6 Things Every Healthy Relationship Needs (Ebook Shorts)

Stephen Arterburn

Description

What does a healthy relationship look like? Knowing the answer to this question is the first step to improving the relationships in your life. In these pages, Stephen Arterburn draws from his own positive and negative experiences, as well as his years of counseling others, to reveal six key attributes of thriving marriages, families, and friendships. His practical advice will help you lay the foundation for the lifelong, supportive relationships you were created for. This is a selection from Arterburn's Regret-Free Living.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441260239
• Langue: English

Extrait

6 Things Every Healthy Relationship Needs
Stehen Arterburn
with
John Shore
© 2009 by Stephen Arterburn
Published by Bethany House Publishers 11400 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minnesota 55438 www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan. www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
E-book edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-6023-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
1. Signs of an Unhealthy Relationship
2. Six Qualities of a Happy, Regret-Free Relationship
3. Loving and Giving Out of Fullness
About the Authors
Other Books by the Authors
Back Cover
1 Signs of an Unhealthy Relationship
B ecause of the work I’m blessed to do through New Life Ministries, I witness all kinds of unhealthy relationships all the time. One of the most common characteristics of an unhealthy relationship is two people who continue doing the same things that have never worked for them in the past and can’t possibly work for them in the future. Sometimes it’s the other person in the relationship who’s blowing it, but mostly the individuals I talk with are much like me people who over the years have had a very active role in perpetuating their own misery.
What people in the misery of unhappy relationships usually fail to realize is that God doesn’t want them to be miserable. He doesn’t want stagnant relationships that aren’t going anywhere or are going downward. And the happy truth is that 99 percent of the time, if both people in any unhappy relationship would just be willing to try a different way, their misery and stagnation would end. Two people working together in a relationship can overcome just about anything.
Paul says, in 1 Thessalonians 5:16, “Always be joyful.” How many of us have been in a relationship that consistently makes us anything but joyful? I’m not talking about the bad week all long-term relationships have or the bad month, or even the bad year. I’m talking about the year-in, year-out drain of a relationship that should have been mended years ago. And if it’s a choice or choices we have made that have us now stuck in the muck of regrets over a relationship, then it’s up to us to find a way out of that mire so we can move on to better choices, better outcomes, a better life.
While there is no formula for fixing every relationship, there are things anyone can do that are sure to bring about the most potential for a healthier future. There is a formula for living above and beyond regret, and following it walking that higher path is something you can choose to start right now.
Your past ended one second ago, and you begin, now , creating a new future for yourself. Joy can be a constant presence in that future.

How do we get stuck in a bad rut in the first place? Well, one of the surest ways is to compare ourselves with the other person and to feel like we are doing more for the good of that relationship. Somehow we build a barrier between ourselves and the other person and after years in the emotional isolation this creates, it at least feels easier for us to simply continue doing the wrong things we’ve long been doing than to undertake starting to put things right.
It’s like what happens when a bathroom sink begins not to drain as it should. At first you hardly notice the problem. Pretty soon, you see that the water left in the sink after you’ve brushed your teeth or washed your hands isn’t quickly disappearing. Before too long nothing’s flowing at all, and you have a problem on your hands.
Now it’s only going to be fixed when you stop what you’re doing, get out your toolbox, get down on your knees, and start doing what’s needed to remove the stinky mess that’s preventing the proper flow of things.
The sink-as-relationship metaphor breaks down in one key way, though. Eventually, you do need to fix a clogged sink. But, sadly, a clogged relationship can continue being gunked up forever. Oftentimes it carries on so long its members get blinded to the truth of just how bad their relationship has become. And that’s when both people need help regaining their lost perspective.
It’s so important to be able to recognize a bad relationship when you’re in one. That’s why I thought it would be a good idea to take a moment and look at some big road signs that tell you you’re traveling down the bad-relationship highway.
All of us have blind spots, areas of ourselves and our lives that we can’t, or don’t, see. On New Life Live, we’re helping people see things in and about their relationships that they might have missed. We’re helping them understand what principle from God’s Word is most applicable in their situation.
But bad relationships don’t just surface on the talk show. Each year we produce six New Life Weekends. These are thirty-six-hour, Friday-through-Sunday experiences in six different national locations. People fly in, we bring in clinicians from all over, and we engage and get involved in real lives. We love watching hundreds of people go to work with group counselors and with like-minded fellow strugglers to come out on the other side with new hope and new tools to move forward. In all my years of ministry, I’ve never been part of anything so powerful. And the results for most everyone are lasting.
One of my favorite couples from our healing weekends had just about come to the end of options for healing their marriage. The husband was there because his wife, as he put it, had “dragged” him. Throughout the course of the weekend, this couple had experienced some insights about themselves and their relationship, but not many.
All this changed in the final hours. In one session the other seven men present, who were being extremely honest with each other, confronted this man about how shabbily he treated his wife. They said he was dismissive toward her. He may not have known much about counseling, but he sure did know the meaning of the word dismissive . And it stung his heart to hear from the others how he treated his wife.
He had simply never seen it before. His walking in front of her, his talking past her, his lack of empathy for her . . . it was all from the way he had learned women were to be treated. But once he became aware, for the first time, of how wrong such treatment is, he threw himself into healing his marriage with full dedication and commitment.
Today I can assure you, those two are not living in the darkness of regret. They have started over, and God continues to work in their lives. And it all began when, for the first time, the man opened his heart to the reality of the negative situation he all along had been creating.
Those who are willing to see reality as it is can change that reality and begin to live a life beyond one defined by regret and remorse.

If you’re in a relationship that just doesn’t feel right to you that you find is always leaving you, your partner, or even the people around the two of you feeling bad, anxious, or just plain angry read the following markers of defective relationships and see how many of them apply to yours. If more than two or three of them do and you can clearly see that they do then you’ll be well on your way to grasping the areas that need your full attention. You and your partner will thus be already headed down the road of healing.
Resentment
It never fails to amaze me how out of touch some people can be with the resentment they’re feeling inside toward someone with whom they’re in a toxic relationship, whether it is a co-worker, a parent, or a friend. It can be as clear as a bell to everyone around them that they’re angry (and to be fair, they often do have all kinds of excellent reasons to feel resentment and anger), but they themselves frequently seem to have no idea what (or how much of it) they’re harboring. It’s a terribly unhealthy way to live, yet it’s the way many people continue to choose to live: full of resentment on the inside but acting or trying to act like nothing’s wrong on the outside. That’s never the right choice.
“Surely resentment destroys the fool,” we read in Job 5:2. I wish every person I know had those words on their bumper sticker or stitched and framed on the wall of their office or kitchen. These are powerful words. I’ve dealt with countless people whose lives have been all wrapped up in the resentment they feel for another person but it’s always they who are being damaged.
The reason so many people have such a problem comprehending the toxicity of their own resentment is that resentment seethes at a person’s deepest level. It lies festering and slowly roiling away beneath everything its host does, says, and thinks. It’s like cancer. It’s there, it’s killing you, and you sometimes aren’t even aware of it until it’s a problem far beyond anything you can handle on your own. Resentment is not like the animosity we’ll look at below; animosity is alive, acting out something in the here and now.
Resentment, on the other hand, is usually rooted in an event or series of events that happened in the past. It’s usually the holdover result of something, either speci