What single quality in a relationship, any relationship, would make that relationship not only worth keeping but celebrating? I was asked this question recently, and it got me pondering. “Just one quality, that’s all I can pick?” was my answer nestled in a question.
Just one quality.
Then it was another conversation I had only two days afterward where I was serendipitously given the answer, or what I feel is the answer.
Two completely unconnected events.
A relationship not only worth keeping but celebrating is a relationship where short account is not only allowed but encouraged and practised, where there is license for all parties to speak the truth in love, where respect and equality abide, where we can be home WITH and IN another person. Where neither lives in fear of the other person’s reaction.
Think about a relationship in terms of being comfortable in your own skin around another person, much as you were if it were just you conversing with yourself. This is the ideal for marriage.
We have no problems thinking about and trying to resolve our own truth, so when we are able to be honest with others about what we think and how we feel, and about how they and others impact us, we are at our very best relationally speaking.
Conversely, it’s the same for the other person in a reciprocal arrangement, which relationships are supposed to be, to have license to raise anything that’s on their heart.
Importantly, speaking the truth in love is about communicating with kindness, gentleness, patience, and grace. Whenever someone communicates in this fruit of the Spirit, they ought to be received, listened to, and responded to in ways that reveal they have been listened to, and thereby respected. Reciprocation in one word.
It's only when people cannot or will not communicate in the fruit of the Spirit that people end up upset, and boundaries need to be installed to protect against further harm.
Additionally, it’s also when there is no ability to keep short account, where a person receiving the truth cannot handle the truth, where there is no agency for a person to communicate truth.
Many relationships are like this, where the truth would be a bridge too far, because there isn’t the maturity in the person or the relationship to be able to bear such truth.
Too many relationships, including too many marriages, feature the communication aspect of sweeping difficult issues under the rug. In peacemaking terms, this is what’s termed peacefaking. It’s a fake and very fragile ‘peace’—and really no peace at all. It’s only a matter of time in these relationships before an impasse threatens to or breaks the bond. This is because the relationship was never based in the full measure of truth, because that freedom wasn’t extended to the other, which is the maturity that is prepared to struggle with the awkwardness of truth, knowing that it’s not truth that crushes relationships, but the despair of betrayal for not speaking what needs to be said.
In the same way, where truth is communicated gently and kindly, and the person receiving the truth reacts angrily against it, it leaves the person communicating the truth in the awkward position of needing to decide whether it’s safe to do so or not. So many times, it’s not, and so people avoid telling the truth in these situations as a result.
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If any of us has a relationship where the other person is able to hear our truth, and we can hear theirs, where no truth is held back, that relationship right there is not only worth keeping but celebrating.
Imagine being in a relationship where anything that needs to be communicated can be communicated and there is a maturity in the relationship to sit in the reality of truth. Imagine not having to second-guess when and how to raise important truths. Imagine being rewarded by being thanked for bringing the truth. Imagine being the one who is trusted with this truth and thanking this other person. In other words, the person who shares their truth with us, even though it may temporarily upset us, shows us how much they trust and respect us.
Realistically, this trust and respect should prevail in all marriages, and these qualities are incredibly beneficial in the workplace, too. Indeed, without a doubt, any relationship that bears the qualities of truth-telling is a relationship worth not only keeping but celebrating.
Telling the truth is a loving thing to do, but if the reaction of a person means truth can’t be told, the whole relationship suffers for want of the fullness of truth’s love.
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