Healthy Relationships Support Group

I found this article on an on-line article site on the internet, I thought you may find it interesting.

The following story gives a metaphor for the difference between heaven and hell.

'One night a man had a dream where god came to him and said he would show him hell and heaven.

First he was taken to hell and was surprised to see a huge banquet table piled high with the most delicious food.

The man was surprised and exclaimed "how can this be hell?" and god said look around you and the man saw that the people were starving.

He said "how can this be?" and god replied they must eat with 6 foot chopsticks.

Next god took the man up to heaven and he was faced with a similar banquet table but this time the people were happy and well fed.

The man said "I get it, no 6 foot chopsticks" and god replied "they also have 6 foot chop sticks but here they feed each other."'

I love this metaphor because it indicates that the real difference between heaven and hell is one of attitude specifically the disposition of people to be kind to one another. We can also quickly see that when applied to civilization, we could have heaven on earth tomorrow if only people would work together for the common good.

The basic building blocks of civilization are the relationships between individual people, the strongest bond being the intimate relationship formed between two consenting adults.

I believe that the six foot chopsticks provide a good metaphor for the tools necessary for building a healthy relationship and these tools apply across the whole sphere of the intimate relationship, including:

Passion and romance

Love and acceptance

Faith and honesty

Sex and intimacy

Talking freely openly

Expression of feelings

Empathy and compassion

Shared parenting

And just as feeding each other with six foot chopsticks would take a large amount of practice and a number of mistakes will be made along the way.

The problem for most of us is that as a result of our far from perfect childhoods, we have feelings of inadequacy and shame about our lack of expertise when it comes to using the tools of healthy relationships and as a result of this will often try to avoid embarrassing ourselves.

Thus often when confronted with the needs of our partner we may become defensive and try to avoid aspects of our relationship or look for excuses to not participate fully. In the same way we will also may be reluctant to make our needs known to our partner in order that they may not make demands on ourselves in return.

One casualty of this reluctance to participate fully in the relationship may be talking openly where we may find it hard to talk about our personal problems like shyness, indecisiveness and some of our fears. As a result of these fears we may end up filling our alone time talking about trivialities like the weather, the latest episode of a soap opera or the latest scandals from Hollywood.

Another casualty may be a fulfilling sex life where in our ignorance about the others likes and dislikes we may just settle for workmanlike missionary position which may be shorter and less intense than either party would really like. Whereas in the case of a healthy relationship the couple would learn to know each other through extended foreplay and s frank discussion of sexual likes and dislikes.

This lack of knowledge of how to bond properly in all areas of the relationship and the lack of will to find out through making mistakes is what can turn what should have been a vibrant, intense, joyous relationship into a relationship of increasing boredom and acrimony possibly resulting separation or in the case of marriage, divorce.

The sad part for me is that we may end up condemning ourselves to relationship hell not through a lack of willingness to cooperate but just because we do not want to embarrass ourselves.

I am a husband, and father of one son who works as an engineer. I became involved in writing articles about self improvement and positive attitude as part of a process of developing a more positive attitude to life myself.

I am committed to making my thoughts freely available to anybody who takes interest in reading my articles in the hope that they can similarly make their attitude more positive.

For anybody who is interested in improving their attitude to life and would like to see more of my articles or simply wants some advice on how they can feel better about themselves please visit my website http://www.positivity.9f.com. I am interested in any feedback about whether my articles are providing a positive benefit.
Posted on 11/03/09, 11:11 am