Patrick Sallee finds gems of relationship wisdom in Jessica Ann’s interview with Mark Groves.
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Editor’s Note: Each week, Patrick Sallee reviews Jessica Ann’s podcast, The Art of Humanity, to share the insights with our readers.
In this week’s episode of The Art of Humanity, Jessica Ann visits with relationship expert and coach, Mark Groves. Mark shares some great insights about being true to love … which is different from the romanticized “true love” that many automatically think of.
When we think about love and relationships, we learn much of our approach from the people around us and our family. It is no wonder we see an increase in divorce from kids who were children of divorce. Many of the ways we view communication in relationships, not just romantic ones, come from the examples we grew up seeing. Groves makes a great point about how critical relationships are to our happiness and the astonishing lack of education we provide on the topic:
Learning to be in a high functioning relationship, business or personal, is the most essential skill that will determine every aspect of success of your life. At what point do we intervene from an educational standpoint and enable people to thrive?
Learning how to improve your relationships, through communication opens people up to being true to love. Fundamentally, being true to love is being honest with yourself about what you want, owning up to your feelings and sharing them …understanding that not all relationships are meant to last forever.
As men, to succeed in relationships we need to own our emotion, be assertive, and expressive of how feel and that doesn’t affect how we are as men. Unwillingness to share those feelings, even out of fear, is a waste of another person’s time and is selfish. It is refusing to allow the other person to participate in the conversation, to engage in the relationship. We have to give them the opportunity to hear what you have to say and trust they have the tools to manage, even if it stings a little.
The best takeaway from Mark was this: “If we want to exist in high functioning relationships, we want to create an environment where we can perform audits on our relationships.” He gives a great example of a couple that plans weekly discussions, over dinner and a bottle of wine to ask “what kind of partner was i this week”. It is crucial to create this as feedback, and not criticism.
To create the kinds of relationships we all hope to have, it is imperative we stay true to ourselves, do our best, stay open to feedback and create opportunities for meaningful communication.
Photo—Martin Fisch/Flickr
Patrick
That was a brave question
“what kind of partner was I this week”.