WHAT A GOOD RELATIONSHIP NEEDS TO BE

or How To Live a Little Better With Help from Others

27 years.

That’s a long time.
That’s a long time no matter how old you are.

Shannon and I stood in the backyard of our newly bought home. It’s summer kitchen built in the 30’s barely hanging on to the brick but reverberating the sounds of the fall fair demolition derby as we said our vows.

I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships lately.
Our wedding anniversary has kind of cemented it for me.

I don’t just mean marriage or love.
This can be spouses, friends, family, and even business.

A good relationship should be the following:

Safe Harbour
Life gets stormy. It can throw you about at random and make you feel like, or more to the point remind you, that there are many many things we have no control over.
A good relationship should be your safe harbour.
A place to rest, regroup, fuel up, and repair any damage.

Foundation
Day to day life can feel concrete one day and vapour thin the next.
A good relationship should be the farthest you can fall.

Partnership
We all need to lean on someone sometime.
A good relationship should be reciprocal and based on the best of two people leaning on each other.
When one person is diminished, all effort should be made to remedy their position back to 100%.
Both sides must be equally at their best.

Real
What is really happening in life can sometimes be missed or ignored.
A good relationship should have each partner looking out for the other based on the realities of life.
Be truthful.
Pointing out when things are going wrong and, more importantly sometimes, when things are going great.

Maintained
One of the truths of life is that it is constantly changing.
Daily life is made up of an unknowable amount of variables.
No relationship can navigate life without maintenance.
Work must be put in to ensure the strength of the relationship is maintained.

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You’re not going to have a good relationship with everyone…
but you should try to ensure that as many as possible are.

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(Pictured: Author and Luckiest Man On The Planet with Too Nice For Her Own Good Bride)