Thoughts On Relationships

With what kind of people do you most like to be with? Who makes you feel the best? In whose presence do you enjoy being the most?

If you carefully observe and analyze your attitudes and the feeling that you have in their presence, you would probably find something common and would come to some of the following conclusions:

• In their presence you feel that you are totally accepted as you are. They give you the opportunity to be yourself. They do not put expectations on you. You can express yourself, your inner being in safety and assurance that all will be OK. Because you feel that they will not condemn you or get upset.
• They genuinely interested in your wellbeing and challenge you to be the best and the greatest you can be and that lifts you up and inspires you.
• In their presence you feel good about yourself and full of hope.
• You do not feel manipulated, controlled or forced to do or be anything than what you want to be. You have complete freedom.

When we experience some of the above in our fellowship with this kind of a person we are often overwhelmed by a certain kind of indescribable feeling and we call it love. And in that moment there is something within us that wants to mirror this experience back to that person and others.

Observe the people that you believe are in love and you will see that the more above points they experience the more in love they appear. And if you want to have a similar experience then do what you can to make the other person feel good about themselves and most likely they will do the same for you. They will mirror back the same kind of pleasure you give them. Try it, begin with a smile especially to those that know you and will not think you have become crazy.

Expectations
How do you respond to those who put expectations on you? And why do we expect when we suffer from our expectations so much? Have you noticed?

We learn in our childhood that it is better to fulfill the expectations of those around us and as parents we enforce our expectations on our children. Often it is done automatically without thinking and if we do we reason, that we know what is best for them and besides our expectations help us to keep the house running easier.

When children know what is expected of them, like what time to go to bed and if they do not live up to our expectations then they know that there will be unpleasant consequences. So, we get used to living up to other people's expectations and learn how to enforce our own on others. And before we know it and without realizing we become slaves to our own and other people's expectations.

Those who live under our expectations; do they enjoy being prisoners to them? Do we need to live under the expectations that we live under? Have we matured enough to leave our childish behavior?

Let us take responsibility for our own responses. Others may never give up their unreasonable expectations of us unless we clearly let them know that we have matured enough to live the way we see it best no matter how upset they get.