Dissection of a Relationship

Friend: A person to which you can joke around with, hang out with, watch football.  Still, there’s that level of separation.

True Friend: Layers of comfortable support; compatability; love; similiar beliefs and beyond; accepting.

Spouse: All the levels of friend and true friend… a person that definitely goes above and beyond every level of relationship there is.  Your best friend, love of your life.

Family Member: Boy, there’s just all sorts of descriptions here.  This relationship has many of some categories, none of others.  Family members are your chosen relationships, and are different from every other relationship on earth.  You can choose your other relationships. 

I wonder about relationships a lot.  When I think of them, I think of the people in my life — like my wife, my friends, my true friends, my family.  In many cases, those true friends are of course the people I’ve chosen to be the closest.  Yet, in many of those instances still, we are not close by one another.  What makes that relationship work?

I suppose persistence has a lot to do with it!  Afterall, if you weren’t committed to these so-called true friends, how did they ever get to that point in the first place?

I can think of one true friend who just moved away from the immediate area surrounding my wife and I.  Since this is so new, persistence will have to get us through…since this friend is on the road a lot.  Upholding our promises to visit quite a bit and maintaining that closeness will have to be our guide.

Another true friend is a man I’ve known for nearly six years now.  He hasn’t lived close to me for about 5 and a half of those years!  Wow.  How could a person whom I now hold as a true friend ever maintained and even moved up in status over those years, especially since he hasn’t been near me for nearly all that time?  I guess it’s commitment.  And as you know from early blogs, commitment is one of my new, refreshed resolutions for this year.

 I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 other “true friends” that are all doing their own thing right now.  You know, in my perfect world, we’d all be together again.  And I believe that is going to happen one of these days.

Think about your friends, your family, and your spouse (if you have one).  Think about those relationships and dissect them.  What sustains you?  What keeps your relationships fresh, new, exciting, and relevant?  Or is it that there’s nothing new about them… they’re old, comfortable, tried and tested?  There’s nothing wrong with that one either.  The bottom line is that relationships take work.

In this dissection of relationships, I also have another element for you to ponder: the relationship you have with yourself.  And one thing comes to mind — the closing quotation of the Sex and the City series.  The narrarator, Carrie, says:

“Later that day I got to thinking about relationships.  Thre are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back.  But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself.  And if you can find someone to love the you that you love, well, that’s just fabulous.”