Understanding Relationships

If you know yourself, you will always understand others better. And if you can understand others, there will only be one thing left in your relationships, and that is harmony.

Here is a discourse for you on understanding relationships. The following is an excerpt from the opening lines of the discourse:

For most people, their life revolves around relationships but an overwhelming majority are not happy with the state of their relationships. This discourse covers the spiritual side as well as the practical side. What is a relationship? Is it a transaction of convenience? Of needs? Of desires? Or is it a bond? A bond of love. Does a relationship come about because there is a bond or because there is a need?

In other words, is it because of the bond that people share common needs and therefore a relationship, or is it because of needs that they get into a relationship and form a bond? The notion in the west is somewhat different to what it is in the east. You may want to read about the secret of a good relationship. 

Hare Krishna. Swami

Editorial Note

Understanding relationships is no piece of cake. Arguments, ego clashes, chilling silences, frustrations – the list is endless. On the flip side, laughter, friendship and joy also abound. Guess what? A healthy relationship has both sides of the coin!

A man and his wife were having some problems at home and giving each other the silent treatment. He overheard her on the phone one evening. “I can’t understand what my husband is saying! I always listen and he feels I don’t!”

More exasperated than ever, he vowed to continue giving her the silent treatment when suddenly, he realized that he would need his wife to wake him up at 5:00 AM the next day, for an early morning business flight.

Not wanting to be the first to break the silence, he wrote on a piece of paper, “Please wake me up at 5:00 AM, thank you for understanding,” and left it on her bedside table.

The next morning, the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 AM and he had missed his flight. Furious, he was about to yell for his wife when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed.

“It is 5:00 AM. Wake up.Thank you for understanding what?”

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Learning how to build a healthy relationship is very much in our hands. The following FAQs delve into the different facets of understanding relationships; they are, after all, the cornerstone of life.

Sometimes, building a loving relationship is as simple as breaking the silence.

1. What is the secret to understanding relationships?

When two people are in love, one or both of them tend to believe that love will be enough to keep them going. The truth is love alone is rarely enough because just wanting the other person is not love. Just being able to love is not enough for harmonious living.

A newly wed couple asked their master, “What shall we do to make our love last?”

“Love other things together,” he replied.

This is the secret of successful relationships: love other things together and don’t lose sight of the good you have. When you are able to love not just the person you love but what they love, your relationship reaches a whole new level.

Successful relationships are not built on some utopian definition of love but on simple practical aspects of living. Continue reading The Secret of Healthy Relationships to understand these aspects with the help of a telling short story about a couple.

2. What are the 4 foundational pillars of a healthy marriage?

A good marriage has four pillars, columns of strength and togetherness. The building of any close relationship stands on these four pillars. Spacious and cozy rooms of faith, love, respect, intimacy and understanding are built on these pillars.

If the foundation is strong, you can withstand, with remarkable ease, storms of mutual and personal crisis, floods of turmoil, tides of emotions and a whole heap of other unprecedented circumstances and adversities.

The four pillars of a marriage are the four types of securities. Think of a marriage as an individual entity, a building if you will. Your job is to ensure the strength of these four pillars, the four different types of security. Each pillar is equally important:

• The pillar of financial security

• The pillar of physical security

• The pillar of emotional security

• The pillar of moral security

These pillars are the key to understanding relationships. Delve into details, in Four Pillars of Love.

3. What is the truth about marriage?

Living in the world, relationships are inevitable. At work, in society, at home, in the family, everywhere. Generally, the more intimate a relationship, the greater and more deep-rooted expectations.

And understanding relationships that are intimate need time.

My focus today is personal relationships, the type where both physical and emotional intimacy form an integral part of the relationship. Society may label such relationships as marriage, girlfriend-boyfriend, lovers, and so forth.

Both partners want some quality, a certain equality in a relationship. It is often compared to a two-wheeler, where both wheels need to be balanced for the vehicle to move smoothly. However, that is an intellectual proposition, albeit a convincing one.

In reality, man and woman are built differently, psychologically, emotionally and physiologically.

I would like to share with you the four truths of marriage:

• It is not possible to let go of expectations in marriage.

• One partner is always more attached than the other in a marriage.

• One is always more expressive than the other in a marriage.

• A functional relationship is not about perfection.

Read about these truths in detail in Personal Relationships and learn how to build a healthy relationship with your better half.

4. What are some examples of maturity in a relationship?

All real and mature relationships undergo a phase of crisis when everything you know is challenged. In fact, it is only in stress that you really get to know how fragile or strong a relationship is.

And, there’s only one thing that sets apart the couple who are celebrating their golden jubilee from the one who are fighting in a court within months of marriage.

That is: in a healthy relationship, you focus on the positives in the other person while in a negative one, you do the opposite. When you focus on what’s good than what’s bad, you naturally learn to value what all is there. And when you truly value something, you work hard to protect it.

It is easy to get carried away and think me-me-me, but a functional relationship is about a lot of patience, mutual care and respect. With such traits blossom the wildflower of love, spreading its fragrance all around, making life more beautiful and worthwhile.

And the only way to keep love is to love back. Love begets love. Keep reading How to Make a Relationship Last? for a moving short story about Mixoo the dog who showed that the ultimate key to understanding relationships is valuing the person you love.

5. What is the golden rule of being happy in relationships?

Understanding relationships may not always be possible but being almost always happy certainly is! The following video speaks of the one golden rule that is guaranteed to keep us happy, no matter what.

Timeline:

• 1:35: The golden rule