I have been thinking a lot about relationships lately -- what is it that makes good relationships? How do you build trust? What fosters friendliness and goodwill toward each other?
I think one of the single most important things in having good relationships, is learning to understand other people. The ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes is not a skill that comes naturally for most people.
There's probably a number of things that contribute to that, one being that people are simply all so different from each other! A friend of mine commented recently how making food is therapeutic; I confess, I failed to come up with a scenario in which food prep might serve that purpose for me. Or we have people like my husband, who feel the closest to others when they engage in animated discussions, the like of which would typically send me looking for a bed to crawl under. The goal in understanding these things is not so much to determine right or wrong/ better or worse responses and feelings. The goal is to recognize what is true to the other person, so that we can view their actions accordingly: Making food truly is therapeutic for that person. She is probably not going to stress out about making a snack for x-y-z like I would. Or: loud, animated discussions truly do make people like my husband feel intimacy. Understanding that can help me learn to press in and engage, instead of taking things personal or running away.
We tend to expect everyone else to respond to life the same way we do -- "I hate to ask her to bring all of the dessert for sewing because that would feel like a lot to me." (Purely being hypothetical here. I would stress out a lot more over preparing, say, a turkey, than dessert for sewing. But you get my point) Or "If I was saying something that loudly, I would be upset. That person must be really annoyed." The fact is, regardless of how true those assumptions may seem to me, they may not be true at all in either of those scenarios. It is easy to see how other people understanding me can be helpful, but it's a whole lot harder to truly believe the other person's truth and put myself in their shoes.
I enjoy personality tests, love languages and the like for the very reason that they are helpful in understanding other people's truth. I know the enneagram is a controversial thing for some people but I have found it to be one of the most valuable tools I've discovered so far in learning to understand other people (not to mention, myself). I think another valuable tool is listening to other people's stories.
I mentioned Katrina's blog and book last week. I have also immensely enjoyed a podcast she and her husband put out last year. As of now they are no longer putting up new episodes, but I loved their mission with the Voices of Survival podcast: "Voices of Survival shares, in their own voices, the stories of people in our Brady Street, Elkart neighborhood, who have survived difficult times. You provide dignity by listening to their stories. But the stories will provide you with something too: a sense of gratitude for the childhood that you had and a sense of compassion for those who have not had it."
That, in a nutshell, is what listening to each other's stories can do.
I am woefully behind in reading through the chronological Bible this year, but I just got done listening to the part in Deuteronomy where Moses admonishes them over and over to remember their story. "Remember where you came from; remember what you've gone through; remember to remember." That's a bit of a bunny trail, maybe. But I think it ties into the thing of telling our stories and understanding where we came from and where we're going.
I'm not always real great with relationships. I'm the person who came through a pandemic feeling like it's just easier to live life without needing to deal with people, remember? The fact is though, in order for most things in life to work smoothly, we need other people. And in order to accomplish anything well with other people, we need good relationships. A big step toward building those good relationships involves learning to understand what it feels like to live life in another person's shoes. It may not be a skill we are naturally born with, but I do think it's one we can learn to be better at!
