Relationships require management and maintenance. Without these psychological nutrients, death ensues, and a bridge is either burned or washed out. Open, honest and occasionally rapid-fire (back-and-forth) communications are required to gauge the nature of the relationship as the participants each independently evolve, and as the relationship, of necessity, changes its structure in order to accommodate the changing requirements, expectations and circumstances of both members.
If you cannot maintain an open and unfettered two-way channel of honest communications in a relationship, it will never be suitable for a partnership or a joint effort. These relationships are inherently limited in terms of utility. They are generally not worth a significant investment of your time -- with the occasional exception of a very private, or guarded person who only becomes voluntarily communicative when he or she feels safe and unthreatened, and has the comfort of familiarity.
And in a relatively new relationship (or even an established one which is 'up for review') where you feel as if you are walking on eggshells because of either a) the other person's volatile, or hair-trigger personality, b) your reasonable fear that if you say the 'wrong thing' that person will no longer be receptive to your advances or initiatives, you must acknowledge the fact that your relationship, and its entire basis, may either be entirely one-sided or completely fictional -- in even terming it a relationship, you may be making an unrealistic assessment.
If you feel the tension of constantly walking a tightrope in your interaction with another person, trust your commander's instincts...something exists between you and the other participant which is not quite right. And it is better to do a flamenco dance on those eggs as early on in the game as possible (and perhaps make a Spanish omelet), than to continue to invest time in cultivating that which has no true potential.
The question: Isn't it better to find out earlier if you are wasting your time, rather than to invest emotionally, financially and otherwise in a meaningless, one-sided campaign? It is far better to know precisely where you stand in a relationship as soon as possible, than to continue to water a dead tree, or indulge in a fantasy which is keeping you from addressing reality. Why invest resources into or develop dependencies upon things that are so tenuous and tentative.
When you feel as if you must walk on eggshells in order to sustain a relationship, there might not even be a relationship there. It is best to put on your motorcycle boots and speak front-and-center, and toe-to-toe [I normally avoid cliches like the plague] to the other person. Honesty and confrontation can often prove to be a leader's greatest weapons in the arsenal of tools to save precious time. Why tiptoe around a sleeping lion?
Importantly, when you save your precious time, you are doing the other person a favor as well, albeit not quite as obvious.
Life is an experiment and the world is your laboratory. Get out and start scrambling some eggs. Now.
Douglas E. Castle
http://InfoSphereBusinessAlerts.blogspot.com
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