Sustainable Relationships
4m | Feb 4, 2025Q: Typical advice columns can provide advice on relationships. How would sustainability relate to a relationship?
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A: Man… I’m in no way qualified to provide any sort of relationship advice! Sustainable or otherwise. So much failure…way more than what I would have liked. And it’s all my own fault. Thus, anything I say here is coming from a perspective of hands on experience of total failure. And as a result, what to keep an eye out for, and to avoid, in order to be more sustainable than I have been in a relationship of any measure.
Take this all with the tiniest grain of salt.
This question is a great one actually, as “sustainability” has to do with absolutely everything, not just the environment. People don’t realize that. The word simply means to have the least, to no negative results for the longest of time frames. Indefinitely if possible.
Let’s go through a few of my catastrophic failures so that you may have a better chance at developing sustainable relationships.
Work on yourself before even trying to sustainably connect with others. If you don’t, it will show up in your relationships. And then they have to deal with you failing yourself, and them. Which is just a really shitty thing to push onto another human.
So, show up for yourself first. Then you can show up for others.
Poor communication. If you cannot communicate with someone …the good, the bad, and the ugly… in a safe, open, and honest way, then your relationship is likely unsustainable and doomed. It’s simple to say, but good communication is sometimes really hard to find, and to develop in yourself. But there are many, many avenues to explore at getting better. So it’s out there if you want to improve. You just gotta admit, like I do, that you suck first!
Respect. You gotta have respect for all parties in a relationship if you want it to be sustainable and last. If you don’t respect the people in your relationship, that will reveal itself in all sorts of wretched ways. If that happens to you, or you notice it in yourself, try and communicate your feelings, and see if it can be worked through. But, depressingly from my own defeats, I found the best thing for myself and to avoid further destruction to others, was leaving the relationship entirely if respect was lost.
Respect is very hard to get back once lost.
I’m sure this can be a long list of things, but these three topics, I feel, are core to a sustainable relationship of any kind. At least that’s how I view it from my perspective.
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