Relationships are a mystery, don’t you agree? You’ve probably heard the saying, “Some people are in your life for a reason, some for a season, and some for a lifetime.” The challenge oftentimes is figuring out who is who. In other words, how do you know why the bleep someone is in your life? What if there were three guiding principles of relationships to help you figure that out?
We all have certain relationships that are quite the mystery as to why they have shown up. Most of us have one or more relationships in our life that baffle the hell out of us. Could there be some overarching principles to relationships? And that once we understand and apply these principles, then it makes it much easier for us to solve the mystery as to why someone is in our life.
After a lot of thought and reflection about my own experiences throughout my life, I have come up with three guiding principles of relationships that seem to have helped me unravel the mystery behind some of mine. I hope they help you.
Principle #1 – Relationships Are Both Physical and Spiritual
One of the guiding principles of relationships is that they are both physical and spiritual. Obviously, they are a physical experience because we process them through our five senses. However, they aren’t exactly a “thing” we experience in a physical sense but we use language as if they were. We talk about having a relationship like it’s something to possess or getting into or out of or holding on to a relationship as if it had physical qualities.
Our five senses provide us a way to experience another human being which then creates an emotional response that we oftentimes physically feel. For instance, our heart flutters when we see a certain someone. We get nervous around them or maybe the opposite, we feel comfortable and at peace. A relationship follows along a chronological course of events in a linear fashion. So on one hand relationships are part of our space/time continuum.
But what if relationships were more than a physical experience? What if we experienced them on a spiritual level too because they themselves had a spiritual quality to them? Relationships are a mystery to us because we fail to see their spiritual quality.
Relationships have an energy all their own
If a relationship is the combining of two (or more) people who are both physical and non-physical then wouldn’t it make sense that a relationship has both physical and non-physical qualities too? Wouldn’t the combination of the energies of two people result in a new and separate energy uniquely its own? Think of it like the combining of two separate chemical compounds. The combination of two people creates its own unique entity or energy. The same way hydrogen and oxygen, two very different and distinct elements, join together to make water.
Reflect back on some of the relationships in your past. Have you ever had the experience of being with someone and you felt a weird energetic pull (or push as the case may be) when you were with this person? The interaction between you brought out aspects of yourself that you didn’t know were there. Just being with this other person created a space, an energy, where you felt differently about yourself. Again this could be positive or negative but the point is that your two separate energies, both the physical and spiritual aspect of who you are, created a space totally unique.
You’ve also probably experienced this when just being in the presence of another person. For instance, you can be with a friend and when it’s just the two of you he/she acts a certain way. But when another person joins you and now there are three of you then your friend seems different. You might even feel different. The space and energy changed with the addition of this third person.
And herein is the basis for principle #1. Relationships, like everything else, are a form of energy. They are both physically experienced through the five senses and experienced non-physically on the spiritual, energetic level. This is why people can actually feel “love at first sight” or feel an immediate uncomfortableness with someone when they first meet. If relationships are a mystery, then principle #1 helps you solve the mystery by getting you to broaden your perspective.
If you are struggling with a relationship in your life, stop looking at just your physical experience for the answer. What you are physically experiencing? The hurtful words or miscommunication, the negative thoughts, and emotions, or the unpleasant tension between you are just the physical symptoms. There is something going on beneath the surface, in the spiritual realm, that requires your attention and understanding. That something is guiding principle #1. Relationships are both physical and spiritual. In order for you to solve the mystery of why someone is the bleep in your life you are going to have to acknowledge that there is a spiritual component at play.
Principle #2 – Relationships Have a Divine Purpose
Another guiding principle of relationships is that many of them have a divine purpose. I have asked many people if they believed whether or not people come into our lives for a reason and nine times out of ten they answered yes. The problem is that most people don’t have trouble remembering that when an “angel” person comes to their rescue but seem to forget this principle when they have a conflict ridden relationship with someone. People will get all caught up in the drama and the emotions and the upset. They fail to get out of their ego to look at the bigger picture of what is really going on. They forget to realize that the person is there for a reason – a divine purpose. Forgetting to apply this principle is what causes the relationship to continue in a never ending conflictual cycle and remain so difficult.
When relationships are joyful and fulfilling it’s easy to welcome them as God sent, but you need to remember that even those relationships that are painful are there for a reason too, and are actually the ones you will grow the most from.
People come into your life for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they are there to drastically change your life. Sometimes just to give you a nudge or a suggestion or to teach you something. A friend told me once that people are sometimes “triggers.” They show up in order to set something off in you to help you get unstuck and off dead center.
Every relationship is part of your life’s journey
No matter the reason, you should consider each of these special people as a spiritual friend and part of your journey. Don’t forget that your relationship is for their benefit too. You have come into their life for a reason as well. You could even be someone else’s trigger. For instance, you might be there to hold up a mirror for them so that they learn something about themselves.
You will, of course, have many inconsequential relationships over the span of your lifetime. The impact of meeting or knowing or interacting with them will be negligible. But there are some people who come into your life and because of them, you will literally be changed forever. Some of these relationships are easy to spot such as our parents or siblings. A close friend or a memorable teacher. Boyfriends and girlfriends. People we work with or who become our boss or mentor. And of course our spouse and our children. These relationships are easy to see as God given and have a divine purpose.
But could a person you barely meet and have but a brief encounter with be God sent? Of course they could. Think about meeting a person in a coffee shop and you strike up a conversation. During your brief encounter, they end up recommending a book or giving you the name of someone to call, or telling you some fact that you didn’t know that was important information for you at that time in your life. What if that brief conversation led to something that altered your life’s course just ever so slightly? But even that slight alteration set in motion a new and very different path for your life? Remember, it takes but a split second to change the outcome of a person’s life.
The important thing to remember is that you will have many relationships in your life for maybe just one specific reason. That purpose could be big or small, positive or negative, joyful or painful.
Principle #3 – Relationships Operate in Perfect Timing
Life, as we experience it, has an element of time to it. It’s uncanny how it works but there is a guiding principle that guides each of our lives, including our relationships. This principle has several different names. Some know it as Universal Timing, God’s Timing, or Perfect Timing. This guiding principle of relationships basically states that when someone is supposed to show up in your life they will. Perfect timing is not about whether or not we agree or disagree, accept or reject, like or dislike, feel ready or don’t feel ready, etc. When something is meant to happen it will. Perfect timing occurs when God orchestrates for something to happen for the benefit of a soul’s growth. Sometimes that something is a someone.
The principle of perfect timing, in particular, has a huge impact on certain relationships in our lives. These are the people who will show up as if right on cue. They will be there and become part of your life and fulfill a vital role in your story.
It will be the perfect time because they will show up at the precise point in your life when you are destined to learn the lessons that they are destined to teach you. Or it’s the perfect time for them to be a catalyst that gets you to make changes that will cause your life to move in a different direction.
These people are going to show up in your life right on time whether you think you are ready or not. Remember the game “Hide and Go Seek” we played as kids? The seeker covered their eyes and counted to 60 while everyone else hid. When the seeker was ready they would yell, “Ready or not, here I come.” The seeker was going to go looking for you whether you were ready for them to find you or not.
Those “seekers” are like some of the relationships that seek you out and come into your life. Ready or not they are going to find you. They have shown up in your life and you need to realize that God put them there for your benefit. How you choose to handle the relationship and put effort into learning from the relationship is up to you.
Look back at your own life. Think of the significant and special relationships you’ve had in your life starting with your parents and family. Did you know that you came into their lives at exactly the perfect time for them and for you also? No child is an accident. Every child born and even those not born has/had a purpose. The purpose is a goal of the soul, not the body. Relationships are a mystery until you see that they have a purpose.
Your job is to embrace perfect timing
You and God knew what you were doing putting you together in the family you had. Your job is to embrace the perfect timing of your coming together, as wonderful or as dysfunctional as it was. Recognizing all the ways both positive and negative being a member of your family gave you unique opportunities to learn and grow.
You can have the exact same perspective with regard to all the other relationships you’ve had in your life that left their mark on you – the friends you’ve had throughout your life; the teachers and friends you had in school; the people you dated and fell in love with; the person you married; the children you had; your employers and co-workers you worked with. Each and everyone one of them showed up in your life in perfect timing.
Once you embrace this concept, you might start to appreciate the relationships for the lesson(s) you were meant to learn. You might gain from the relationships what you were meant to gain. You can release from the relationships what you no longer have to carry. When you apply the law of “Perfect Timing” you can go into the future with a sense of peace that the past was “perfect.” You will also know that everything and everyone in your future will be perfect because the future, too, will happen in Perfect Timing.
So what do you think of my three guiding principles of relationships? I hope they make you look at your relationships from a new and more enlightened perspective.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily represent those of The We Spot, its employees, sponsors, or affiliates.
