The 7 Essential Ingredients
From my own personal experience, as well as extensive research into the areas of human psychology, sociology, emotions, interactions and sexuality, I have determined that there are seven fundamental ingredients needed to provide a stable foundation for a successful relationship. This is not to say, however, that more is not necessary, or that it may not differ from one relationship to another. Yet, generally, from what I’ve observed, these seven – at least – are essential if we wish to have a functional and long-lasting relationship. And this applies to us all – both females and males.
Communication – Communication is listed first for a very important reason: in order to even make contact with another, we must communicate our intentions. Eye contact and body language help, but because most people ignore their intuition and hence, are unable to understand and translate what they’re seeing, they often miss important clues that might tell them various things about another individual. So while communication does include eye contact and body language, the communication referred to in this instance is verbal communication. Without talking and communicating our thoughts, feelings and ideas to another, few relationships succeed.
Still, although it is necessary to communicate our thoughts and intentions in order to open a dialogue, doing so also requires truthfulness.
Honesty – For various reasons, honesty is one of the most difficult aspects of human inter-relatedness to achieve. One reason for this is because most of us want to be accepted by others. Consequently, we’re often hesitant to say what we think for fear of losing the other person’s support or acceptance, or because we don’t wish to hurt his or her feelings. Then too, sometimes, we are less than honest because we wish to protect ourselves from some (often mis-) perceived discomfort, fear or danger. But what does it mean to be honest?
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary* states that honesty is ‘fairness and straight-forwardness of conduct,’ ‘adherence to the facts,’ ‘sincerity.’ When we are straightforward and sincere in our speech and actions towards another, the chances are that that person will respond to this in a positive rather than a negative way – even if what we have to say is not necessarily what the other person wishes to hear.
Conversely, when we are not honest, we are not only doing a disservice to others, but we also run the risk of creating more long-term – and in many cases, severe – issues for ourselves. These issues can be anything from hurt feelings when the truth does come to light (as it often tends to do eventually), to bad marriages and violent behavior in work- and other socially-related situations because we just didn’t know how to say what we really meant (see my article, “I Love You”: How Three Little Words Can Cause so much Pain and How to Turn that Pain into Ecstasy).
Therefore, being honest is an absolutely essential ingredient in a successful relationship.
Trust – ‘Trust’ has many meanings. In this context it means to ‘believe; hope; depend; to have confidence in; to do something without fear or misgiving; to rely on the truthfulness or accuracy of,’ etc. This, as many of us are well aware, is not always easy to do. Further, if there are issues in our past, trust can be a difficult thing to attain; especially where another person with whose character we are not familiar is concerned.
Yet, if we wish to achieve a successful relationship we must learn to extend others the proverbial ‘benefit-of-the-doubt,’ and trust them to do what they say they’re going to do, or to entrust them with our feelings, and sometimes, even our lives. Learning to do so allows us to attain a level of connectedness in our relationships that would not be present without the ability to trust.
Empathy – is “…the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings [, and] thoughts … of another … without having the feelings, thoughts and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner…”
Etymologically, ‘empathy’ comes from the Greek empatheia, which literally means to be passionate, to experience the feelings and emotions of another. Or to put it more directly: to experience empathy for another, we must place ourselves in that other person’s figurative shoes and understand or attempt to perceive how she or he might feel in any given situation and/or circumstance. In still other words, empathy requires making the effort to understand the thoughts and feelings of another.
What I and many others have found is that, when we make that effort to empathize with another’s thoughts and feelings, and reflect that understanding back to the individual, we are far more likely to lay a solid foundation for a successful relationship. As Stephen R. Covey, empowerment guru and author of the legendary book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People said, “Seek first to understand, before you seek to be understood.”
Think about that for a moment: what does it truly mean to understand another? It means that we must perceive as others’ perceive, or to see an event, situation or person as another perceives that same event, situation or person. Once we perceive as another perceives and act on that perception, we are far more likely to be successful in our relationship with that individual because they will see that we are making the effort to make the relationship work.
Compromise – Aside from honesty, compromise is probably one of the next most difficult things to attain. Compromise requires accepting the fact that we all have needs, wants and desires and that we all can’t always have what we want, need or desire at any one given moment in time. Therefore, to make the relationship work, we must be willing to concede our position up to a point in order to allow the other individual to experience some degree of satisfaction in the process.
One caution here, however: this does not mean that we should become doormats by totally giving in to another’s wants or desires at the expense of our own. If not handled wisely, co-dependence (which is an issue unto itself and beyond the scope of this article) can result and can create additional issues better suited for a behavioral health specialist.
The goal here is to aim for a win-win situation so that everyone can have as much of what they want, need and desire without manipulating, controlling or harming others.
Compassion – Compassion is ‘sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it.’ As with the other essential ingredients, being compassionate is much easier said than done. To truly feel compassion for another requires empathizing with that individual and feeling what they feel. I would go one step further, however, and say that compassion is the act that follows the thought which is begun after we empathize with another.
Applying compassion in relationships requires that we not only understand how the other person feels (empathy), but act on that understanding by following through. In other words, verbal or sometimes physical action is required to demonstrate compassion.
Love – Love is, among other things: “strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties; warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion …” etc. If we lack love, we won’t care one way or another how the other person feels. This holds true for all types of relationships.
Finally, in order to make these 7 essential ingredients work for you in any type of relationship endeavor on which you choose to embark, it is necessary to be balanced. Balance or moderation is paramount in anything we do; but most especially in our interactions with each other. The more balanced our relationships are, the more pleasant they will be. The more pleasant they are, the happier we will be and the longer those relationships will last.
In fact, once more of us practice moderation in our lives and in our relationships with others, the sooner hatred, enmity and war will be a thing of the past.
