Cultivating Connection: The Hows & Whys of Nurturing Personal Relationships
Jill Wellington/Pixabay
Have you nurtured your relationships?
With working, maintaining a home, and all the “stuff” that needs to get done in life, time for relationships often gets edged off to the periphery of people’s lives, undermining emotional and physical health. The relationships are there, but we attend to them with whatever energy is left over… which is often woefully too little.
In those quiet moments when you are not rushing to get things done – even if that is only as you try to relax into sleep – do you feel unsettled, lonely, or disconnected? You might also feel this way when you receive either good or bad news and realize you have no one to share it with. Those are the times when the aloneness, loneliness, or disconnection you have pushed aside takes center stage.
Paradoxically, the emptiness that goes with feeling alone can weigh heavy in your chest. You might realize that you are missing the kinds of connection that make life enjoyable and uplifting. You might also realize that you lack support and don’t feel connected to a community. (Importantly, this is a strain the affects your physical health along with your emotional well-being.) When this happens, rather than suppressing the need for others again, consider making a different choice – to add meaningful connections back to your life.
If you don’t have significant relationships in your life, you might be struggling with an insecure attachment style, which can make connecting with other difficult. Whether that is the case or not, it is past time to consider how you might meet new people or nurture ancillary relationships that have the potential to be more. If you are fortunate enough to have friends and loved ones, then take the time to recognize them for the treasures that they are and attend to them.
Strengthen Connection in Your Life
Prioritize relationships. Nurture your relationships and they will thrive. Neglect them and they will shrivel and die. Stated another way, you must invest time and energy into your relationships for them to thrive and be a source of enjoyment, support and caring.
Though you no doubt need to attend to a lot each day, you can choose to make time for friends and loved ones. Even when life is hectic, you can, at the very least, make a short phone call or even send a quick “thinking of you” text so they don’t feel ignored or rejected. But that does not get you off the hook. It is still important to find another time to spend with them. If that future time never seems to arrive, you might want to reevaluate your priorities.
Accept your limitations. Giving of yourself both freely and often can feel great! But you also need to be realistic about your ability, time, and energy. Overcommitting can cause lots of problems, such as failing to fulfill your promises despite your best intentions. Or, you might end up feeling depleted, resentful, or distancing yourself as a way to cope. Any of these dynamics could create tensions that undermine your efforts to create a happy and fulfilling connection. So, be sure to acknowledge, accept, and live within your limitations.
Assert your needs and wants. While you may want to be there for another person, it is also important that they are there for you. For this to happen, you need to let the person know what you want from them.
If you are upset with someone, you might find that you overcome the problem by summoning the courage to tell them what is bothering you. For this to work, you need to be clear and assertive, without being aggressive. It generally helps to talk calmly and directly about your concerns, focusing more on your feelings (which will hopefully elicit caring) than on what they did (which might make them defensive). Because chronic intimate relationship problems in particular can be difficult to overcome, you and your partner may want to consult couples workbooks, books or workbooks that address attachment issues, or even enter couples therapy.
Know what you want from each relationship. Every relationship has something unique to offer. Because no one person can offer you everything, be sure to focus on enjoying the “gifts” of each relationship. But also nurture friendships that can meet your different needs. For instance, you might have an exercise buddy who helps you maintain your workout routine and another friend who seems to always know just how to cheer you up when life gets hard.
An Exercise to Cultivate Connection
For each important relationship in your life, ask yourself: What are my expectations, and how well do my friends meet them? Then allow yourself to be grateful for what you appreciate in each friend, to reassess your expectations as needed, and to consider how to best deal with any issues that arise. The following brief video, Make Time for What Matters: Reconnect with Your Relationships, offers some more ideas about how to assess and energize your relationships.
A Life with Relationships as a Priority
Relationships are easy to take for granted, or to think you will get to them once you take care of everything else. So, remind yourself that connections provide meaning and a sense of well-being, as well as a safe haven when life becomes overwhelming (which it inevitably does at times). On the most fundamental of levels, when you prioritize relationships, you are also prioritizing your health and happiness.
(If you are interested in reading more about the importance of connection, check out my Making Change Psychology Today blog article, The Secret to Feeling Good: Connection)