How to Build Relationship Beyond the Roles We Play

Todays Blog is written by Emy Minzel, Adventure Sister.

Who am I? How do you define yourself? There are some relationship patterns we seem to get ‘stuck’ in, roles we are born into, or the positions you may appoint to yourself. I am an only child. I am the oldest child. I am the baby. I am the parent. I am the spouse. I am a mother, wife, daughter, niece, friend, business owner, and animal lover. I am aware that I exhibit a great number of contradictions. I am an adventurer that loves to be home, semi involved environmentalist, meat eating animal rights advocate, and a failing perfectionist. I am a walking contradiction. I am human.

Do you have to choose just one or two titles to identify with when we are with other people? Doing so sure would help others put you in their perceived boxes. They have you in these already. Coworkers will perceive your characteristics differently than your best friends, parents, or children perceive you. Yet you may be all of these ‘people.’ How can we consider real soul connections if we are only able to see our family and friends as only the role they play in our lives?

Certain roles come with big duties we must fulfill. these fill our lives with tasks, big and small, throughout the years. We may tell ourselves, “My parents were fabulous! I have goals to be an even better parent than mine were.” These roles can give us direction and purpose or a reason to get up every morning. Then life continues to grow and changes those roles. When we get married our roles are filled with being best friends and lovers. Maybe then children come, and we are up to our elbows in diapers, sleepless nights, work, and being bossed around by little people needing you to fill the ‘parent role.’ Yet we are still supposed to remember we have a best friend and husband/wife who still thinks of us as a lover.

We may hold on to those roles for dear life, or we may try our hardest to bust out of the mold society has us in. We may buck our roles as the child to our parents after we have children of our own. We may reject the roles, stories, or nicknames we still have attached from childhood because we are not those roles anymore. Yet to our loved ones, you will always be who they want to see. Rejecting the molds of roles society puts us in, affects all the other relationships you are in. Loved ones who don’t understand your actions, because you have changed, is part of growing in relationships. They don’t call them growing pains for nothing, do they?

Let’s take some responsibility and ask ourselves, can we possibly know who our parents truly are if we never ask them about their past, present and future? We don’t know for sure who our children are if we do not ask them about their lives and plans. How can we call our best friends best friends, if we don’t ask them questions about their lives and feelings? Instead of talking about work and the weather, we could ask questions of future dreams and goals to find deeper depth and connection.

Asking questions shows interest in connection. It helps to add more depth to their personality through years of these relationships. Showing interest in others helps us build bonds that we crave in these close relationships. Talking helps to communicate and grow into or through the roles we are pigeon holed into. Asking questions only works if we listen.

When we really listen, we can appreciate all the roles one person can encompass throughout their lives. This helps you to see what motivates them to think the way they think, or act the way they act. What if we tried honoring people for who they are, rather than the role they play in your life?

~ Emy Minzel, Adventure Sister. Have you enjoyed Emy’s blogs here at StacyCrep.com? She has been inspired to start her own blog at EmyMinzel.com. Check is to to read more of Emy’s wisdom!