I may be in the minority with housecleaning duties, but I enjoy maintaining a clean, clutter-free home throughout the week. I’ve adopted the ‘clean-as-you’ go mentality, especially while cooking, which helps dirt and dishes not to pile-up. There is actually some mental satisfaction and stress-relief in my brain from the act of cleaning and ‘picking-up’ and seeing the final product. Surely many of you are annoyed reading about our family’s cleaning habits. However, the more we start to look around at our world, the more we notice all the things that need ongoing maintenance.
Just like we wouldn’t drive a car without an oil change, let a month go by without cleaning our homes (eeek!), or forget about taking out the trash each week, maintenance is essential to our personal property operating efficiently. Relational maintenance falls into the same essential category if we want to operate at optimal levels as a couple or as friends. The question is: how many of us actually have intentional, deeper conversations or feel motivated to do so?
Remember, an intentional, deeper conversation does not need to re-examine the meaning of life but rather focus more on core issues of your friends and significant others. Think about it in terms of addressing the emotional needs of you partner. If someone comes to you annoyed about work issues or something happening in society, we can take a deeper dive and see if there are any deeper, personality issues that are causing the annoyance. I do not believe people are born negative or whiney no matter what some parents may say about their kids (myself included). Normally there is a need not being met or something that goes against someone’s self-identity, core value or personality. This is the entry point into a more fulfilling conversation that hopefully goes past the surface level issue.
Some couples like to schedule relational maintenance conversations or even dates so they assure themselves of the moment. With others, the scheduling may not be as feasible, so the moments need to happen more organically but perhaps less frequently. No matter the state of your relationship, if there is one phase to prioritize it would be maintaining the relationship. When we deal with nagging emotions, pains, traumas, and core issues, they will not have time to fester and become larger issues than they actually are perceived to be. The relationship will be in a better place because the trust levels will increase. We crave being our total selves with our relational partners and, to some extent, our friends. Maintenance allows that happen and gives you a fighting chance at going the distance.