The Foundation
The Burj Khalifa located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is the world’s tallest building. With a total height of 829.8 m (2,722 ft, just over half a mile). For this building to be this tall and stand without toppling over because of the fierce dessert winds that blow against it, it not only needs to be aerodynamically designed, but it also needs a world class foundation. The Burj Khalifa’s foundation is over 45,000 m3 of concrete, weighing over 110,000 tonnes, configured as 192 piles buried over 50 m (164 ft) below the earth’s surface. Its main purpose is to support the weight of the building above. If there is a flaw in the foundation, the possible result would be beyond catastrophic. The Burj Khalifa that hosts hotels, restaurants and stores that serve thousands of people daily would collapse.
Just as a building requires a firm and deep foundation to go high, so does your relationship. For people to feel safe living in the Burj Khalifa they need assurance that no hurricane or earthquake will bring it crashing down. The engineers, architects, masons, carpenters and other construction workers had to design and build the building with the elements of nature in mind. Therefore, the foundation of your relationship must be built with knowledge and understanding of the elements that may cause your relationship to collapse.
Now most of us go into romantic relationships purely on the basis that we are attracted to the other person.
We don’t typically give much thought to the foundation especially in the early stages. Then when the winds come against our building it topples over.
Many people at this point are left confused and befuddled because they remember how amazing their partner was at first and now it seems they just can’t get back to that happy place. If the foundation that the relationship was built on had faults because of a lack of understanding, then it is possible to conclude that the ingredients the couple used were probably structural and not foundational. Structural ingredients include love languages, gender roles, date nights, baecations, money and zodiac signs. This all can help push the building toward the sky. But they all suck as foundational ingredients.
The Ingredients of a Healthy Relationship
The foundation of a relationship is often not thought about until after the relationship has already begun. This means we usually put the cart before the horse. While this may seem counter intuitive it’s actually not a huge problem. The couple just needs to pause to discuss their foundation and come to an understanding of each other’s highest values. The aim of this discussion is for the couple to get on the same page regarding the ingredients. For a high reaching, long lasting, happy and fruitful relationship I recommend the following foundational ingredients:
1) Unconditional Love
2) Intimacy
3) Friendship
4) Unwavering commitment
5) Jesus Christ (The Bible)
These ingredients combined produces a foundation just as solid as the Burj Khalifa’s. Each of you reading this article may interpret these words differently. However, without the correct interpretation these words will be of no assistance to you. So, I’m going to explain the meaning behind them. Honestly, each of these ingredients are full-length article topics. So, in the interest of my word limit I’ll briefly introduce each. In future articles I’ll go into deeper detail regarding their importance.
Unconditional Love
Now you may not agree with what I’m about to say. But I’m speaking from the basis of my experience. Keep in mind this is the worst relationship advice ever. The only love there is, is unconditional love. It may be expressed in many ways, but the basis of every loving action needs to be unconditional. Otherwise, it is transactional and that can get messy unless the terms and conditions were previously discussed and agreed upon. Now, if you don’t want your relationship to feel like business more than pleasure then I recommend unconditional love.
To love unconditionally is to choose to give loving actions to your partner regardless of how they look, what they think, how you feel, or what they may have done or not done. It is to detach your emotions and their actions as influencers on your love. That sounds impossible, doesn’t it? I mean all our lives we have allowed our emotions to be the main influencer of how we love and who we love. Matter of fact, the feeling of love has been the main thing used to define what love is for most people. However, if you read 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 you’ll see there is no point in that scripture where love is described as a feeling. As a matter of fact, I have yet to find 1 scripture that describes love as a feeling in the entire Bible. If you are a Christian, I believe the main thing influencing your definition of love should be the Bible, not an RnB song or a romantic comedy, I’m just saying.
Embracing the Bible’s definition of love will allow you to appreciate just how painful love is. This will detach you from the Disney fairy tale notion that love is sweet and always wonderful. This new understanding will come in clutch when your relationship faces turmoil from within either because of you or your partner. Being able to maintain kindness toward the person who offends us the most is emotional maturity at its peak. As I said in my previous article. “We need to recognize our own fallibility as humans and become so accepting of it that we effortlessly extend grace to the fallibility of others.” I will surely dive deeper into this ingredient in future articles.
Intimacy
Now when I say intimacy, I know your brain most likely thinks about sex, kissing, massages or holding hands. But no, physical intimacy is only a subsection of intimacy as a whole. I wouldn’t consider it foundational not even to a romantic relationship. When I say intimacy, I mean to know and be fully known. To achieve true intimacy is to be always open, honest and transparent with your partner about your past and present. This means both of you need to tell each other everything even the bad and ugly things. Even the things we know are going to hurt the other person emotionally.
However, intimacy must be built slowly and in stages. This is because we all come into our relationships with our own prejudices. Without knowing the hang ups of your partner, you can over share. If they are not mentally prepared to process and accept your truth especially the ugly parts, this can do more harm than good. The first thing to establish when seeking to build intimacy is a zone of zero judgement. That no matter what is said all reactions will only be accepting, warm and empathetic. Judgmental facial expressions, body language or verbal criticism will shoot the intimacy building process in the foot and leave the relationship limping possibly till it ends.
It is important to most people that the person who is closest to them maintains a good perception of them, trusting that even behind the mistakes and the ugly traits there is a good heart that yearns to love and be loved. I will surely go deeper into intimacy in future articles.
Friendship
Growing up I used the word ‘friend’ very loosely. Once someone was in the same group, class, team or club as me I considered them a friend. Adulthood taught me quickly that just because you happen to be near someone else that doesn’t mean they are your friend. They may just be your classmate or teammate, co-worker or acquaintance. A friend isn’t there by default or happenstance, they are there by choice. A classmate or acquaintance may become a friend. But there is distinctive behaviour that will help you promote such persons to the friend role in your mind.
Characteristics of a friend include:
1) A person you can share your inner most thoughts with without the fear of judgement or rejection.
2) A person you can lean on when you aren’t at your strongest or when you are going through a hard time.
3) A person who shares common interests with you.
4) A person who supports your endeavours both tangibly and emotionally
5) A person who fights for you and honours you.
6) The person you do all the above for in return.
Friendship blossoms out of intimacy and is seen in two people laughing together at their inside jokes, enjoying movies together, working on projects together, playing games together, being sad or angry together, looking after each other when the other is not well, lending the other money when their financial management falls off or investing in the other’s vision.
Genuine friendship between man and woman is a direct attack on gender roles and almost always renders them null and void. This is a good thing depending on how you look at it. At least who should cook the meals vs who should make the most money won’t be a huge debate because the nature of friendship is collaborative regardless of gender. More on friendship to come in future articles.
Unwavering Commitment
If our main influences regarding relationships are music, movies and social media. Then that may be an indication pointing to why marriages are failing more often now than in the time of my grandparents who are still married to this day. A relationship can’t last if it ends. I mean that goes without saying, right? A difficult relationship has no hope of becoming a beautiful relationship if one or both people quit.
For your relationship to last for years upon years you and your partner must commit whole heartedly. Because I promise you, no matter how wonderful your partner seems now, they are going to offend you from time to time. They may say something insensitive not really understanding how much of a trigger it would be for you. They may not do something you expect them to do. They may commit a huge offence that may warrant the end of the relationship. However, the relationship may still be salvageable through thorough and thoughtful discussion.
Unwavering commitment must be agreed upon by both people, it won’t work if it is one sided. Both must agree that under no circumstances will we end this relationship. Now I already know what you are thinking. This aspect of the foundation is the most tricky and scary because it sets us up for abuse. But only if we are not in tune with the character of our partner. So, this ingredient ought to come after the previous 3 have been established. Otherwise, we may unknowingly bind ourselves to a tyrant.
Jesus Christ (The Bible)
Some of you may ask, “why is Jesus necessary? Don’t many non-Christians have healthy relationships? Yea, there are relationships that survive without prayer or the Bible being direct influences. However, every healthy relationship has elements of Christ’s character whether the people recognise it or not. In those moments when we fall short in our humanness, we both need to lean on Jesus when our emotions are telling us to quit, and look at the character of Jesus so that we may see how we should deal with our partner even when they have hurt us deeply. God’s example of love in the Bible is our ultimate example and should be our main influence.
Closing Remarks
Thank you for reading my article I hope it blessed you, challenged you, caused you to consider the things you regard as foundational to a healthy and happy relationship. Are you into videos? Click the the following link to see me talk about the 5 foundational ingredients on YouTube
In my next article I’ll be going deeper into unconditional love. This is THE WORST RELATIONSHIP ADVICE EVER. You should not take what I say to heart, unless it makes sense to you in some weird way.
Blessings to you and your family.
Darren O. Salmon
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