THE DINOSAUR-TERMITE OF RELATIONSHIPS
by
William Cottringer


Relationships are at the center stage of life where all the action is. There are few other such experiences in life that offer as much of a variety and intensity of feelings—from love to hate, from joy to sadness, and from complete fulfillment to utter abandonment.

What I am finding out after 60 years of relationships, is that they are the main door to knowing God better. More than anything else, God wants us to have a good relationship with Him. He uses human relationships to teach us how to do just that.

Why do we have so much difficulty making relationships work? Why do so many people walk away from relationships? Why are so many people unhappy and dissatisfied in their relationships? There are literally libraries of solutions for having better relationships, but why is the divorce rate still climbing?

One useful guideline I have discovered in having better relationships is this: Be and let be. This is exactly how God treats us and hopes that we will learn how do the same with each other.

One easy way to get along well with another person, is to follow God's suggestion and allow the other person to just be and grow “better” according to their own schedule. Isn’t this the most fundamental application of the Golden Rule—treating others as we want to be treated ourselves? Isn't this God's approach with us?

Perhaps the biggest difficulty in having a good relationship starts with an unsuccessful "selection process." What doesn’t start well probably won’t end well. What is the best starting point? The object is to become more sensitive to moments of opportunity with people you meet--the ones who you are closest to in two dimensions—your material wants (physical, personality, mental, character, vocational, social and financial attraction), and spiritual needs (unconditional love, understanding, acceptance, unselfish service, creativity and wisdom). Of course this is what we are all typically trying to do and yet many don’t succeed. Why not?

Some important underlying things affecting the quality of a relationship are each person’s commitment to growth and the rate at which each person is growing—and the similarity and satisfaction of each person about that all. This is our human reaction to God's purpose in our lives. Of course this blossoms into an endless array of surface “symptoms” with which to be dissatisfied according to whatever is a priority at the time—wanting a better body, higher intelligence, more money and a livelier personality, or needing more unconditional love, acceptance, recognition and understanding.

The Dinosaur-Termite of relationships however, is the point of no return-- when you make an impatient judgment that you are dissatisfied with where the other person is at in closing the gap between who he or she is and who he or she is becoming. If the other person is not where you want him or her to be and not seeming to make the progress at getting there, you typically start rejecting the person in your mind the moment you begin to sense that you are giving more than you are getting—in any important areas of your material wants and spiritual needs.

My daughter recently shared an important insight that is worth passing on. She said that you really get in touch with how much you love a person when you realize they are rejecting you. Naturally, the more you love the person, the harder it is to let go and that is when you tend to become the most unlovable and make things worse. The only consolation to this heart-wrenching experience is that you are softening your heart and growing your empathy, which brings you back to the wisdom of the Golden Rule in allowing you to allow the other person to just be and grow at their own pace.

What is the best answer to this mess? There may be three helpful hints: (1) becoming more sensitive to moments of opportunity that will help you get closer to what you want and need, so that you aren’t too disappointed in what you have left over from the “honeymoon,” and (2) Re-learning and re-practicing the Golden Rule of just being and allowing your partner to just be (3) learning to want what you have so you have what you want.

More than likely, you already have everything you could ever want or need in the person standing before you. All you have to do is put everything you think you know on hold and take the time to really get to know the other person—allowing him or her to just be and seeing all the gifts, talents, and experiences that are yours to enjoy and that can help you close the gap between who you are and who you can be. This is one very big clue to the mystery of life and it is easier done than said!

We all want material success, enjoyment and satisfaction, and we all need to be understood, accepted and loved. There are times in your life where you can’t have both. Some say this is God’s way of testing us to see if we have finally learned which aspect of life—material control and success of getting what you want, or spiritual surrender and obedience to God's will and your soul’s more substantial needs—is really most important.

Maybe when you answer this question correctly and pass the test, and are lucky enough to be near someone else who has arrived at the same answer, you will be with your forever true love. Even then you can probably expect some harder tests to come your way. That is all life is—test after test, all designed to help us all become a better people.

My bottom-line point here is this: If you are not happy and satisfied with your experiences in relationships, then consider rearranging your thinking and wanting—if you didn’t have exactly what you wanted in a failed relationship, think about how you could have wanted what you did have and what you did or didn't do to keep that from happening.
Where you not enjoying the person because you were wanting him or her to hurry up and change into the person you wanted or expected?

You usually can’t avoid the failed relationships, but you can learn from them. The lessons to learn are: (1) every relationship has a purpose to teach you something important about yourself—did you learn it? (2) the next time make a better selection—Find out what is relaly most important to you and then select a person closer to where you are with your priority wants and needs, and (2) Finally get it right by allowing him or her to be and grow naturally from where you both start. Work on your patience, tolerance and acceptance.

I was a "victim" of losing my true love to this very same process. I could have continued being a victim but I choose to learn how to move from being rejected in love—by someone who was dissatisfied with who I was and how slow I was becoming what she wanted and needed—to allowing her to be who she is, accepting her own pace of growth, and learning how to become her friend in the meantime. This is what giving unconditional love is all about, but it certainly isn't easy.


William Cottringer is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA. He is also a business success coach, sport psychologist and writer. he can be reached at bcottringer.pssp.net or (425) 454-5011