The month of Love is upon us, easily the month with the most discourse on matters of the heart and I also consider love to be a wellness conversation. I don’t think I want to live in a world averse to love, and I cannot imagine what that world will look like and feel like. Although most of the conversations about love in this season are usually tilted towards romantic love and while that is absolutely fine, this article will spread its wings into other forms/ sources of love.
The discussion on love falls into the Relational wellness dimension. This dimension encourages the building and nurturing of meaningful relationships. In my view, love is a derivative of quality relationships and this refers to our relationship with self and others. I believe also that we need to be mindful that relationships need attention to thrive and we are responsible for how much nourishment we get from all our different relationships.
Since love can be the outcome of meaningful relationships then let’s talk about what we need to do in relationships in order to create it. Like I mentioned earlier love in this article isn’t limited to romantic love. The dictionary definition of love is “An intense feeling of deep affection”. Upon discovery of the definition the first person that comes to my mind is my mother, I definitely have an intense feeling of deep affection for her.
After years of butting heads and getting into a lot of arguments with her, I had to take a few steps back to appraise the quality of our relationship because I had noticed a few of my friends who were really close to their mothers and I began to yearn for the same love they shared with their mums. The desire to get closer to my mum spurred me to improve my relationship management skills. The experience affirmed to me that even relationships with close family members will require effort if we want to experience an intense feeling of deep satisfaction from them.
There were two critical skills that saved the day for me and my mum’s relationship to become the loving relationship that it is today and they are conflict management and conflict resolution skills. The ability to prevent a conflict still remains the more important skill – here you are self-aware enough to stop a potential downward spiral. Before now when I got into an argument with my mum, I would be more interested in getting my opinions across and when I encountered any resistance I pulled in from any available resource to ensure that my voice was heard and sometimes that included raising my voice.
Now, with my new knowledge in conflict management, I place the value of the relationship (recognizing that I don’t want it to end) over my opinions at the moment, not to suggest that I drown my opinions but instead I understand that it is a little difficult for anyone to listen when emotions are high. Let’s face it, our mothers often find it confrontational when you express a contrary opinion to theirs so many times it’s better to allow things cool off and revisit the conversation at a later time.
Often times even the most skilled in conflict management can encounter challenges because in every potential conflict you are only in control of one side of the situation and that’s why the second skill is important. Conflict resolution is what is described in customer service as a service recovery, It is basically damage control. In the world of Customer Service, service recovery if approached skillfully will not only revert a customer’s initial dissatisfaction but also convert them to a raving fan of the organization. I believe the same principle can be applied in relationships. Conflicts don’t have to lead to a total collapse in a relationship that can otherwise become a source of love in our lives, it is possible to recover and rebuild any relationship even after we experience conflict.
Love is a beautiful thing and meaningful relationships are a great source of deep affection.
It’s amazing what a little effort can do, my mum and I are enjoying a deep bond that I never imagined possible and if like me you want to build meaningful relationships with the people in your life then you will need to be intentional about it.
Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Very thoughtful. I dread not being heard, it feels like I’m suffocated when I can’t express myself. So, truly conflict resolution is a big part of relationship and not many of us handle this well.
I understand. we all want to be heard and that’s perfectly fine but I think we can do so without losing valuable relationships. Remember that everyone comes into every conversation with their own world view so there’s a need to be tactful in how we express ourselves, never to suppress your thoughts and feelings but always make room for a contrary perspective.
Thanks for sharing. The feeling of being right will definitely steal all the joy from a loving relationship. I am learning to stoop to conquer.
I agree with you. We need to get comfortable with taking the high road sometimes, because when we unravel the motivation behind “being heard” we will notice how much of our ego feeds that behavior.