Relationships with

Parents, Relatives and Friends

Blood may be thicker than water but does it justify pressures and frictions that afflict many families? There is much to learn about this neglected area.

While we can’t choose our relatives, we can supposedly choose our friends and those people we associate with for business and social purposes. But are we choosing wisely?

How do we judge if a friendship or association is good for us or for the other party? If we decide to lose some so-called friends, how do we make new ones?

In this Learning Area we help you assess the value of your current relationships (other than your own immediate family i.e. partner and children). We discuss what is friendship and how does it differ from the relationship we have with a life partner or spouse.

We will look at other levels of personal association such as work colleagues and acquaintances. Both of these can have downsides if not handled well.

We also look at ways in which friendship can benefit us and how to evaluate it. We will consider the controversial subject of so-called ‘toxic friends’ who definitely do not benefit us. We look at how to identify them and how to handle them.

We can also review our family relationships to see if any of these are detrimental to our well-being. We can then work out a strategy for handling these in a way which does not give unnecessary offence but grants us the breathing space to be ourselves.

If as a result of these activities we find that we have fewer friendships than we want, then we can look at ways of obtaining more and better friendships which give real benefit to us and to the other person.

What is the difference between having a web or a network of relationships?

Whether we recognise it or not, we all have a large number of people with whom we have ongoing relationships. We may think we have too few friends or too many relatives, or the other way round! In this article we examine the quality of these relationships and how they may develop through our lives.