It’s the beginning of another year and a time when many people are taking stock of their fitness, the health of their bodies, and pocketbook.
While it might seem more confusing or daunting to give our relationship a check-up than it is to get a check-up at the doctor’s office, checking in and assessing the health of a bond is just as important and it doesn’t have to be difficult.
Here are a few questions to help determine if your relationship needs some extra TLC or if emergency care is needed.
Is give and take in balance in my relationship?
An imbalance of give and take in a relationship means that one partner often takes on the role of the giver who doesn’t get anything in return and the other person takes on the role of the taker who doesn’t give back.
Seeing Winter Anew; Embracing Stillness
Out of the bosom of the Air
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
To those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, we move towards December’s coming of winter. We equate winter with harshness, cold and stillness. Indeed, it’s the time when the blossoms, trees and world have gone into hibernation, rest and retreat. But to many cultures, winter represents potentials building within a cyclical womb.
In the last ever panel of one of my favourite cartoons (Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson), the two main characters embark across a snowy scene with their sled, marveling about the gleaming snow. “It’s like having a big sheet of paper to draw on,” muses Hobbes, to which Calvin replies, as they head off into the sea of white, “A day full of possibilities, it’s a magical world, Hobbes ol’ buddy…. let’s go exploring!”
Life is full of beginnings and endings, and though we fear endings, an end represents a beginning. When I painted this scene of a tree standing in a winter landscape, I had the idea to leave half of the image blank and white, “it’s like having a big sheet of paper to draw on,” an untapped potential… something ripe and ready for creation in the right time.
Dealing with Discomfort and Disappointment
For most of us, when we are asked what we want in life we have some general answers that reflect our desire for happiness, “I want a good relationship” or “I want a fabulous job” and yet when it comes down to it, we are often unwilling to suffer the pain that comes from uncertainty, from risking our vulnerability with a partner or a new job, from the hard work required to create the realities that we claim to want.
Our modern culture is immersed in INSTANT gratification and touts our happiness as a spiritual goal. As a consequence we have zillions of products, self help books and activities designed to alleviate suffering, get exactly what we want and fix discomfort.
It only makes sense; we’re hard-wired to avoid pain. An important question arises: are we ready to embrace discomfort or hard knocks, or are we so inclined to have things our way that when the inevitable let-down happens, we’re clueless?
How to Get the Most out of a Reading
Relationship Building
Building a relationship during times of stress (or the hubbub of the holiday season) sometimes seems like the last thing we want to do.
With everything else seeming more important, it’s easy to fall into familiar traps where we see the other person as our aggravating, progress-blocking, obstacle who is doing whatever they’re doing to hurt us… on purpose.
Often this is not true at all, in reality it’s just a distraction from intimacy manufactured from conclusions we’re jumping to, or the desire to protect ourselves without really knowing the full story.
However, there are times when the other person really is trying to get under our skin or deliver a few well placed emotional punches.
No matter how innocently it begins, without thoughtfulness it always escalates.
A poorly chosen word, a reaction, spines going up, assumptions made, angry energy brewing, pretty soon everyone is pointing the finger at someone else and relationship building is the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. But when faced with this contentious energy, we actually have an amazing opportunity to join and to build the relationship to an even higher level of connection.