How You Can Choose to Have a Better Relationship Now

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Do you want to have relationships full of joy and peace, lacking in fights and arguments? If you do, really do, then it is possible for you to have that experience. Every relationship you have can be permeated by love and peace. If you want this it takes a choice; a choice to let go of seeing things in terms of separate sides, of winning and losing, of holding on to being right.

True, making this choice is not magic, and there is a process to getting there. The more you practice this step by step in your relationships, the more natural it will be and the less effort required.

How do we know this? The constancy of our relationship. The pervasiveness of knowing we’re on the same side. It’s like walking through life and having a path constantly appear before us; in other words, no obstacles ever arise. It feels completely automatic; a form of grace that has been given to us, yet at the same time, we know that it is something we’re doing. We don’t even notice doing it, except maybe occasionally when we have the choice between being kind and being snippy.

It may not be like that for you, and that’s understandable. Everybody has dug their ruts in life, including us; that must be why that path keeps opening before us. But where we have learned to tread that path, for those of you still falling into those ruts, there will be an initial effort needed to climb out.

Do you want to have relationships full of joy and peace, lacking in fights and arguments? #couples Share on XFirstly, you have to want to. Maybe that’s why you’re reading this now. Then you need to find a route out. Perhaps the easiest way to describe that route is to say it is respect for the other person, whether that is your partner, friend or family member.

But to make that effort, you have to know what to change. To know what to change, you have to know what you are doing. To know what you are doing, you have to pay attention. To pay attention requires introspection. To be introspective requires intention.

When you look at how you are living your present life, why is it an effort to change once you have the awareness and the intention? It’s because there is a comfort in the familiar, even when that place is uncomfortable. There is a feeling of safety. Your rut might be descending into acrimony or feeling unheard or a sense of loss – look at yours and when you see it, write it down to make it clear. It’s familiar and comfortable (even if it causes behavior you don’t want) because that is how you have learned to be – maybe from your family. You may need to go back and explore that, but the way out is in the present, and it will be – obviously! – unfamiliar.

That is where the effort and the self-awareness come in. Just make the smallest change. It might be holding your tongue, or taking the trash out, or a touch, or a compliment, or not being late. Only you, with your self-awareness, can know what it is. And of course, you won’t always catch yourself. But two things will happen. You will get better at it, and your change will also affect the other person. Just as you can spiral down into those familiar uncomfortable places, you can spiral upward into a new, strange, loving connection. Choice, belief, and intention will make it happen.

Photo credit: Antique Bavarian postcard
Photo note: From the collection of Maude Mayes

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