Why is it you can feel miles apart from someone when they’re standing right beside you? Why do we sometimes have difficulty connecting to people we’ve known and loved for years? Despite physical proximity, we can experience an invisible gap of infinite distance between us relationally.
Maybe you’ve seen family members grow more distant over time, despite getting together every holiday for years. Maybe you’ve enjoyed a friendship that has become stagnant because you don’t want to risk rocking the boat and loose a really good thing. Somehow, somewhere, this kind of distance has crept into our relationships at one time or another.
Invisible relational distance can color our interactions and create a false perception of one another that’s difficult to undo. When this happens, we are tempted to believe the distance is now a permanent fixture of our relationship. But what if the amount of distance wasn’t the obstacle?
An infinite distance between people can be bridged in seconds with just five simple building blocks.
This is what genuine connection is all about. In fact, we need only a few sequential ingredients to build mutually secure and sustainable relationships.
If we want love (and I know we all do), we need to be capable of holding trust. To be trusted and trust another requires a degree of understanding. But understanding first needs to know acceptance. Yet acceptance cannot be experienced if we don’t take steps towards communication. And finally, real communication is only possible when an underlying commitment to be available and present is freely given to another person.
5. TRUST
4. UNDERSTANDING
3. ACCEPTANCE
2. COMMUNICATION
1. COMMITMENT
These are the building blocks we can stack on top of one another to build a stable relationship. If all five foundational stepping stones have been established and nurtured, we’ve created a reliable bridge that can hold love. Love is allowed to freely flow between you and me – love can now be given, received, and felt.
COMMITMENT
“Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.” –Mister Rogers
Life in a busy world – full of tasks to do, resources to consume, and easily accessible tools to be used – may influence us to see and treat our relationships in the same way. It’s tempting to allow modern relationships to become mere utility. But relationships can’t grow if they are always out of mind when out of sight.
Commitment is most often viewed as the last step in a relationship, if it’s ever made at all. While I understand nobody wants to feel trapped, this might be the reason why many of us feel too easily failed by own relationships. Too many of us have refused to make any initial investment, which means the slightest perceived grievance makes it easier to just move on. If this is the how most of our social world functions, we will miss the most basic commitment: to give someone a chance.
To commit is to show up physically and be present emotionally. It’s to simply make yourself available for another person. Commitment is the soil that allows connection to grow and take root.
COMMUNICATION
“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like ‘struggle.’ To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” –Mister Rogers
Communication is a dynamic process of exchanging information, thoughts, feelings, and ideas. It makes connection possible as the pathway for creating and sharing meaning with others. In every exchange, we are never saying just one thing.
We are always saying something about 1). the content of my message, 2). the nature of our relationship to one another, 3). how I want to be perceived by you, and 4). my expectations for the communication process itself. Misunderstandings and conflict most often occur because the speaker is talking about one of these facets (perhaps the content) while the listener is hearing another facet (like the relationship) and each believes their messages are clear. Their actions of one another are viewed from that misplaced, unchecked perspective and quickly escalates the conflict.
Communication is always in motion, so we are always moving further up the bridge or further down it. In this awareness, may we share honestly and listen actively. When real communication occurs, the results are always a change in the trajectory of relationship.
ACCEPTANCE
“When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong along with the fearful, the true mixed in with the façade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.” –Mister Rogers
Making it to this stage isn’t easy. It’s natural to have a defensive posture towards honest and potentially painful communication, because we have all been hurt and have felt the sting of rejection. Everyone has a deep need to be accepted for all of who we are.
Acceptance is withholding or removing all forms of judgment. It clears the slate. Creates a new space, frees us from the baggage of judgments we’ve made of others and the ones made against us.
Hearing the words, “You are accepted; I accept you for who you are,” can be world changing. You feel it in your body. Everything inside you relaxes. Your true self begins to emerge. A part of you comes alive because you are on your way to being known.
UNDERSTANDING
“There are many ways to say I love you. Just by being there when things are sad and scary. Just by being there, being there, being there to say, I love you.” –Mister Rogers
Understanding comes when we can empathize and truly see from the other person’s perspective and they genuinely feel understood. This doesn’t mean we have to agree with one another. It means we understand one another and can offer each other mutual respect and dignity.
It’s an amazing feeling to realize, “You really get me.”
One of the most effective tools for understanding ourselves and one another has been the Enneagram. The illuminating awareness of our own internal motivations and the differing motivations of others has allowed us to minimize the fallout when they inevitability clash in conflict. Repeatedly doing this well build something known as trust.
TRUST
“We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence.” –Mister Rogers
Trust is process by which we develop confidence, faith or hope in someone or something.
Trust is about taking risks. It’s never fair. But the consistent exchange of understanding (and everything underneath) creates a reliable foundation of trust. The fearless giving and receiving of ourselves, time and resources, and the courage to ask without shame.
This final step needs lots of maintenance, but it’s worth it because of what can now be carried over this bridge.
LOVE
“Deep within us—no matter who we are—there lives a feeling of wanting to be lovable, of wanting to be the kind of person that others like to be with. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.” –Mister Rogers
With a completed bridge of commitment, communication, acceptance, understanding and trust, we have something significant between us that can hold genuine love. To love and be love is the greatest desire of the human soul.
Now we can talk about love, read and think about it, and dream about it. But we still might not know it. Love cannot be faked or followed like a script. Love can only be known by experience.
The only thing left to do is to risk that first step. It takes a little courage and vulnerability. If you get stuck somewhere along the way, you can use this bridge as a map for what our relationship needs to work through next.
The love of God will cross galaxies for you and me, and this is just one way we can know it by our own experience.