"Making Healthy Choices in your Relationships..."

(relationship) by Susie and Otto Collins

Recently, a man wrote to us and asked us to give some tips about how to successfully start a new relationship. As we thought about his question, we remembered how we began our relationship and how dramatically different it was from others we had been in.

We also realized that the things that allowed us to start our relationship in a healthy way are also the things that continue to keep our relationship healthy, strong, vital and alive today. What we've discovered is that a great relationship isn't created by one, singular event but is instead made up of a series of choices.

Whether you're trying to decide to go on a date with someone,to get married, to have a child, or whether to watch television or talk to your partner, two great questions to ask yourself are:

• "Will this choice bring me closer to what I want?" and "is this in alignment with who I really am?"
  

One of our coaching clients is starting a new relationship with a man whom she's known as a casual friend for a couple of years. In the past few years, she's has chosen partners who weren't right for her in one way or another.

In this relationship that's recently evolved from friendship into a "dating" relationship, she's making conscious, healthy choices about what she wants and doesn't want. In previous intimate relationships, she didn't do that.

She tended to try to be the pleaser in her past relationships. She would create stories in her mind about how she thought her partner at the time wanted her to be and she would try to be that person. She would try to be someone she wasn't so that she could make a "good" impression on the other person.

In this relationship, she's asking herself in every moment if she's acting and speaking from who she truly is and what she wants or if she is repeating the same behavior that helped to create unhealthy relationships in the past.

When we began our relationship, we decided that we wanted to do things differently than we had in the past. What we wanted was a close, connected relationship of two people who were coming together as equals.

One decision we made very early in our relationship that make a significant difference in our lives was the agreement to tell the truth to each other as soon as we realized what our "truth" was. And we continue to make this choice every day.

This means that whenever we feel a disconnection between us or we feel angry about something, we take some time to first realize that there's a problem and then we talk about it.

We call this "killing the monster while it's little." In our relationship, we understand that if small things go unattended they can become giant problems that can get out of control pretty quickly. Even if it's hard sometimes, we've agreed to listen without interrupting and allow each other to say what is in his or her heart.

The point is that we made this agreement from the start of our relationship and we feel that this is one of the healthy choices we made early on that has helped us to create the relationship that we both enjoy. So how do you want your relationships to be?

This is a very simple question but don't discard it because there is great power in it's simplicity. In order to create the kind of relationships that you really want, it's important to create them based on your answers to that question.

It's a radical idea to a lot of people but the reason that we don't make healthy choices in our relationships is because many of us don't take the time to stop and figure out what "we" want from our relationships and our lives.

For example, if you say you want a close, connected relationship then be open to exploring with your partner what that means to both of you. If you want a relationship with a lot of "space" for each of you to grow, then get that out in the open.

When you discover what you want in your relationships and make the commitment to live from those discoveries, the healthy choices will naturally follow.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation,
because your character is what you really are,
while your reputation is merely what others think you are
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