Relationship Bridges

Experiencing a long-lasting friendship can be incredible. It feels great having someone in our corner, especially when we’re confident they’ll be there forever. It can be a beautiful experience to fall in love and explore life with someone.

Sometimes it is not so wonderful. Some people don’t want to be a part of the construction crew to build something new. They are content with jumping over the wall and doing as they please. Others are life-long friends who we accidentally cast a blind eye toward, by allowing them to treat us in ways we would never tolerate with new friends.

The key to all relationships is to build relationship bridges from someone else’s palace wall to ours. We can invite them into our palace as a guest, but they can’t stay. Each time we meet they must cross the bridge and obey the road signs. If they break the rules their entry must be denied.

The rules our significant other follows are much different than those we’ve set with our mother, father, or friend. Every bridge requires upkeep and understanding and must be built from a foundation of empathy, humility, and respect. Everyone in the world is an island and these bridges connect us. The stronger we build and upkeep them the less likely they are to crumble or burn.

In relationships we must maintain a vigilant eye on all the moving parts. Our primary focus should be our palace, because the most important relationship we have is with ourselves. Are we doing everything we can to live the highest quality of life, are we chasing our dreams, are we living our purpose, and are we taking care of our body? If we lack a solid foundation our relationship bridges will not have the structural integrity to support the weight of another person’s load.

In every moment is an opportunity to learn something new. Every day is a class that teaches us how to use a new tool, because life is a school. But the courses are crazy, and the teachers are mute, the quizzes are cryptic, and we aren’t given any clues. It is a strange program that is messy and amazing, and equally filled with facts and untruths. We are career students pursuing an education in the field of existence, and the only way to graduate with honors is by living with love and offering the goodness of truth.

As explorers of our own existence, we must actively engage our Incorporeal Union and our emotional creatures. We must know where all of our dark parts are and how they influence our actions. We must search for how we can be hurt, and how we often hurt others.

We must know that relationships of value must be constructed on a strong and stable foundation. We must feel safe enough to explore interesting and uncomfortable ideas. We have to feel like we are heard, and our partner is capable of holding space. We have to know that if there is a problem, we can say what we need to say, without it ruining the entire day.

This is important because weak friendships have no future. If the foundation of our romantic and platonic relationships is flimsy and weak, how can we expect them to be in our corner when we need them most? How can we expect them to give us the scoobie snacks we need eat, when we are hurting and hungry? Meaningful friendships must have a solid and strong foundation of empathy, humility, and respect. A home built upon the foundation of eggshells will eventually collapse, so our vetting process with others must be equally intense and relaxed. To vet someone we must interact with them in a way that is fair, honest, and fun while enforcing our boundaries, so we are not chewed up like chewing gum.

In the path of life, we sometimes encounter people who escape definition, they seem so monstrous our ability to empathize fails, and once again we feel lost. This kind of creature swims through the waters of life like a hungry shark hunting wayward spirits. Sometimes they sink their teeth into anyone they can bite, but most seek to eat a special kind of treat. The worst monsters we can meet prowl the most vulnerable and desperate. They take the bad and boil it down until their victim’s experience only a hellish frown. They lie, cheat, steal and destroy for their own pleasure, often with little gain. They slice and stab their victim’s skin with their razor-sharp teeth, while smiling with a sadistic grin. These boundary breakers find their way to our lives, pick and pluck like a buzzard’s beak seeking to peck away our ability to see.

When we encounter these kinds of people we need to step into our strong spaces, while offering empathy and remaining humble. We must defend ourselves, but we must also refrain from destroying our boundaries breakers in the process.

Typically, when we meet these people their true colors are discovered as we get to know them. Sometimes it takes considerable time to see past their masks to witness their true face behind the veil. In these instances, I suggest resisting the urge to burn the bridge, but if it is the only way to protect ourselves, then we must do whatever it takes to enforce our boundaries.

Sitting beside my friend Ernest we chatted the lazy morning away. We were in old town Saint Charles enjoying a delicious coffee. Little birds scurried along begging for breadcrumbs, and golden rays slipped through the fluffy blankets of clouds, creating kaleidoscope lightshows in the street. Beside me was Ernest, he had a lean build halfway between a runner and a weekend warrior. His intensely bored eyes stared into the distance. He was tense and taut as a bow.

“What did you think about the book I suggested?” He asked.

Watching the steam rise from my cup of coffee I placed my hand over the delightful heat of the freshly brewed deliciousness. Raising my eyes to his. “Oh yeah, the Mind over Matter, You Are the Placebo book? It was boring with very little substance.”

Crossing his arms, Ernest’s face reddened as his brow furrowed.

I took a deep breath and continued speaking. “It was like four-hundred pages of pseudoscience garbage. I get what the intent of the book is, but it’s the kind of message that can lead seriously ill people astray.”

Ernest shifted in his seat, his body movements sharpened, and began to speak. “I can’t fucking stand people like you. How can you just discount and dismiss what you read?” His words boiled with anger.

My eyebrow raised, I assumed he took my review as a criticism of him. I was kind of weirded out by his reaction. To ease the discomfort of the scene I raised the mug to my lips and took a sip; it was my favorite, highlander grog. Thankfully it had cooled enough for me to enjoy its exquisite flavor. I looked at him, then back at the birds and the dark river in the distance. It took a few minutes of silence for his agitation to subside. As the air cleared his grimace lowered and his arms uncrossed.

“You know I could’ve charged you when we first met?” He said with a stern face. “But I value our time too much, so I didn’t…” Slowly he twisted his face into a half smile. “…and I know you need our meetings.”

I shrugged and took a sip of my coffee. “I wouldn’t have hired you, so it wouldn’t have mattered.” His half smile curled into a full fake smile. Watching his reaction, I continued. “I’m sorry… I don’t pay for advice, or for people to be my friend.” I said holding my hands on the sides of my warm mug.

A few moments passed. Ernest stretched out his leg and sat back in his chair. The pallor of his face started to redden again as he pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes. “So, what’s up, how are things?”

“Eh, pretty rough, recovering from chemotherapy has been slow and hard.”

He stared off into space then back at me. “You know, the only reason you haven’t recovered is because you choose to stay sick, right?”

“Excuse me?” I could feel a warm anger in my stomach.

“You’re choosing to be sick. As soon as you want to get better you will.” He paused for a moment. “That’s what Joe Dispenza is talking about right? This is all mind over matter.”

“That’s not how it works, that’s not how chemotherapy or cancer works.” I was getting angry, but I was doing my best to remain calm.

“That is how it works; if you tell your cells what to do they heal. If you choose to be sick, you stay sick. You have chosen to stay sick. Right? It is your decision; all of this is your decision. You’ve chosen to stay sick, just like you chose to get cancer.” His tone grated on my soul, like being stabbed by the splintered uneven edge of a broken spear.

My blood began to boil. How could he believe this garbage? No one chooses to get cancer; no one wants to be sick.

He continued to explain. “I only get sick when I want to. I’ve been telling my wife and daughter this a long time. To prove it I told my wife I was choosing to get sick, and I got sick. She used to have headaches all the time, now I’ve taught her how to choose not to have them, she doesn’t get them anymore. My daughter doesn’t listen though; she’s stuck like you and won’t accept she is in control of her health.” Ernest’s smile and eyes became wide for a moment before continuing. “You are the placebo, if you want it hard enough, you can have anything you want.” He paused for a moment and looked at his phone. “I have an appointment, give me a hug brother, I’ll see you next week.”

To have a relationship with someone we must build a bridge from our palace to theirs. It requires upkeep and understanding built from a foundation of empathy, humility and respect. That day he was in the business of setting fires. There are certain things we don’t burn, just like there are certain things we don’t say. It felt like he was in the mood to set my palace on fire, so I turned him toward the bridge. He started by melting and discarding all his understanding, then set flame to empathy, and at the very end once the bridge began to crumble my respect for him was gone. I could have stopped the conversation, told him how offensive his statements were, but why put out a flame when the arsonist is just going to set it ablaze again?

I am not a fan of creating a friendship space where others have to walk on eggshells. I prefer creating a place for people to speak their mind, to share their feelings, and connect. If the conversation were simply discussing a difference of opinion, even if it were heated I would have been cool with it. Growth after all does not occur within an echo chamber. We need outside exposure to elements we do not normally encounter to evaluate our ideas, opinions, and beliefs.

The core of the problem was he was using me. I was in an interesting spot in life, and he was just starting his life coaching career. He visited with me, I believe, with the intention of using me to have his own really powerful success story. When you believe in the mind over matter concept to the degree that he does, having me in his testimonial database would have been a wonderful marketing resource. Of course, I can’t prove this, but what I can prove is that we never had a real friendship in the first place. As he said, he could have been charging me for the time we were spending together. Friends don’t say that to each other.

If I did want a life coach during that phase of my life it would not have been with him. I would have selected someone with more life experience, someone who knew what it was like to taste the barrel of death, and possessed a greater internal harmony than I. He did not possess any of these traits and as a consequence I would never have hired him for his services.

Whenever we enter a relationship, we are introduced to a series of unspoken rules. These are social contracts created from invisible hand handshakes that set the tone and pace for our budding bond. It would be great if we could assume each participant had the intent of developing a mutually beneficial, honest, and loving relationship, but we must have our guard up to some degree to protect ourselves from malicious ulterior motives. Sometimes people want us in their lives so they can eat us, and though this is not always true, it occurs enough that it is a real threat.

The key is to have tall enough walls that we can prevent people from walking right into our palace, but not so high that they can’t peek in. If others can’t figure out a way to bridge the gap between us and them, they won’t ever attempt to forge a connection. This applies equally to how we broadcast our energy in life and when we speak to people we want to have in our social circles.

Click Below to Read Part 2