How to stabilise shaky relationships

By Judi Light Hopson, Emma H Hopson and Ted Hagen/MCT

Do you worry that some of your relationships are falling apart?

Maybe your relationship with your teenager is full of tension. Or, do you argue a lot with your spouse or a co-worker?

A close relationship can fail to function properly when one or both people feel the other person isn’t trying hard enough.

Taking control means taking the high road. This means you’ll need to accept others just as they are. Naturally, you can nudge for a little change, but it’s important to realise that people aren’t going to change a lot.

Instead of pushing hard to change another person, you can quietly consider what you can do. By changing yourself, you will manage the relationship a lot better.

These tips can help:

* Place a limit on what you can give or do. If your teenager wants you to allow her friends over every weekend to spend the night, you might limit this to every other weekend.

* Don’t demean the other person. Instead, point out what feels acceptable to you. You might say to a co-worker, “I know this new project is really important to you. Can you ask a couple of others to stay late and help me organise the documents? This is a lot of work to do by myself.”

* Keep a pleasing attitude as you make changes. If others engage us in a quarrel, we can feel guilty for wanting something different. If someone tries to control you, try that much harder to stay in a pleasant mode.

“I have a cousin who used to put more than half of the family reunion planning on me,” says a friend of ours from Tennessee. “But, I’ve learned to say, ‘I’ll give you a list of things I can do, so you can find someone else to pick up the slack.’ I don’t get angry, because people will try to make you feel anger and shame so they can manipulate you.”

There’s great truth in the adage: “Nothing changes. We change.”

You might decide to spend less time with someone, or you might have to stop sharing so much about your personal life with a friend, relative or spouse. Picture how you can alter something fairly easily.

“My wife overwhelms me by complaining about her co-workers,” says a man we’ll call Jeff. “It makes me a nervous wreck to hear all of her stories at night over dinner. I’ve learned to tell her she can tell me later about all that stress. I just say that I want her to enjoy her food and relax for her own good at the dinner table. By the time she winds down, her stress stories are much less intense.”

To help preserve relationships, it’s necessary to realise that others have a right to be exactly as they are. Our power over others is limited.

Consider a teenage boy we’ll call David. His parents recently divorced, and David initially took out a lot of anger on his mother.

“My son was crushed,” says David’s Mom, Pam. “His dad has moved away with his new girlfriend.”

While Pam fantasises about beating her ex with a stick, she’s determined to keep her son connected to his dad.

“I told my ex and my son they’d have to reinvent their relationship,” says Pam. “I don’t want my son to wind up without any sense of direction. My ex really tries to stay in daily contact with David, so I know I’ve done my part. Encouraging their relationship is the only control I have over this.”

* Judi Light Hopson is director of a stress management website: www.usawellnesscafe.com. Emma Hopson is an author and nurse educator. Ted Hagen is a family psychologist.