Successful Relationships Reading Corner
This week, we wrote that you should base your relationships on connection, not competition. Here are some of our previous posts on different aspects of this topic.
Why It’s Important to Relate to Community as Well as Individuals “I have been reflecting since the recent event how deeply important it is to feel this type of connection and to have an awareness of not being isolated from it. None of us is alone. We live intertwined with one another, sharing services and depending on each other in a million tiny ways for our lives to function. As we foster peace within our individual relationships, we need to nurture the sense of community and our relationship to it as well. We have different options since the restrictions of Covid times brought us Zoom and the ability to meet up with each other without distance being an issue. As that way of being together evolved, it has created a whole new forum for us to become aware of each other and to share and support each other. This is also true of some social media, depending on how those avenues for interaction are used. In these current times, it is ever more important to foster these relationships and to find a sense of backing and support within community, as we each strive toward individual peaceful relationships.”
We Depend On Each Other, So Let’s Love One Another! “I have been thinking a lot about how society is structured. Everybody cooperates (literally “works together” from the Latin opus: work) by doing different activities and sharing the results. This is not obvious because cooperation is so much a part of what we are and so ubiquitous that it fades into the background. Instead, we see life in terms of competition and rugged individualism. Yet it is very difficult to live completely alone and have to do everything, like smelting iron, yourself. I’ve also been seeing more and more research showing that friends are good for your health. Putting the two together says to me that it is in our nature to value our connections with each other and be grateful for them, and this is what makes a community cohere. (An interesting word: it means both stick together and agree.)”
How We Create Peace in Our Relationship by Intending To Do So “Another source of our belief is the fact that people live in communities because they need each other to survive, both physically and emotionally. Relationships, from business to personal, are how we get those needs fulfilled. This is a cerebral argument, but it’s a useful idea that at base, you and your partner need the same things. Believing in a peaceful relationship is a challenge because of the prevailing common view that conflict is inevitable and even healthy. This idea is so easily accepted because we live in a capitalist society that reveres competition and free markets. You might say that couples also fight over limited resources, but a relationship is more about emotional needs which are not limited in the same way; when differences in a relationship arise, they are better handled with a mindset of community than competition.”