Category: Relationships (Page 5 of 13)

5 Ideas for Navigating Troubled Times

March 21, 2020 / Matt McMann / 0 Comments

It was a heartbreaking conversation. A few days ago, my wife and I helped our son and his fiancé make the gut wrenching decision to postpone their long-planned wedding. Their immanent April celebration is now a distant October event.

It’s a challenging time. The reach of COVID-19 is affecting us all, but not in the same ways. Some of us have been devastated by the disease through personal illness, the loss of a loved one, or financial instability caused by industry shutdowns. For others, the impact to this point has been relatively mild, like adapting to the new realities of social distancing and sheltering in place at home.

Rather than write a “one size fits all” post, I decided to share a variety of suggestions to hopefully help you navigate this season regardless of where you’re at on the impact spectrum. You may be drawn to some suggestions while others might feel completely irrelevant to you. In the future, the appeal of these ideas may completely reverse as your situation changes. Here’s a list of thoughts and resources for you to browse as you choose:

1. FIND YOUR BALANCE

It’s okay to be scared right now. That’s normal and natural given the breadth and impact of this global pandemic. That said, huddling in the fetal position unable to function or stuffing an entire closet full of toilet paper is an unhelpful overreaction. Conversely, laughing this situation off as an overhyped hoax and not taking proper precautions for the good of yourself and others is also a dangerous extreme. Somewhere in the middle is a healthy place to land.

2. FIND YOUR PEACE

I use several apps to help me with this. The Calm app provides guided and unguided meditation experiences of varying lengths with soothing music, imagery, and nature sounds. For those with a spiritual bent, there’s the Pause app produced by author John Eldredge based of his book Get Your Life Back. It leads you through one, three, five, or ten minute reflections to quiet your anxious mind and realign your perspective. A friend also recommended Rob Bell’s latest podcast where he and his wife Kristen share tools they use to navigate these troubled times. Choosing your focus also really helps (you can read my post on that here).

3. FIND YOUR MOTIVATION

While not the right time for everyone, this may be an opportunity for you to get to some long-delayed or newly discovered home projects. Scanning old photos, decluttering (see my post on that here), deep cleaning, whatever. I plan on hanging picture shelves.

4. FIND YOUR FUN

In addition to binging that show you’ve been meaning to watch, break out the board games or coloring books. Curl up with a steaming mug and a novel. Check out Google Earth or the Google Arts & Culture web site and take a virtual stroll through the world’s greatest museums, cities, and sites of interest. My wife and I have a puzzle sitting out to noodle with during breaks in our writing sessions. For 94 different ideas, check out this great list of in-home activities from Apartment Therapy.

5. FIND YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

With many of us stuck at home, this is a great time to connect with friends and family on FaceTime or a good old fashioned phone call. I recently chatted with my parents then spent an hour and a half on speaker phone with my sister over lunch. Physical isolation doesn’t have to mean relational isolation.

So which of these ideas connect with you right now? Pick one and try it today. Keep the others in your back pocket as it looks like this “new normal” is going to be around for awhile. Find your BALANCE. Find your PEACE. Find your MOTIVATION. Find your FUN. Find your RELATIONSHIPS. If you do, you’ll make it through these challenging times, and you’ll take another step toward BecomingYourself.

How to Have Healthy Relationships (part 3): Yourself

February 22, 2020 / Matt McMann / 2 Comments

Let’s start with an exercise – open your phone camera and flip the image so you can see yourself. Got it? Now ask yourself these questions: How is my relationship with the person I’m looking at? How well do I get along with myself? How do I feel about me?

Dating friends recently asked me about the keys to a healthy, long-term relationship. Since then, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learned in twenty-seven years of marriage to my wife Lisa. Beyond that, what have I learned in forty-nine years of deep connections with family and friends? To help clarify my thinking, I’ve been doing a series of blog posts here at Becoming Yourself. The first key I talked about was intentionality (read that post here), and the second was about expectations (read that post here).

The phone exercise was an introduction to this week’s key:

To have healthy relationships with OTHERS, you need a healthy relationship with YOURSELF

We know this intuitively, right? Most of us have been in or observed enough relationships to know that without positive self-worth and a clear sense of identity from both people, relationships tend to go badly. Without these anchors, an unhealthy codependancy and “clingyness” sets in. When we aren’t comfortable in our own skin, we always want a friend or our partner around because we don’t like being alone or we expect a relationship to solve our problems. While someone else can help you, bring out the best in you, and make life more fulfilling, they can’t fix you. Only you, and I would add God, can do that.

Some of this is personality driven. I’m an introvert, and I love to be alone with my own thoughts. Extroverts naturally enjoy being around other people much of the time. But regardless of your personality type, I think there’s a core issue of relationship to self that we all need to face. If we’re not okay with the person in the mirror, we’re going to have a really hard time being in healthy, long-term relationships. Why? Because the best thing you can bring to a relationship is a healthy you.

So how do you have a healthy relationship with yourself? I could recommend positive self-talk, concentrating on what you’re good at and the nice things people say about you, helping others and doing good in the world, etc.. Those are all wonderful things that will help you feel better about yourself, but I don’t think they address the core issue. When it comes to a positive relationship with yourself, I believe the most important thing is this:

IDENTITY

Who do you really think you are? If in your heart you believe you’re bad, spoiled, broken, a mistake, unworthy, stupid, or unlovable, then no amount of pep talking in the mirror is going to change that. But if deep down, you believe you’re wonderful, worthwhile, beautiful, wanted, cherished, prized, and loved, that’s going to radically impact your sense of self.

So how do you have the later view instead of the former? My best advice is to anchor your identity in something bigger than yourself that won’t move or shift or fail. For me, that’s God. I believe I was created to be in relationship with Her/Him (God is beyond gender binaries). That God desires to know me. That I’m more than a cosmic accident of time + matter + energy + chance. I build my sense of identity on a foundation that says no matter what I do or what happens in this life, I’m God’s child and always will be. That makes me feel really good about who I am, which enables me to give myself fully to others.

I know that for some of you, the God thing is a non-starter. I get it. We’ve all had different experiences and have different views on God and spirituality. That said, I think we all have the same core questions and issues to face, and one of the biggest is “Who am I?” You don’t have to base your identity on God, but you do have to base it on something. Make sure whatever you choose is big enough, strong enough, and unshakable enough to survive the storms of life. Careers, money, abilities, goals, activities, and other people are all great, but they’re also impermanent. Who will you be when they’re gone? How you choose to answer the question of identity will have a major impact on your relationship with yourself and in turn, your ability to have healthy, long-term relationships with others (for more on finding your identity, see my post here).

So how are you getting along with that person in the mirror? What do you ultimately believe about yourself? What will you choose as the foundation of your identity? Answer those questions well, and you’ll hold another key to deep, lasting relationships. And you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

This post was originally published February 23, 2019.

How to Have Healthy Relationships (part 2): Expectations

February 15, 2020 / Matt McMann / 0 Comments

I recently had some dating friends ask me what the “secret” was to my twenty-seven year marriage with my wife Lisa. Rather than give an off the cuff answer, we decided to get the four of us together to discuss it. Since then, I’ve been thinking about how I would answer that question. What are some of the keys to developing and maintaining not just a marriage, but any healthy, long-term relationship? As I shared in my last post, one key is intentionality, taking specific actions toward the goal of building the relationship.

The second relationship key I want to share is a little slipperier. Harder to pin down. Constantly moving and adjusting. Often unspoken and unrealized, even to ourselves. What is it?

EXPECTATIONS

What are expectations? They’re the assumptions we have about the way things will be. What’s going to happen. How life is going to work out. They can be good or bad, realistic or crazy. Our brains are loaded with expectations about everything from the weather, to how our career is going to develop, to how good a movie will be.

Relationships are no exception. We all have relational expectations whether we’re aware of them or not. They’re influenced by a lot of things – how we were raised, the relational experiences we’ve had, the relationships we’ve observed first hand, even what we’ve read about or seen on TV and in movies. We have built in, usually subconscious expectations of what our relationships will be or should be like.

So here’s the big problem:

UNMET EXPECTATIONS ARE THE GREATEST SOURCE OF RELATIONAL CONFLICT

Think of any problem in a relationship, and you can usually trace it back to an unmet expectation. It might be about sex, handling money, punctuality, cleanliness, work ethic, religion, child raising, communication, how you spend the weekends, you name it. We all have expectations about how those things will or should go in a marriage / dating / friendship / family / fill in the blank type of relationship. When our expectations are the same as those of our partner, things are usually smooth. When they’re not, we have problems.

So what’s the solution?

EXPECTATION MANAGEMENT

What do I mean by that? Let’s start with three ways you might be managing your relational expectations poorly:

You have UNCLEAR expectations – when you don’t even realize or acknowledge your own assumptions, biases, and desires for your relationships, you’re destined for trouble. If you’re feeling upset, frustrated, or angry about your relationship but don’t know why, try to pinpoint exactly which aspect(s) of your relationship is causing the disconnect. Think specifically about each area of your relationship (money, work, sex, time, communication, etc.) and see which ones cause a negative emotional reaction. A hidden unmet expectation is probably the source of your feelings.
You have UNREALISTIC expectations – when the expectations you have for your partner or relationship are too low or too high, you’re going to have problems. For example, if you don’t have a good sense of self-worth, you could have too low an exception of being treated with respect. Conversely, if you base your expectation of what your romance will be like based on what you see in movies, you’re probably setting a bar no relationship can reach over the long term.
You have UNSPOKEN expectations – when you don’t voice your relational expectations to your partner, they’re bound to cause trouble. You may subconsciously be expecting the other person to be a mind reader. While assuming a certain degree of sensitivity is reasonable, thinking “if they cared about me, they would just know” is usually not. When you assume the other person understands your unspoken expectations and still fails to meet them, then you assign bad motives to their behavior when in many cases they are completely unaware that they’re disappointing you.

Now let’s look at three ways you can counter those problems and manage your relational expectations well:

IDENTIFY your expectations – think through what you believe should be true, or what you desire to be true, about your relationships in various areas (money, work, sex, time, communication, etc.). If it’s not clear to you, it’s probably not clear to your partner.
BALANCE your expectations – as with most things in life, it’s all about balance. About being reasonable. As in our previous example, setting your assumptions for a romantic relationship based on what you see in the movies is probably too high, but settling for no romance at all is probably too low. This takes time to figure out and will change as you get to know your partner better. Their past, internal wiring, and their own set of relational expectations will impact what are reasonable expectations for them to be able to meet. There’s nothing wrong with setting growth goals for your relational expectations either, as long as you do number 3.
SHARE your expectations – in real estate, it’s all about “location, location, location.” In relationships, it’s all about “communication, communication, communication.” Once you’ve identified and balanced your expectations, it’s time to communicate them. Clearly. Repeatedly. Patiently. Gently. Respectfully. And remember that how you say something is just as important as what you say.

So how are you doing with managing your relational expectations? Are any of your expectations UNCLEAR, UNREALISTIC, or UNSPOKEN? Are you ready to IDENTIFY, BALANCE, and SHARE them? If you are, dive in! Put in the effort. It takes some work upfront, but the benefits are amazing and long lasting. You’ll feel the tension drain away from your relationships and enjoy a peace and closeness you never thought possible. You can do this! And if you do, you’ll take another giant step toward Becoming Yourself.

This post was originally published February 16, 2019.