There is something curious about how we handle the different kinds of relationships that we engage in. An average person does have a number of relationships and each relationship comes with different responsibilities. Different responsibilities mean navigating between/among different levels of emotion.
Many of us do not pay attention to this. When we transit from wearing different hats with different or same persons as we navigate between/among different roles, we actually need to acknowledge and consider the mental shifts that take place and what each level of relationship demands or will demand from us.
Let us explore a little bit and see where it leads.
Primary Relationships
Our primary relationships are core to us. They are core because we entered into them intentionally and deliberately committed to the building and growing of specific shared vision and life purpose. Primary relationship is built on the values of respect, integrity, transparency, dignity, support, burden bearing and sacrifice despite familiarity.
This is the relationship we have in marriage and the fruit or offspring from the union is part of it. This is your primary constituency. It is your lifelong investment. It is the place where you find rest, where you set out from and retire to each day. You guard and protect it with all you have. A man or woman who finds this finds life and dramatically prolongs his or her life. This is the ideal situation where primary relationship is concerned.
Where there is a loss of one partner, for example, where the man dies, the woman finds it difficult to remarry. This is the case with my mother. My mother lost my father at 42 and since then she never joined herself to any man. She is 82 now. She busied herself with raising the common heritage, the fruit of the union. While such may be rare, it obtains. It comes from the place of definition of and commitment to rare positive values. We find rest yet in the vows we share even when the law of separation through death sets us free.
Secondary Relationships
When you have a secondary relationship, you may have a friend, who is often of the opposite sex. There is an attraction. It could be looks, it could be intellect, it could be understanding, but there is a pull definitely. Because of these, there is a pervasive drive or lure to consummate the friendship. This is usually lust. It is not love. The usual end result is a dislocation of sorts: abuse, pause or outright stop in communication. Hate takes the place of lust and other unpleasant scenarios play out.
There is a huge tax on the emotions. It can even lead to extremes like mental or emotional breakdown or even loss of sanity where one is weak. There is often confusion as to what to do because emotions have been invested and taxed over time. Often, someone has released too much information that they feel trapped because they have exposed themselves to the other person. They become captives. By the time they realize, it may be late. Yet, courage is required to overcome.
The madness was fed by the sustainability of conversations. Where two persons of the opposite sex can sustain their conversation over a long period on or offline, it can lead to anything because vulnerabilities come to the fore and these can be exploited depending on intentions, especially where there are ulterior motives that one of the parties may either be blind to or chooses to ignore to their own hurt after they spot red flags.
A secondary relationship can evolve into something deeper but usually it is the fruit of lust where one or both of the partners engaged in it as an escape from the heat from the primary one or person. The majority of adults are caught in this intricate web. It often leaves a bitter or insipid aftertaste in the mouth. You have to put your emotions in check to escape this bile. It is odious, indeed.
Business Relationships
A business relationship is one entered into with the primary and deliberate intention to provide goods and services to customers. A great step to this is to have clear lines of operations at the outset so that parties know their roles and play according to the rules. It is important that men and women who share the same values and principles come together and collaborate in business relationships. Where there is no surety in this, it will be extremely difficult for the partnership to thrive.
Marital relationships that are built on the foundation of business relationship or that evolved from business relationships of parents purely to cement or solidify business partnership may not be the best of decisions in the long run. We have seen friendships go south where the relationship of offspring in marriage get a hit.
An army general and leader married his son to the daughter of his business friend. Some years down the line, the two found no reason to continue to stay married. The question is: Were both youngsters attracted to each other naturally or was the marriage of their children contracted purely on the grounds of consolidating their business and otherwise friendship? Parents can be selfish when they do some of these things. They mortgage the happiness of their children. The two are separated today. Would the well-being of their children not be affected? What a ripple effect of negative impact on more than two generations!
The centre may no longer hold where either of the friends has a soft spot for their ill bred daughter who finds it difficult to obey the rules of a tough son in marriage, and vice versa. A thriving business relationship may suffer from such an extension of business to marriage. While the move itself may not be wrong, there may be underlying motives which are ulterior. As earlier noted, it is usually selfish and not in the interest of the children.
Now, there is nothing wrong if two friends with the same values go into business as long as personal values and business boundaries are respected and honoured. Businesses have thrived better this way but partners need to know this well enough before they extend a third hand into their friendship, otherwise devastating experience will be their teacher.
Extended Family
Oftentimes it is better to leave family members out of business where the emotions of bloodlines may interfere with values. We do not choose our blood family members the way we choose our friends. This is important.
Where we have great extended family members, it may be okay to keep family out of business because it may be difficult to seek arbitration outside family circles where there is friction.
Experience has taught me to know this better. Where bloodlines are pretty strong and siblings or relatives have been raised in a close-knit fashion, it is pretty difficult to break those ties if the abuse of money comes into play. The business may need to be sacrificed and money is lost. Sometimes it is better to patronise and engage with total strangers. This should save enough emotional stress and problems for the future, should things go awry.
Acquaintances
Oftentimes what we have are acquaintances but we ignorantly mix them up and refer to them as friends. A friend is not an acquaintance, though we can transit from acquaintance to friendship. Where friendship is concerned, the understanding is beyond bread and butter or convenience. We must keep acquaintances as what they are. That person we often meet at the canteen, at the train or bus station, at the cash machine, at the bank and in those public places, we have to be sure what develops from those constant chance meetings. Before you open the door of your heart fully, do not undermine the red flags you have been granted access to see. They are real. Take them very seriously.
In any case, everything in life is a risk but if we live intentionally and deliberately, we should find things out with all diligence and be definite about the things we do and the people we do them with.
Colleagues
Your colleagues are those persons with whom you work. They are your team members and because of the business goals you aim to attain, there is the temptation to get close. You can get too close for comfort. You must draw the lines therefore between being colleagues and keeping it so, unless of course you are ready to go into deeper involvements which you may find yourself struggling with after the work itself ceases to be or the collaboration on the project is done with. Often we do not give deep thoughts to these things. We allow ourselves to be carried away. We commit to relationships that are actually situationships. It may be true that some enduring relationships have been forged this way, but the risks are high.
Friends
When we talk about a friend, it is a deliberate choice we made to give our lives for. Friendship is life for life. A friend is not an acquaintance but an acquaintance may grow into friendship over the months or years. But with friendship, extreme care is called for. Caution about information, caution about physical access, caution about what we share, caution about exposing our vulnerabilities. Friendship is a difficult place to be because of the wrong investment of essential properties and values.
My only example of friendship is Jesus Christ and His Disciples. He got to a stage with them that He referred to them as friends. It was the evolution of the relationship. He called them friends and not servants because He kept no secrets from them. He gave His life for them and gave them His Spirit so they became one with Him.
Judas Iscariot did not have that privilege. When it got to the point of sealing the friendship with the receiving of the Holy Spirit, he fell away. The red flag of stealing money from the bag, the red flag of condemning the act of the woman with the alabaster box of perfume oil and of going in and out of fellowship manifested. When Jesus was revealing His relationship with the Father and stamping the knowledge and authority of His Deity to them, Judas had been sent out. Jesus knew who Judas was.
We choose our friends and we get to a stage in life that we prove and certify our friendship. We subject it to tests. We know from knowing who we are ourselves. Because a person errs against you or makes a mistake does not mean that he or she is not a true friend.
Again, Peter is a perfect example of this. Peter, the Apostle, was an irascible and almost unstable person but he was true. He may not have the right words always like Judas may. He may not be as prim and proper as Judas, but he was true to the cause. He knew the cause and he signed up for it.
Thomas Didymus was a great friend of the Master too, despite what seemed like unbelief. He would not pretend to know what he does not. He was plain and made no claims to an ability that he did not have. He ensured that he made full proof of owning the knowledge, even if it was after the resurrection. It is the same way with our relationships today. There is evolution. We must give some things time. Great things do mature with time. We must learn from these examples.
Relationships and Strains on Your Emotions
There are relationships where you have not clearly defined the boundaries and you really cannot tell what you are in with the other person. You get entangled with burdens you should not. Oftentimes you get used. You exert emotions and these are energies wasted on unproductive and immeasurable engagements. Your emotions get stretched beyond acceptable limits and you know you are being drained. Deep down within, you know you are sowing the wind and will reap whirlwind. This is nothing but pain which will only return with regrets. Perhaps, you may learn from your foolishness if you are not destroyed in the process of being entangled in such a situationship.
Sure, it is a situationship because you really cannot define or tell what it is for a certainty.
The Misuse or Misinvestment of Your Mental Faculties
What you put in your perception, reasoning, will, imagination, intuition and memory is more important than you realize oftentimes. It begins with what you pay attention to. It begins with what you give your time to, the things you pause in the moment to consider, the distractions you feed and what you listen to, more than what you hear. You actually dive deeper into listening as your mind further opens to whatever it is you have opened yourself up to.
It could start or begin with a gossip, an image, a skit and then you are drawn in. Before you realize, you have become hooked and have invested huge emotional currency in it. It becomes difficult if not almost impossible to extricate yourself from it because you have to invest more to unlearn what you had either consciously or unconsciously learned.
Close
The afterthoughts of the whole of this is that with every new relationship we engage in and act our way into, there is a different level of emotion deployed. When we are transiting from colleagues to friends, we must be emotionally prepared for the transition. The principles that work for colleagues may not work for friends.
When we are transiting from a business relationship to marriage and become in-laws in order to deepen our business ties by using our children, we must weigh the odds and the tax on our/their emotions. We are bringing in new life, new complexes, new biases, new thinking, new challenges and so new emotions into an already established relationship. We should not assume that it will work the same way as the previous.
Transiting from friends to business partners is a whole new experience. The same applies when we evolving from family to a business membership. You must understand that the rules that applied to family ties would not apply to business. You may be making the most woeful business decision making such transition. The mental shift is a great demand and it is not commonplace. These should be considered.
