Relationships

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the relationships in our lives and how we behave within them. My most prominent relationship at the moment is probably with Tom, as we’re a couple and we are actively making the plans for our relationship’s future, but we each have our own connections and relationships with other people.

I am enjoying a new active relationship with Jesus, if I may phrase it that way. It’s been enriching to become part of a church again, and one that is rather different from my previous church experiences. It’s more traditional, perhaps less hierarchal, and there’s more “sit-stand-sit-stand” which gives my legs a break from going to sleep. Also individual silver shot glasses for communion wine which tickles me!

But witnessing others’ relationships around me can be enlightening and heart-warming, as well as difficult and upsetting. I recently watched a loved one have a big argument with some family members over their treatment of a mutual relation, which resulted in both arguers cutting off immediate contact with each other and a lot of internal misery (at least at the end I was with) which breaks my heart. How can we cause so much pain to one another?

I’m not at all innocent in these issues; those who were around during my teens may remember a bad-tempered girl who was constantly fighting her mother and giving her grief and struggling with her peers. I can’t swear to being a totally reformed character but I hope I value people more and show them – even if I have to live fifty miles away from mum to have that! And even then we can still piss each other off.

So in the back of my mind the horrible truth that one day whatever offspring I  product will come to hate me in turn too. Great.

But back to the here and now. Family should not be divided over money and power. Neither should couples. Or friends. We are all human at the end of the day, so the only real resentment I think can harbour is the acts which hurt each other. And we should try to not do many of those too.