If a person wants to be a part of your life, they will make an obvious effort to do so. Think twice before reserving a place in your heart for people who do not make an effort to stay.
Have you ever worked harder than you should have in order to maintain the personal or professional relationship beyond that which would be reasonably expected from you?
I would suspect that we all have at one point or another.
When relationships are healthy and are operating on common ground, there is a reasonable expectation that both parties are willing, desirous, and able to carry the weight of their own responsibility in terms of continuing to maintain the value in such a relationship. As a direct result, the relationship operates under healthy parameters.
When we are more needy or more desirous of holding onto a relationship than the other party, we are sometimes finding ourselves exerting the degree of energy we might not necessarily be willing to exert if we were not in need of that relationship continuing.
The continuous dance of imbalanced equity that we find ourselves in while trying to hold onto something that is not truly worthy of our efforts, cannot help but leave us continuously in a state of awkwardness that ultimately must be reconciled.
When we are working to maintain a relationship, we cannot help but feel a certain degree of anger and disappointment for our having to go the extra mile that the other party just is not willing to reciprocate, and as a direct result, our resentment cannot help but build and ultimately fester deeply within us.
When we are clear about how and why such a relationship is continuously making us feel disappointed and ultimately saddened by the dynamic in which we are operating, we are ultimately left with three choices…
We either suck it up and ignore it or we have a constructive discussion with the other party in which we make it very clear as to how and why their actions are leaving us feeling the way that they do or we leave.
When you are caught in such a cycle, you must ultimately be willing to ask yourself whether or not you believe that what you are securing from that relationship warrants what you are genuinely paying for it.
Reserving a place in your heart for an unworthy recipient is a recipe for sadness, despair, sorrow and regret. If they truly deserve a place in our heart, they will make the effort to stay there.
Happy Sunday!
Brian Weiner 