The closer people are to one another, the more likely they will hurt one another’s feelings.

All of us have lived in a household with other people at some point in our lives, especially when we were growing up. From our birth until we went out on our own as adults, the extremely close proximity of the immediate family was the first experience of the intensity relationships take on when living under the same roof.

The difficulties we face in our relationships are most affected by our primary instinct as humans, the instinct to survive, and secondary to that, the instinct to procreate.

The primal instinct to survive gives us the very strong human ego that is always operating to preserve its own life. The message the ego knows as soon as it is born is – LIVE. Do anything to survive. This controls just about everything in our environment, until we become aware of it. Being selfish is natural, although very problematic.

The ego is a very strong human force that seems to take over any time there is fear. Anything that scares us, tries to control us, or that we can’t control, makes us anxious. Anxiety is the fear we face whenever we feel threatened or lost. We are trying to live. We don’t want to deal with anything that challenges that.

People are instinctually led to procreate, to have children, even if that’s not something the person would want if our culture and our instincts weren’t driving us to do it. So we have parents who may not have good communication skills, and that leads to children who will struggle to understand and express their own feelings, thoughts and emotions.

Relationships are natural and essential for human survival. Even the “worst” parents usually help their infants thrive, naturally guide the toddler for better or for worse, and keep their children in the house until they are ready to have a home of their own. Where relationships are inevitably hard is when circumstances emerge where egos get too aggressive, and people lash out at others in the household, or ignore others in the household.

We are human, so our aggravation can range from a small insult being spoken under the breath to all out physical violence. We automatically go into fight, flight or freeze mode anytime we feel offended or threatened. In a household, we act and react at times, without caring how that is affecting those around us.

We all take it really personally when a person in the household yells at us, insults us, or harms us in any way, even in a quiet, passive way. When we are young we try to fill in the place of fear of abandonment with something, anything, that will get us back to feeling safe and secure. Even those who learn to shut down and jump into another set of behaviors, take it personally; they just put it in a suitcase that will burst at the seams and zippers at a later time, while they play with masks to see which personality can work best.

If we’re going to get frustrated or anxious at home, we will not be able to avoid somehow, even if by body language and energy, expressing that feeling, which often plays out in us saying something mean, or something we didn’t mean. Either way, there’s usually an even bigger emotional reaction going on in the recipient, the person or people being affected by our anxiety. We all feel each other, whether we are aware of it or not. In a household, we ping off of each other like bumper cars.

The solution is self awareness. Did we start the domino effect? Or how did we contribute to continuing it? Are we taking other people’s stuff personally? Can we separate self from others?

Knowing what thoughts, emotions and reactions belong to you, and what is solely the other’s, can help you become grounded and give you a chance to stay calm. Observe the situation without reaction, and then make a choice that will bring about the best outcome. This is an approach that counteracts the habitual instinct to act on impulse. It prevents outbursts we may later regret.

We have to be aware of when we are operating out of ego, and self protection, and when we are keeping ourselves open to compassion and understanding for the other. Again, the key is self awareness. We make it a habit to keep coming back to the present moment, and our choice in the present, our behaviors – asking ourselves, are we in alignment with our true inner self and our personal value system? Because that’s the only moment that counts, and it creates the moments that follow it.

Most importantly, it is important to remember we are not perfect and we are growing and trying to learn a better way to interact. Knowing this helps us relate to others, they are the same. Those nearest to us don’t have a daily user’s manual that helps us make a perfect choice every time we need to communicate or express feelings. There’s a need to be heard and be right, and that will cause problems for both parties if they are unable to agree to disagree or make a compromise.

It’s best to know why problems exist and arise, as well as knowing it’s normal to have a few bumps in the road, and knowing it’s not healthy to abuse one another, even if it is all we know.

THE LOVE RELATIONSHIPS ARE SOME OF THE MOST CHALLENGING OF ALL

Probably the biggest issue for couples trying to maker a lifelong partnership work in a way that supports both people, is communication mishaps.

Communication is a huge topic because there are so many things that fall under the category. Some of many categories of communication are: talking, body language, tone, facial expression, vocabulary, posting, texting, writing, music, & artwork.

The need for healthy communication is very important if a relationship is going to be healthy and feel good to the people in it. And the most important virtues that must be honored to have a relationship that is “healthy” are trust and respect. These ideas have been around for as long as self help books and couples therapy.

Trust, respect and healthy communication are the three golden keys to a relationship that can fulfill both people. Having all three does not guarantee that a love relationship will last until “death do us part.”

WHY?

Because people change and grow over time. It’s possible that two people may grow in different directions. In the best scenario, the two people will amicably let each other explore their passions and new directions, even if it means breaking up but staying friends.

What makes relationships challenging is our perspective about them. Our cultural beliefs and norms, which are rapidly shifting, have given us permission to want to own another person. “My” boyfriend, “my” wife, “my” other half – these endearing terms send the message that I’m yours and you’re mine. We are used to these terms because we’ve always said, “my mother” or “my father”.

There’s an unspoken sense of ownership, but subconsciously, it is often more one sided. We can tend to perceive ourselves as being free and independent, while seeing the person we are involved with as belonging to us. When each person tends to do that, collisions start to happen between two people who love each other.

There’s something that happens that makes one or both uncomfortable, the communication probably doesn’t go smooth at first, and then both feel like, ‘wait a minute, you’re not supposed to act like that. I’m not ok with how you’re being. How you are makes me feel unloved.’

Both people are probably feeling the same about the other, it becomes a mirror of us arguing with ourselves. We tend to take it into our mind when we are alone and have hundreds of small conversations in our mind with this other person when they are not around. When both feel rejected and/or abandoned, the riff in a love relationship is formed, and over time can either be healed or widened.

In love relationships we are more sensitive. Our hearts can get broken and we know that. We tend to defend that part of ourselves maybe more than we need to. Our expectations of the other are the highest when we are in love. We don’t want to lose that feeling and we really don’t want the other person to lose that feeling and leave us. Our panic about feeling secure is constantly triggered if we are not confident in the relationship.

IT’S NOT HOPELESS

Any relationship, whether it be parent-child, two best friends or lovers, can exist in a peaceful way. It’s not impossible to have a healthy relationship, even if you have not truly experienced one yet. Most of us haven’t had the chance to be in a healthy relationship, because we didn’t really know what that meant for us, and to us, as life unfolded.

Now, people are able to jump online and get advice, take workshops, listen to pod casts, that help us all try to live in a way that is healthier. We all want to feel good. One of the things that will make a person go searching for information is a break up. Grief makes us sit in discomfort. Even if we don’t want to, we will experience physical, mental and emotional discomfort from losing someone who was close to us.

When we start to put ourselves back together, we often come across advice we can use to better define what we really want in our lives, and how we can become exactly who we were meant to be. We find ourselves again. Often we redefine ourselves again. In this process, there is hope. It’s where we get to grow and set ourselves up for better relationships in the next moments of our lives.

A relationship can work, or at least be healthy and functional, if both involved know how to be honest about their wants and needs, and will be respectful to others. Sometimes, one of the people involved will refuse honesty and may refuse to make any changes. Unfortunately, there’s not much hope for a healthy relationship here; but the hope is in the changes we makes that allow us to accept when the other isn’t going to contribute. We see it differently now.

As we take time for ourselves, and as we define and redefine what we really want in life, the past hurts are further and further behind, making our new vision more possible. There is a gift in being able to let the past be the past and in knowing we don’t have to live from it or keep holding onto to it. We can grow from what we want now, and we can make different choices, no matter what. Sometimes it is a choice to end the relationship and move on. The hope is then in the moving on to something we really do want in our lives.

Relationships are only hard if we choose to see them that way, otherwise we can make a choice to see them from a new perspective. Mostly, to understand the challenges are very normal. We are all learning how to be better together, as we become more mature as a culture, so will our way of doing relationships of all types.