“That’s now how relationships work,” an advisor slid into our conversation. The phrase hit me like a fat kid on a waterless slip-and-slide so the conversation came to a screeching halt.

“Then how do they work?” I wondered out loud. 

She didn’t respond.  

It bothered me when she didn’t respond. I wanted an answer. Some questions, she reminds me, are to be steeped before they’re answered.  This must be one of them. 

I couldn’t shake the question.  

    HOW do relationships work? 

    How DO relationships work?     

    How do RELATIONSHIPS work? 

    How do relationships WORK? 

I thought about good ones and bad ones and lop-sided ones and legally supervised ones and ones that once were.  I thought about relationships for life and relationships that were supposed to be for life. 

Tomes have been written about relationships because they’re really important and really hard. We are relational people at our core.  I’m still not sure I have an answer to her question, but here’s what I observed in healthy, mutual, life-giving relationships.  Clearly, relationships exist that are less than healthy or are defined by a formal power dynamic.  Tolerating those has its place, but that’s for another discussion.  

Relationships are messy - living in relationship is messy — often literally.  My house looks like four children live here because they do.  It’s a cost we pay for choosing an active life.  I remember going to visit this old lady as a kid and she had a plastic cover on her couch.  Nothing screams ‘keep your visit short’ like having the back of a child’s legs sizzle like bacon on a summer afternoon, afraid to lean back for fear of touching the untouchable decorative pillow.  There will be physical mess after a good meal, especially if that meal is cooked together.  Living in relationship can be interpersonally messy — as individuals become more comfortable with one another, the moment of pause to carefully assess the impact of what may be said shortens and words are said that require cleanup.   

Relationships are reciprocal — relationships are give and give.  Phones work both ways. Email is as free to generate as it is to respond. 

Relationships are giving - relationships are checking on people for the sake of checking on people.  Calling after six months or two years because you need something is not a relationship — it’s an ATM.  

Relationships are forgiving - relationships hurt.  Words are said.  Birthdays are forgotten. Haircuts go unnoticed.  Relationships hurt and real relationships forgive, giving the benefit of the doubt, pausing to question, honoring the heart before the act.  The hurt is real and so is the effort to mend it. 

Relationships are regular - relationships of any consequence happen with some regularity.  Annual events are reunions and will build some level of connection if built every year, yet to know someone is to know the pains of the news from the doctor, the wins of that client success, good grades and flat tires.  It’s in the time between reunions that the details of life provide depth to the stories. 

Relationships are courageous - relationships require heart. Relationships are built on the courage to step in and say ‘can we talk?’ or ’the story I’m telling myself about what you said is…’ Courage is going to dinner with her friends knowing her husband will bad mouth your company or, heaven forbid, wearing Tech gear to the State/Tech game this year because her Dad’s a fan.  

Relationships act on mutual respect - Relationships are mutually respectful.  My job is to be her biggest fan, reminding her of the best of her. Relationships do not badmouth or demean or disrespect — in private or in public.  

Relationships are dynamic — people change. It’s a fact of aging. Continuing to check-in on where people are and how their orientation has shifted since last you connected is the continual dance of growing.  

Relationships — healthy, life giving relationships — are complex and dynamic and fantastic.  Healthy relationships can weather almost any storm, yet each requires work. A lot of it.  Seems a bit much, doesn’t it?  Not all relationships are worth the effort, frankly.  But the ones worth working for are tremendous.