Prosperline Onyekachi Amadi

The Essentials Of A Healthy Relationship.
"What topic were you given?, read it out to the house." That was the voice of the Deputy Editor that made my anxiety hit the ground running. "It was too early to begin receiving assignments", I thought to myself. I half prayed that I picked a nil. I shuffled my way to the back, seriously praying that I picked a nil as I anxiously struggled to open the piece of paper. Alas! it was a topic. I imagined my guardian angel grinning at me and saying " I gotcha". I reluctantly moved to the front and read my topic "The essentials of a healthy relationship". As the rules were read out and creativity was being emphasised my mind ran in a hundred directions on how to creatively write this.

I thought of other posts I had read on relationships. I remembered books, seminars, friendly chit chats. Words like honesty, loyalty, respect, communication and the likes swam in my mind's eye. Do I write a poem? Do I write a story or maybe creativity could bless me with a song. It didn't matter the medium, so long the message was passed. I don't know if I ever decided but somewhere down the line, I decided to damn creativity and really get down to reality. No disrespect to creativity. I recalled, every relationship I had been in ( professional, emotional, mutual, family etc) and tried to analyze why there had been issues at one point or the other. I also recalled the relationships that had lasted and the reasons they had lasted. Finally, I pondered on every article and book I had read and what each had pointed out as essentials of a healthy relationship.
I discovered that most of these articles had pointed out abstracts such as communication, respect, similar goals, true attraction and its likes, as the essentials for any healthy relationship. These books and articles are in every way correct for without adopting such abstracts in one's relationship one cannot truly enjoy bliss. Yet on a closer look, spanning from experiences in my successful and not so successful relationships and interviews with friends, accquaintances on the same issue, I have discovered that People are the essentials of any healthy relationship. People invariably translates to personality which is the totality of qualities or characteristics (aptly put: the totality of abstracts) that makes a person.
For any relationship to exist there must be two or more persons involved. These persons have different psychological, physiological, emotional, social and even spiritual make up. These two or more parties are brought together by a connection. This connection cum relationship, only serves to establish a level ground of interaction but what sustains this interaction is the people themselves.
Often times, when asked why a relationship in whatever capacity it existed turned sour, we're quick to reply with stuffs like "he is too bossy", she doesn't know how to communicate", "he likes to cheat", "she is proud", "he doesn't respect my views" and so on as reasons for the sour turn. In the same vein, positive personal attributes of one or both parties will most likely be given as the reason for the sustenance of any thriving relationship. We hardly ever have replied like, "it's me, I am very impatient or it's me I am the very caring one". One will find  upon close examination that people themselves or their personalities are what makes any relationship healthy or unhealthy.
It is not that honesty in itself is the bedrock of any relationship. It is that the persons who are in the relationship have chosen to be honest and the adoption of honesty has worked to make the relationship healthy. Honesty can exist for all we care but until someone deliberately accepts to be honest, then no relationship with that person will ever be healthy. So no! It's not the abstracts that make the relationship healthy but the persons who are relating.
It's not uncommon to hear people say, "it's my nature to not call, to be bossy, to be selfish, to use a harsh tone, to be insensitive etc when confronted about a particular behavior. These so called natural behaviors often become the bane of any relationship such persons get into. For instance James has a "natural behavior" to be bossy and he works for Andrew who happens to be his boss and has a natural dislike for bossy people. James and Andrew will most likely have an unhealthy relationship if neither James nor John are willing to make amends. I will advise as a rule that the person who has the unhealthy personality be the one to make amends.
This underlying factor, that is, the personality of people is often the reason for abusive relationships, relationships without trust and respect. Relationships where communication is lacking. A man who grew up in an abusive home will most likely abuse his own wife and children and even people whom he comes across. A woman who is used to emotional manipulation as a way of escape in any situation will most likely manipulate any person she comes across to get her way. Unless people consciously work on themselves in reference to their relationships with others, accepting their achilles heels and consciously working on it, relationships will remain unhealthy. It's a typical case of love your neighbor as yourself and do unto others what you want to be done unto you. If you love maintaining healthy relationships then anything that could pose a threat to maintaining one, would give you concern. Especially if that threat is you.
Relationships are like  pots of soup made with different ingredients. To make a delicious soup one person has to take it upon oneself to consciously combine the ingredients together in the right proportion. Not forgetting that there will be ingredients that need washing to enable the soup really come out nice and healthy. Similarly, each person in a relationship is responsible for making the relationship work by constant improvement on who they are, how they behave and how they react to things in the relationship. This will largely determine the health of the relationship.
Finally, the next time you want to relate with someone on a very healthy level and you want that healthiness to last, look inward and work on you as a person. Often times our relationships with others are just a reaction to who we are or who we potray ourselves to be. It is often said that a man cannot give what he does not have. Hence, an "unhealthy" person will only mete out "unhealthy" relationships.

Prosperline Onyekachi Amadi is a graduate of Communication and Language Arts from the University of Ibadan, Oyo state, Nigeria. She is currently serving her fatherland in Osun state, Nigeria where she is a member of the Editorial CDS.

Prosperline naturally likes to write, loves Love stories and makes the yummiest cakes you've ever tasted. When she is not writing she is reading anything interesting in whatever genres they exist.