bodies, their minds, their emotions, and their spirits. This relates to the importance of self-care, which I’ll discuss fully in chapter 5. When we teach this concept of a relationship with self at our intensives, people just come alive. When they accept this truth and start thinking about the future of taking better care of themselves, they get very excited and hopeful.
But be prepared for something else.
I have to admit, sometimes when I see snapshots of myself, I don’t always like what I see. I look across a row of beautiful smiling faces—my children and grandchildren, my wife, and then I see my smiling self—and I think, Is that really me?
If you look at yourself through the camera lens, you may not like what you see. Some of what you see—in your behaviors, in the responses of other people, in the attitudes that you cast out among others—just won’t be pretty.
The danger is that you’ll run from the ugly stuff and put away the camera. In fact, that’s why people avoid developing an honest, objective relationship with themselves in the first place—because they’re afraid of what they’ll see. But some people dare to look at themselves, and when they do, it yields great results in their relationships.
Although it’s good for us to look at ourselves through a camera lens, many of us use the wrong lens. Sometimes we use the lens that Hollywood uses when filming aging actors and actresses—the soft-focus lens that blurs out the wrinkles. Other times we use distorted lens, like carnival funhouse mirrors, which makes us look uglier than we are.
I believe that the most objective and true camera lens is God’s. And that brings us to the third key relationship in our DNA. Again, as soon as our intensive couples realize that they need a relationship with God for many reasons. They need God for the empowerment to change in the first place and they need him because he fulfills us in supernatural ways. God takes the pressure off of our mate, children, friends because he is our primary source of fulfillment.
You Have a Relationship with God
Your most important relationship is with God, the source of all life. Some people may not want to admit that they have a relationship with God. They may say, “I abandoned God a long time ago. I have no relationship with him.”
I maintain that we all have a relationship with God, whether or not we like it. Even people who don’t believe he exists nevertheless have a relationship with him—a bad or dysfunctional one, but a relationship nonetheless. Think of the physical world. You have a father, whether or not you like it. He may be living or dead, a man of integrity or a criminal. But you have a father. Your relationship with him may be wonderfully nurturing or deeply hurtful. It may be intimate or cold as ice. But you have a relationship with him.
The reality is that you have a relationship with God, and he created you to need a relationship with him. In fact, recent scientific findings have led researchers to believe that the human brain itself is “hardwired” for God. A Newsweek cover story carried the intriguing headline, “God and the Brain: How We’re Wired for Spirituality.”
God is serious about his relationship to you. In fact, the Bible says that “He is a God who is passionate about his relationship with you.” If you ignore this relationship, if it becomes out of balance, then all of your other relationships will also be out of kilter.
