by Brian Tracy
Marriages and relationships may not work out, but if they were initially based on liking and respect, the two parties can still communicate and interact on an adult level without the negative feelings that go with relationships that ended in which no real liking or respect ever existed.
THE BEST FRIEND TEST
An excellent way to tell if you are in the right relationship is “the best-friend test.” In the ideal relationship, your mate will be your best friend. There will be no one in the world that you would rather be with, share with, talk to or spend time with than your spouse.
If for any reason you do not feel that your spouse or mate is your best friend, if you do not feel that you would rather be with him or her than anyone else, it is an indication that something is wrong in the relationship.
In every interview with couples who have been together for a long time, both the man and the woman describe the other as their very best friend in the world.
The starting point of a long-term romantic relationship is the feeling that you have met your best friend. One of the indications of this is the amount you laugh together. The amount of laughter in a relationship is a measure of the health of that relationship. When two people are ideally suited, they laugh a lot together, and at the same things. When two people are unsuited for any reason, they won’t find much in common to laugh about. Their senses of humor will be different.
The fifth rule for successful relationships is that similar self-concepts attract and are most compatible. You will always be attracted to, and be most compatible with, a person who is just about as happy and as positive as you are.
The general tone of the relationship, the general level of optimism versus pessimism, is a good measure of the compatibility of self-concepts. Interestingly enough, people with negative self-concepts will be attracted to each other just as will people with positive self-concepts. They will marry, settle down and be quite content together for many years, if not for life. Their relationship will be based on the fact that they are both largely negative personalities. Similar self-concepts attract, whatever they are.
Give your mate a score on a scale of 1 to 100. Estimate what percentage of the time he or she is positive and optimistic versus what percentage of the time he or she is negative or pessimistic. Then give yourself the same test.
You will find that you are the most comfortable with a person who is pretty much as happy, or as unhappy, as you are. That’s why it is said, “Birds of a feather flock together,” and “Misery loves company.”
If two people enter into a relationship and one of them is much happier than the other, there will be all kinds of conflict and unhappiness. Most relationships and marriages that break up do so as the result of self-concepts being out of balance.
In one study, researchers found that four out of five divorces in America are initiated by women who are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” It’s amazing how many husbands and wives feel that they are being held back because of the negativity of their spouses. This is a serious problem in relationships in America today, and there is no simple solution for it.
The sixth rule for successful relationships is that there must be good communications. The primary reason for the success of marriages is that the two partners communicate well with each other. They are on the same wavelength. Each can sense what the other is feeling and thinking. They come to the same conclusions independently. They almost seem to “share a brain.”
The primary reason for the failure of relationships is poor communication. The couple misunderstand each other and continually argue about large and small issues. Each is convinced that he or she is right and the other is wrong. They have a hard time with the idea that both viewpoints might be correct, rightly considered.
To build and maintain a high level of quality communications in a relationship, you require both a high quantity and a high quality of unbroken time with each other. Couples need to be alone together. They need to spend long stretches of time talking and listening in order to keep their communication channels clear. Whenever two people get so busy that they stop taking time to talk, you can be sure that there are troubles ahead.
Good communications require both speaking and listening skills, which you can learn. But excellent communications between a man and a woman also require an understanding of the major differences between them.
VIVE LA DIFFÉRENCE
Men and women are different in many ways and they have distinctly different communication styles. Generally, men are direct and women are indirect. Men are more focused on results and completion, or closure, than women. Women are more concerned about relationships and the process of communication than men. This can often lead to fundamental misunderstandings.
Take the case of a man and a woman who have been driving for two or three hours. As they go past a McDonald’s, the woman says, “Honey, are you thirsty?”
The man, without looking around, simply says, “Nope,” and continues driving. She bites her lip and feels hurt at his insensitivity. He is blithely unaware of what she was really asking, and he has no idea that she is now unhappy.
In her indirect way, she was saying, “I am thirsty; why don’t we stop and get something to drink?” However, because of the way she phrased it, it went over his head completely. He missed the point.
Another example of this difference in communication styles is shopping. For a man, going shopping is a simple process with an expected result. He goes in, he purchases what he came for, and he leaves. Men in general don’t like shopping; they feel uncomfortable doing it and they want to get it over with as quickly as possible. The ideal shopping trip for a man is dashing in and dashing out, leaving his car running in the parking lot.
For many women, however, shopping is a process, even a recreational activity. A woman does not necessarily even have to buy anything.
Shopping is a sensory experience for a woman, and when she is shopping with another person, it becomes a social experience as well. The conversation that takes place is as important as, if not more important than, what she buys. This is something that men have a hard time understanding.
Here is another example of this difference in communication styles. Men are oriented toward closure and completion. When a woman begins discussing a problem with him, he will almost immediately respond with what he considers to be a logical solution.
He will say, “Why don’t you do this or try that?” He will then go back to reading his newspaper, or turn his attention to something else. He will honestly feel he has been helpful and has properly addressed the issue: her problem.
What he does not realize is that the woman is usually not asking for a solution, nor does she want his advice or his recommendations. What she wants is an opportunity to discuss the situation, to process the problem through a dialogue about it with the man in her life. She probably already knows what she is going to do, or not do. What she seeks is an opportunity to communicate, using this particular situation or problem as the basis for the conversation.
One of the things that men can do to improve their communications with the women in their lives is simply to refrain from giving advice unless it is clear that this is what she wants. Instead, listen attentively, pause, ask questions, feed back and paraphrase what she is saying to ensure you understand.
ASK HER ABOUT HER DAY
One of the best things a man can do when he comes home at night, or when they get together in the evening, is to ask her about her day.
Most men consider their workday to be the most fascinating experience since the dawn of civilization. However, when a man asks his mate about her day before he volunteers anything about his day, he is often amazed at how much more interesting her day was than his.
The first time a man asks the woman he cares about to tell him about her day, she will probably be shocked, and she may give a brief, dismissive answer. She won’t really believe that he is really interested. She’ll think he’s just being nice. So he must pe
rsist. When she says, Well, I went to work and I had lunch with so-and-so and then I came home, he must ask her, like a detective, What did you do this morning? Where did you go for lunch? What did you do after that? What did you do this afternoon? How is everything going with that person at your work? and so on. If he pries a little bit into her day, he will find that it is often as interesting as anything he did.
An advantage of this approach is that he spends less time talking about his work after she has had a chance to talk about her day. Remember, it is not the content of the conversation that is important. It is the process. Expressing a genuine interest in your mate or spouse and then listening carefully to the other person when he or she speaks, deepens understanding and improves communications. It is only in this way that you can keep the relationship alive and growing.
THE KEY QUESTION
The most important question for you to ask and answer continually to maintain a successful relationship is, “What’s important here?”
What’s important is not winning the argument, or being right, but maintaining the quality of the relationship. What’s important is that you continue to love and respect each other and live together in peace and harmony.
When you continually ask, “What’s important here?” you see things more clearly and you will be guided to do and say what is most appropriate.
Practice the golden rule of relationships. Ask yourself, regularly, “What would it be like to be married to me?” Or “What would it be like if my mate treated me the way I treat him or her?”
If you do to your mate what you would like to see done to you, and if you refrain from doing or saying anything that you would not like your mate to do or say to you, you will be far more aware of the impact of your words and behavior.
Awareness is really the key. Life is the study of attention. If you pay attention to the small things in your relationship, the big things will take care of themselves.
SIX PROBLEMS IN RELATIONSHIPS, AND HOW TO SOLVE THEM
There are a thousand reasons why relationships don’t work out, but you can probably boil them down to six major problem areas. These six problems lie at the root of most arguments, disagreements and divorces. All of them have to do with the self-esteem and self-image of one or both of the parties in the relationship.
The first major problem in relationships is lack of commitment. This is evident in the “go halfway” relationship or marriage so common today. Instead of full commitment, there is only partial or half commitment. One or the other says, “You go halfway and I’ll go halfway.” However, as soon as one party decides to go only 49 percent of the way, a split opens in the relationship. And this kind of split tends to grow wider rather than narrower. The parties dig in. One or the other then goes only 48 percent of the way, then 40 percent, then 30 percent and so on until he or she stops trying altogether.
You see an example of this when a couple gets married but each keeps a separate bank account. The household expenses are divided equally. Every dollar is counted as belonging to one or the other. They even lend each other money and keep accurate tallies of who owes what to whom. I saw one case in which household expenses were divided down to the penny, even including the cost of a postage stamp to mail the utility bill!
Two friends of mine, let’s call them Mary and Joe, lived together for eleven years. They always talked about getting married, but they never seemed to be able to make a decision. However, from the time they moved in together, each person purchased and paid for furniture and fixtures for the apartment separately from the other. On the back of every item in their apartment was a little sticker indicating who it belonged to. They never commingled their funds or their property. At the end of eleven years, when they decided to separate, they were able to divide all their possessions in less than two hours. They had unconsciously been planning to go their separate ways for eleven years by their very act of never fully committing to the relationship.
Another example of partial commitment is a marriage contract or a prenuptial agreement. These agreements make interesting reading. The first paragraph of one of these contracts states, “The two parties, being very much in love and planning to live together happily for all the days of their life, are hereby entering into this agreement.”
The rest of the prenuptial agreement details at great length how the property will be split when they separate. They are, in effect, planning the details of the separation even before they get into the marriage.
When one party is not willing to commit totally to the relationship, this holding back triggers feelings of rejection and unworthiness in the other. It makes one person feel that he or she is not good enough. He or she feels that this is the reason the other is not willing to commit totally and unequivocally to him or her.
When Barbara and I got married, the minister showed us the various marriage vows that we could take. We could choose our own wording for the ceremony. As we went through the various vows, I asked him, “Where are the words, ’Till death do us part’?”
The minister, a very fine man, explained that those words had been deleted from most marriage ceremonies today. Most young people did not want to have something so clear and unequivocal put into their marriage vows. They wanted something that allowed them more flexibility and more options.
I asked him if we could put it back in. He said that we could do whatever we liked. So I insisted that the words “Till death do us part” be part of our marriage ceremony. I felt that a wishy-washy marriage vow such as one he showed us, “As long as we both shall love,” was the sort of marriage vow that suggested that they were probably not really serious about the long-term survival of their marriage.
The way to overcome a lack of commitment is to commit yourself completely to the relationship. Get into it with both feet. Never consider the possibility of the relationship failing. If, through no fault of your own, the relationship does not work out, at least it will not be because you were half-hearted about it.
The second major problem in relationships is trying to change the other person or expecting the other person to change. This is another subtle form of rejection. It is another way of saying, “You are not good enough for me the way you are.”
Whenever you try to change another person you imply that he or she is unworthy, and you ignite feelings of anger and resentment.
The fact is that people do not change very much. As the comedian Flip Wilson said, “What you sees is what you gets.” If the person you are considering marrying is not what you want to get, the time to do something about it is before you get married, not afterward.
The solution to the problem of trying to change the other, of trying to get the other person to lose weight, quit smoking, exercise, become more positive or anything else, is to simply accept the person as he or she is. If you cannot accept the behavior and the personality of the other person, that should tell you something. Acceptance is largely determined by compatibility. Acceptance is a good indicator of whether this is the right relationship for you. Nonacceptance before the marriage is vastly superior to having to deal with it afterward.
Sometimes, when you stop trying to change the other person and just accept him or her unconditionally, he or she will begin to change as a result of his or her own choice. Human beings can be perverse. Often they will persist in behavior that irritates you just because you are continually trying to get them to change. When you stop trying to change them, they will often change their behavior voluntarily.
The third major problem in relationships is jealousy. Jealousy is always experienced in the mind and heart of the person feeling the emotion. Shakespeare called jealousy the “green-eyed monster.” It is a terrible negative emotion that arises from feelings of low self-esteem and personal inadequacy.
The person who feels jealous has doubts about his or her value as a person. He or she feels, “Nobody could ever really love me, being the kind of person I am.”
This type of individual probably suffered from des
tructive criticism in childhood and negative experiences with the opposite sex as an adult. If a person never received the unconditional love of his or her parents or, even worse, if the parents rejected or disapproved of the child during the time he or she was growing up, when that person becomes an adult he or she will be very vulnerable to not being fully loved and accepted by others.
The antidote to jealousy is to realize that it has nothing to do with the other person. It has to do only with the low self-esteem of the person suffering from it. The way to get over jealousy is by working on self-esteem, by saying over and over, “I like myself, I like myself, I like myself.”
When your self-esteem is high enough, when you like and respect yourself sufficiently, nothing that anyone else does or does not do will make you doubt your own personal value. You will be emotionally self-reliant, independent of the behavior of others for how you feel about yourself.
It is never a smart or clever thing to deliberately make another person jealous. Jealousy is a painful, destructive emotion, and it is not the sort of thing that one friend inflicts on another. Each of us needs to feel safe and secure in the relationship to which we give ourselves, and the deliberate provocation of jealousy shakes our security. Jealousy makes us feel miserable and unhappy.
The fourth major problem in relationships is self-pity. This occurs when you feel sorry for yourself for something that your partner has either done or not done to you or for you. Usually people who feel self-pity learned it from one of their parents who practiced self-pity as a method of interaction at home.
Often people indulge in self-pity—“Woe is me!”—when their partners are so busy or happy with work that they feel left out. The solution to self-pity is not to get your partner to do or stop doing something. The antidote is to get so busy with your own goals that you don’t have time to feel sorry for yourself.
