5 Crucial Factors for Your Relationship to Survive

Our relationships are the very foundations that make our lives meaningful.

If our relationships are healthy, we can survive even the toughest problems that come our way. Aside from being a shelter to protect us from the outside world, they’re also a source of our happiness, peace and hope.

What are the most significant factors we should be aware of in making our relationships work? Do we take the time to grow and help each other strengthen the relationships that matter most to us?

Here are 5 of the most crucial factors we need for our relationships to survive:

1. Respect

To respect another person is to give due value to one’s dignity and importance. Without respect, our relationships would crumble and die.

“Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Respect may be hard to define. But lack of respect is something we’d notice easily.

It’s the harsh word that pierces through your heart and seems to judge your whole being. It’s the physical violence that comes from the very person who should have protected you. It’s being set aside and excluded because you were deemed unworthy by the person who should have trusted you.

“Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?” — Confucius

To be respected is to be treated as a human being. It is to feel safe to be yourself because you know that you will be appreciated and valued for who you are. Even if you make mistakes, the other person will still see the best of you, the best you can become.

“When we love and respect people, revealing to them their value, they can begin to come out from behind the walls that protect them.” — Jean Vanier

2. Forgiveness

No relationship can survive without forgiveness. Even the best among us would make mistakes one way or the other. We’d hurt other people and we’d get hurt by the ones we love. If we can’t find it in our hearts to forgive each other, what would happen to our relationships?

“He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven; for everyone has need to be forgiven.” — George Herbert

Only through forgiveness can we find healing. Through forgiveness, we learn to let go of the hurt that continues to consume our hearts. Through forgiveness, we learn to let go of the past. We can start to move on and become even better than before.

3. Communication

Communication is the key to understanding. It is also the key to intimacy. Through it, we can convey our thoughts and feelings better.

Isn’t this what a relationship consists of? To have someone who will listen to us and make us feel less alone. To have that person who values our perspective in life and respects us enough to hear our thoughts even if they may be different from one’s own.

“Honest communication is built on truth and integrity and upon respect of the one for the other.” — Benjamin E. Mays

While it may not be easy to adjust our communication style to fit the other person’s, we must strive to at least reach a point where we can meet and understand the other.

“The first duty of love is to listen.” — Paul Tillich

4. Commitment

Every relationship requires commitment. Through commitment, we resolve to do our best to make things work and to endure even the difficult times that come.

Where there is no commitment, there is no true love.

“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

5. Love

People talk about love all the time. But do we still know the true meaning of love?

Love is not just about our fleeting emotions. Love is not only the fun and excitement we experience when we first get to know the person. While love may bring us happiness, love does not need to fade in times of grief or sorrow. Because love is beyond all that.

When we say that we love another person, we consider the good of that person. We want the best for him or for her.

Love takes away our selfishness because it takes us away from looking only at our own needs and wants. We learn to look at the other person’s needs. We strive to grow with them and we’re happy to see them become the best of who they are.

“Love is active, sincere, affectionate, pleasant and amiable; courageous, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, manly, and never seeking itself. For in whatever instance a person seeks himself, there he falls from Love.” — Thomas Kempis

Final Words

It’s not easy to make a relationship work. Even if we find the best people, we can’t avoid times of difficulty that would challenge the way we look at our relationships. But we can use those times to grow as a person, and to grow in our capacity to love.

To love is to be more human than we think we could ever be. It is to empty ourselves of false illusions while embracing reality with hope and courage.

Let us be aware of these 5 crucial factors that can help make our relationships survive. May they guide us to be less selfish and more compassionate. May they show us the path to a more meaningful life with the people that we care about the most.

Jocelyn Soriano is the author of Mend My Broken Heart, 366 Days of Compassion and Beloved.

Mend My Broken Heart

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“No matter how much we want to, there is no magic formula in healing a broken heart. There is no time-frame also. What we need is to know that our suffering is not meaningless, that the love we have given was never wasted, and that somewhere beyond all our pain, there is hope, hope that could help us endure the hurt we’re going through.”

Get the book from Amazon today — click here