Relationship Building Is a Skill
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”
This is sometimes listed as a “high-tech proverb,” but it’s also (and perhaps obviously) applicable to everyday life … including how we approach relationships. It’s a lot like another well known expression which defines insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Bottom line: If we are not getting what we want in relationships, then we need to do something different. And it’s clear that with bullying, teen dating violence, and domestic violence being far too prevalent, there are a lot of people not getting what they want … or need … in friendships and relationships. This is where skill building comes in.
Skill. Building.
It’s amazing, sometimes, how often we expect human beings to “just know” what they need to know about being the best possible human. Granted: Many of us learn a lot based on innate intelligence, through trial and error, and by observing others. On the other hand, we also often learn lots of ineffective behaviors that way … things that that need to be unlearned, and replaced with more effective approaches.
So what do we need to be the best at being human? Skill building. Skill … the ability to do something well. Building … forming or constructing a plan, system of thought, etc. Skill-building … forming or constructing a plan to do something well.
If we decide to construct a plan to do relationships well, we can succeed. After all, other people are doing it; but it’s good to know what to expect when we start traveling on the healthy relationship road. It begins with awareness; but if we start building skills for healthy relationships … and keep after it, we will not only eventually be good at relationships, but we will be able to teach others how to be good at relationships.
Consider the following illustration of the steps to building a skill:
Now let’s apply these steps to building healthy relationships.
Let’s assume that we start with an awareness of the existence and nature of healthy relationships. If we don’t have that awareness, we don’t have much of a prayer of achieving healthy relationships as a goal. It’s hard for us to hit a target that we can’t see.
Next, let’s say that we decide to take the calculated risk and move toward healthy relationship. Almost as soon as we do that, many of us are likely to experience a certain amount of awkwardness based on the fact that some or all of what we are experiencing is new to us. This is true whether we are entering into a conscious relationship for the first time, or trying to move from unhealthy practices to healthy ones. We are likely to experience discouraging obstacles. (No one ever said that building a healthy relationship would be easy.) And there is a pretty good chance that we will wind up feeling “phony.” (“This isn’t working.” This isn’t me.” I’m uncomfortable.” I’m supposed to do WHAT when I get angry?” “I sound like a textbook when I say that!”)
At this point, however, if the goal is worth achieving (and healthy relationships always are) we can’t give up until we reach a breakthrough point – a place where the discouraging obstacles can’t hold us back and we start to own the new healthier behaviors. Now, we are starting to become skillful with our new behaviors and we are being deliberate rather than reluctant in our use of the new skills.
As we start to see the benefits of our new choices, we find that we are a long way from feeling awkward. Instead, we are feeling masterful and our healthy relationship choices are automatic.
Finally, (and it may come in much less time than we originally anticipated) we find that we are going far beyond the basics that we were taught and we are becoming innovative and creative in building healthy relationships. We are making stuff up as we go, getting better and better at healthy relationships, and passing on what we learn to others. We move from being an overwhelmed “beginning student” to being excited about our continuing education, and our growing ability to teach the next generations of people just beginning to learn and practice the skills of building healthy relationships!
Rob Simon
Violence Prevention Specialist
Start Strong Wichita, a project of Catholic Charities
