Want to fix a relationship that’s not going so well?
The problem is in one of four areas. You or your partner don’t feel;
- safe
- seen
- supported
- or satisfied in the relationship
When we are judging the quality of a relationship, we look at these four pillars.
We want to feel safe, we want to feel that we can say what we wanna say, share it without it being used against us.
The second is we want to feel seen. We want to feel that there’s something about us that you see that you understand, and you accept.
The third is we want to feel supported. We want to feel that you’ve got our back. We are a team. You are with us on this journey.
Fourth one is we want to feel satisfied. We wanna feel raised up by being around you. We want to feel that we gained something from being with you.
Let’s look at these four areas…
Feeling Safe
Google spent four years on Project Aristotle.
It was a deep dive research into what made some teams more successful than others. To find what are the ingredients for a successful team. The authors the makethought it was be about the makeup of the team.
What they actually found was that was irrelevant.
It was more about how people treated each other within the team. That you could share an idea with that being humiliated or ridiculed. That you could challenge without punishment.
The biggest key in any relationship is feeling safe.
The foundation of all relationships is that we feel safe. Deep down every human seeks to be accepted as themselves. The relationship has to meet this need.
Feeling Seen
The old Zen proverb says if a tree falls in the middle of a forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?
A sound is made up of two parts. The noise and the receiver of someone who hears it. So actually a tree without anyone around doesn’t make a sound.
In the same way the three core human needs are to belong, to have status and to matter.
They can only occur in relationship. And so if no one sees us, there’s a part of our human experience that never reaches its potential. So a core pillar of relationship is to be seen.
Feeling Supported
Humans are fragile.
We don’t have great strength. We are not like a tortoise that we have this protective shell. Our strength comes from cooperation.
It comes from the ability to work together.
One of the core pillars of human relationships is the need to be supported. Whether it’s couples, or colleagues, what we want from each other is to feel that someone’s got our back. That we’re in it together.
We are a team.
Feeling Supported
People think relationships work differently than everything else.
People think there is a different set of criteria to relationships. We don’t like to think of relationships being transactional. Yet actually everything that we do, we do for a reason and there’s a reason that we have relationships.
Because when that motive isn’t met, we leave relationships.
If it’s a romantic relationship, we want love. If it’s a friendship, we want someone that we like being around that we trust and we feel good around. If it’s a work relationships, we want someone we can work with who is competent and trustworthy.
There’s always something that we are looking to gain from a relationship.
What maintains a relationship is that we feel satisfied in it. So if we want the relationship to last, we want to make sure it works for us both. Knowing what need the other wants satisfied is key to our success in the relationship.
