A Few Relationship Essentials
Empathy, consideration, prioritization, helpfulness protection, and kindness. These key ingredients are what make you want to come home; to be with someone; to trust them.
In an evolved, advanced civilization like ours, you’d think these would be obvious. But they bump up against cultural icons like radical individualism, entitlement, feelings as facts, rudeness as normative, obscenity as acceptable, and selfishness masked as drivenness, to name a few.
Empathy is the first essential. Relationships come down to feelings; we want to be around people around whom we feel good. We don’t want to be with—certainly not married to—people around whom we feel bad. We want to feel accepted, liked, loved, worthy, admired, respected, and those feelings—or their absence—recognized and cared about. Friends “get us.“ They connect with us emotionally. Not that they feel the same thing, but they recognize what we’re feeling and can be glad for us when we are glad, sad with us when we are sad, worried with us when we are worried, without being codependent. Empathy is the gateway to consideration. We act in ways considerate of another because we recognize what they’re feeling and therefore sense what they may need.
Consideration is the opposite of self-centeredness (another cultural icon). It puts another’s needs and interests on par with our own, if not lovingly ahead of our own. If practiced mutually, it makes for an awesome friendship, and friendship is the essence of an awesome marriage.
Prioritization is a relationship essential; certainly essential to marriage. We trust that our husband or wife will be there for us if at all possible, even setting aside other important things to put us first. And they can rely on us for the same. Prioritization is evidence of what we love. Forever, life’s demands have pulled people in multiple directions, making connection with one’s spouse difficult and sometimes impossible. Children, work, parenting, extended family, securing sustenance, and maintaining shelter have and will always be with us. But, modernity has traded hunting and gathering, water collection and defending city walls, for prioritization of entertainment and comfort and appearance, and the omnipresence of electronic devices that invite 24/7 work, shopping, and sports, electronic friends and social interaction—which are neither. Even though we say our spouse is our priority, it is easy in actuality, for any of these things to take priority. Trust is essential to the marital relationship, wherein spouses trust each other to be there for them, if it all possible, even above other priorities.
Helpfulness is an essential to relationships. Culturally, at least in the west, rugged individualism rules. We can do it ourselves. There’s an app or an online way to accomplish almost anything. If we actually need another set of hands, or if we lack a certain expertise, there is a service or someone we can hire. It’s like we don’t need to depend upon friends, relationships, or our spouse. We’ve reached the point where we can manage, without ever leaving the house; without even getting off the couch. But radical independence is depressing. We are made for relationships. Life is relationships. And part of relationships is helping one another. In fact, one road out of depression is to get outside of ourselves and serve someone else - altruistically. Marriage is an incubator for that essential other-centered helping. Marriage isn’t about being served; it is about serving; helping one another in plenty and want, in joy and sorrow, in sickness and in health.
Protection is essential to relationships. To feel safe in the presence of our spouse, emotionally, physically, and circumstantially is to feel at peace. Spouses trust one another; they entrust themselves to each other for a coexistence that is safe and secure, sheltered, fed, and defended against predators. In addition to protecting one another and us together against such outside threats, spouses trust that they will be protected by one another from one another. Marriage is entered into trusting that the one we love will love us in words and deeds; will protect us from physical harm, not physically harm us; will build us up, not tear us down; will defend what is important to us, even if (especially if) that differs from what is important to them; will live responsibly with an eye to the future. Marriage is the place where we take shelter. To be in our spouse’s arms and in our spouse’s care ought to feel like the safest place on earth; the place where we feel most protected.
Finally, kindness is essential to relationships, including—and perhaps especially—in the marital relationship. If two people say they love one another more than they love anyone on the earth whom they did not marry, doesn’t it make sense that they would be kinder to their spouse than to anyone else on earth? Kindness was likely practiced in abundance when trying to attract one another. And guess what? It worked! It was attractive. Still is. And the various flavors of unkindness (harshness, rudeness, selfishness, mistreatment, abuse and contempt, for example) are repellent. These would end a relationship before it began, and they will end a relationship once it’s begun. Kindness feels good, both as giver and as recipient. And, as mentioned at the beginning, good relationships come down to feeling good in the presence of another. Kindness—a hallmark of love—feels good.
The above seem obvious, yet they are often in short supply, especially in troubled relationships. Maybe their absence can be explained by lack of awareness, or forgetfulness, or woundedness, or busyness, or laziness, or selfishness. Whatever the case, we don’t let explanations become excuses. We restore what is essential. Because it is essential. Not optional. Essential to relationship satisfaction, if not to it’s survival.