How to Nurture Relationships (Sandra Auer)

Are you developing healthy relationships?  Not only that, but are you also nurturing those relationships developed?

Welcome to another edition of MemCare by Radio.  I’m Scott Hollinger and I’d like to thank you for taking time out of your busy day to spend a few minutes with us.  One of my big challenges, when I started working overseas, was developing significant relationships.  According to our guest today, establishing a healthy relationship can be problematic for many, whether you’re shy or you’re very outgoing.

Sandra Auer, of Campus Crusade, is back with us and she’s going to share some advice on developing and nurturing healthy relationships.

This interview was recorded through the internet.

Sandra, I think most of us realize the importance of healthy relationships.  Is developing or sustaining healthy relationships among Christian workers more difficult today than in previous generations?

That’s a tough question.  I’m not sure that it’s any more of a problem these days than it has been.  I suppose it could be, in that we are perhaps less of a relational society in general.  We are connected up through electronics a lot more than we are face-to-face, perhaps, these days.  I think, though, that relationships have always taken time and cost us something.  There’s not really a relational payback without a significant investment on the part of both parties.  I think those of us who are married know that just by what occurred perhaps in our courtship and now after some years of intense living together.  Relationships always take time on the part of both parties.

When you say that, I think that can be a situation where trouble can occur – a good, healthy relationship takes time and yet in today’s world it seems as though many of us think that a good relationship ought to happen overnight.

‘It ought to be effortless’.  Well, it does in the movies, typically.  On sitcoms it’s always very quick but in fact, it takes time for us to drop our guard and be really honest with one another.  It takes time for us to get past just the social frivolities.  It’s easy to enjoy a movie with someone and then go home.  It’s harder to have a conversation about the movie and refer to the real life events in relation to that movie and to one another.  To hear someone else’s life events is even harder perhaps.

When you say that, Sandra, it makes me think.  I even cringe when I think about it.  When I was in high school, wanting to ask a girl out on a date - what’s the easy thing for a guy to do?  They ask them out to a movie and yet I’ve told my sons – ‘Look – don’t make the same mistakes that your dad made.  If you’re going to take a girl out, you often want to get to know her.  Don’t take her to a movie.  Go and eat at a nice restaurant.  Go to a park out walking.  Do something that requires that the two of you talk with each other’.  So what you’re telling me is, I guess, that maybe I’m sort of on track with that.  It takes time, conversation and commitment to get involved in good, healthy relationship with the person.

Right.  It does.  I think often we are very eager to tell our own tale or we’re eager to have a listener for the things that we’re animated about, interested in, maybe a little more than we are ready to be quiet and listen to the other person.  I think Americans are always in a big hurry to hear the other person’s story.  We really want them to tell it quickly.  If they seem to be slow in telling their story, we’ll help by interrupting with direct questions that have to do with things we really want to know.  In fact, a friendship would be much better established if we listened long enough to find out what it is that person wants us to know about them.

That’s a good point and I’m glad to hear that, Sandra, because I know that being in a blended marriage like I am, in our relationship my wife does not tell stories quickly.  She does not relate the events of the day quickly and so I’ve had to really learn to listen and not, as you’ve said, break in and say ‘Well, let’s cut right to the heart of the matter’.  That’s still a very big struggle.  It may be because I’m a man, but I’m sure part of it is my culture as well, saying, ‘Come on, let’s get past all this stuff’.  Well, it’s important to my wife that we go through that stuff first.  So what you’re saying is we need to listen.

Often, too, I wonder if your wife is just checking to see how committed you are to listening, if some of those things that don’t seem so relevant are a way of checking your commitment.  Not that you would do that, you know.  Thinking about that, perhaps we all do it in some less thoughtful way.

You’ve established that we need to listen whenever we’re getting involved in a healthy relationship and developing a healthy relationship.  What are some other steps that people need to take or things that they should be doing when it comes to creating a healthy, good relationship?

Well I think honesty is a really big piece, being an authentic person.  That doesn’t mean you need to tell your deepest, darkest secrets the third time you’re together or something.  In fact, you may never speak of those.  That’s why they’re secrets.  I would hope the parts that you do show of yourself to that other person are real and that you aren’t sort of hiding behind a thick screen that kind of protects you in every way.  That’s how we find out who those people are who we will enjoy being with.  If we don’t really see them as they really are initially, to some extent, we won’t have a clue as to where we fit.  I think of us as Velcro.  The one person has the hooks and the other has the loops and we don’t know where those are.  I love books but I don’t know who those people are who also love books until I listen and find out what sorts of things appeal to them.  What sort of books do you like?  If they’re big history buffs we still may have trouble hooking up on books because that isn’t my zone particularly.  It’s a process, isn’t it?  It’s really a process.

When it comes to healthy relationships, and we’re talking about developing them…once we develop that healthy relationship with another person, how does this healthy relationship protect us?  You had mentioned that and I was kind of curious as to what you meant by that.

I think a healthy relationship means that we have the possibility of having someone to lean on or to lean toward when hard things happen in our lives.  When we are tempted to just walk away and take care of ourselves in some other way, if we have healthy friendships we may go to another person and say, ‘I’m just really feeling bad.  Would you pray with me?  Would you pray for me?  What do you know about a teenager misbehaving in a big way?  How can you help me know better how to deal with my 4 year old because I’m just acting out in anger way too much at times’.  We get isolated with those parts of ourselves that are not so pretty when if we had friendships we might get information and we would have support to do things in a different way.

How do we nurture those healthy relationships?  What are some things that we can do?  You’ve touched on them a little bit, but perhaps some more ideas?

Well, it’s going to mean giving.  It’s going to mean giving up some time that you might prefer to spend lying in the sun or working in your garden just for the therapy of it all.  You’re going to need to say ‘Ok, Friday, Saturday or Sunday I’m going to plan to spend 2 or 3 hours with a friend not because I particularly feel the need for it but because I know that friendships are good for me and they feed me whether I’m conscious of needing that or not’.

Yes, I think of one friend that I have and he’s the kind of person I feel I can tell anything to, it’s not going to surprise him and he’s also not going to go out and tell anybody what I just said to him.  There are times, though, when we enjoy listening to music together.  We have a love for music of all kinds and we can sit there, we can listen to a piece, we can discuss it, but we just enjoy doing that kind of thing together.  It’s different than the kind of outdoorsy kinds of things or other things that I do with my wife.  It doesn’t mean I love my wife any less or want to see her any less, but there is that other relationship that I have that’s just great.  He’s a good friend and we enjoy doing those kinds of things together.

That’s a great illustration of flexing with the person.  Our script is different based on who the other person is and what they enjoy and where we connect.

Well that’s good for me to hear.  Another friend that I have, we put down my floor.  We put down a wood floor.  He’s the kind of guy that loves to do that.  I’m not so good at it, but I’m not bad, so that was a way we really connected as we put down a wood floor in my house.

Wouldn’t we all like to have a friend like that?

Yes!  Well I guess as we wrap up this conversation, we’ve talked a lot about this and one of the things that I’m wondering about, too, is that we’ve talked about positive things, but isn’t it true when people go through difficult things together as well that that can be a bonding experience and provide a healthy relationship?

Yes, of course that’s very true.  You may even go through those difficult experiences at different times but it may link you in a way that is new, deeper and novel to the way you’ve related prior to those experiences.  Going through dark times with a friend who you can call or who calls you…in fact I was just recently with a young woman who’s suffering from extensive cancer which threatens her greatly.  She has a friend who calls her daily and has done so for a year.  That was astounding to me.  I can’t imagine phoning someone daily for a year, any person.  But, because that individual is so faithful in doing that, their calls are very short.  They don’t need to be long because she knows what’s happening with my friend.  She doesn’t need a big report, she just checks in and their friendship is very significant.

I would like to thank Sandra Auer for sharing her insights into the importance of developing and nurturing healthy relationships with those around us.  It’s nice to know when you’re on track, isn’t it, and it’s even better to hear ways that you can maintain and develop better relationships.