Your Relationships Are Only as Healthy as You Are

In Ephesians, Paul talks again and again about experiencing the breadth and depth of God's love and the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. 

That really is the starting point for all of us. Entrepreneurs are not the only ones that struggle with having healthy relationships. There are some entrepreneurs that are just incredible salespeople. They're so smooth with other people, but they can still have rocky relationships with the ones they care about because they're in sales mode.

We all have different ways of being entrepreneurs, and each way has its own risks of faltering on the relationship front. So when you want to build healthy relationships, it comes back to really understanding—not just with your head, but with your heart—and feeling deep in your bones and in your spirit that God loves you. 

If you were the only person on the planet to love, God would love you. That's not a new insight for me, but it's one that I continue to come back to. It's new every day. 

As you think about your life, you may find yourself saying, "Well, I know that's not the best way to do it. I feel guilty about that." But just remember that God loves you as if you're the only person on the planet to love. On the very first night of our Relationships 101, we tell the students, "There's no pop quiz, there's no midterm, there's no final. That's because this is a pass/fail course." 

We tell them on that very first night, "We want you to write down one single sentence. It doesn’t matter if you take any notes the rest of the semester. At least write down this single sentence." And we tell them that this sentence will revolutionize their relationships. 

Here it is: "If you try to build intimacy with another before you have gotten whole on your own, all your relationships become an attempt to complete yourself."

If you try to build intimacy or a connection with another person before you've done the difficult work of getting healthy—getting whole on your own—all your relationships become an attempt to complete yourself. 

The idea that “you complete me” is such a misnomer! It sounds great. It's a romantic thing to say. But if you really buy into that idea—that this person can complete you—you're setting yourself up for serious heartache. Nobody can complete you because ultimately your compulsion for completion is met in your relationship with your Heavenly Father, not with this other person. 

Sure, they may help you on the path to wholeness, but it's not their job. So many of us get frustrated in a marriage relationship because we think this person is supposed to complete us. And so we lean on each other, and it looks romantic at the beginning, but then we start to pound down on each other. "Hey, I thought you were so and so." Or, "If you were a good husband or a good wife, you would do this for me." 

What I'm passionate about that these days is helping people really get healthy themselves because this was a big "aha" for me. Your relationships can only be as healthy as you are.

This is the most important thing you'll ever do for your relationships -- whether it's your marriage, or your colleagues at work, or the people on the church board that you serve with, or even a stranger. The most important thing you will ever do in your relationships is to work on who you are in the context of them.

And like I said, for me, that begins with standing firm on how incredible God's love for us is!

Les Parrott

Les Parrott III, Ph.D., is founder of RealRelationships.com and a Professor of Psychology at Seattle Pacific University. He is also co-creator, with his wife Leslie, of eHarmony Marriage.