Relationships!
By Muju91
@Muju91 (67)
Tanzania
July 12, 2012 1:05pm CST
Out of all relationships, friendship is the strongest one. In friendship there is pure trust. Do you ever wonder why in a marriage a husband or wife might take their marriage problems to friends for advise. It's because there is no friendship between them. To keep it simple, friendship is a relationship that can exist on its own. All other relationships are friendship dependents. So treat your mom, dad, wife, husband, kids, God as friends.
2 responses
@Lorden (348)
• South Africa
12 Jul 12
Thank you for the advice! I most certainly do treat my family as friends.
In my family I seem to be the only one though, which sometimes makes me sad. One of my brothers for example still treat my mother as some kind of something he takes very seriously, and has all these expectations of our poor aging parents.
For example, he is very angry when they don't always jump up and babysit his children for free. Then he holds some kind of grudge. He sees them as parents who just always must want to be pestered by rowdy little children, because they're his.
This of course whould never happen if he saw them as friends. In fact, who would have the audacity to ask friends to babysit days on end? Nobody. And if friends said no, they don't want to babysit, it won't be a big deal to him either.
@Muju91 (67)
• Tanzania
13 Jul 12
Hi lorden! It makes me sad too the way your brother treats your mother. But then it's a good thing your family has you, who understands the value of friendship. I suggest you talk to your brother as a friend, don't blame him. Just a friendly conversation, tell him to treat his mother as a friend and that friends look for each others back. We all want appreciation from our friends. That is why we do good things for them. So by treating mom as a friend maybe she wont mind babysitting because it's not a job anymore but a good deed for a friend.
@Lorden (348)
• South Africa
13 Jul 12
Oh, she babysits his children a lot, make no mistake about that!
But she still has a job, and she has a project her and I are doing together, and she has dreams of things she wants to do with her music career, and she wants to do nothing sometimes and just rests.
My brother doesn't understand that. He sees her as his children's grandmother. And grandmother must always be available at any and all times to babysit, without any complaint or want to do anything else rather. She must always just be happy to see them whenever they pop up.
Sometimes he would simply drop them off at short notice (sometimes without notice), and then he leaves them there until very late at night, or simply leave them until the next day some time.
Obviously it's so he can have free time himself. In his household, his little girls are daddy's girls, always wanting to be with daddy 24/7. So he never gets to do what he wants to do, because they always demand his attention.
It just would be great if he could understand that the same way he loves them but need time for himself sometimes, the same way his children's grandmother may want to actually be free when she has free time, and not want to have to watch those clingy children.
She does babysit them a lot but sometimes when she says she'd rather do something else, my brother always explodes into some kind of grudge-holding mode. It saddens me when they cannot find each other in this issue.
@succeednow (1633)
• Singapore
13 Jul 12
Hi Muju91,
I think human relationship is extremely complex and is not easy to manage. All sorts of emotion like love, hate, envy, anger, disappointment etc will come into play in any relationship whether it's among friends or loved ones. The trust one has with someone can be broken as easily as a spoken word. I think if one is sincere and has genuine love for one's kind it will go a long way towards a lasting and meaningful relationship. Just my thoughts. Have a nice day.
@Muju91 (67)
• Tanzania
13 Jul 12
when i said friendship is the strongest of all relationships, i didn't mean it can't be broken. My point is friendship can strengthen any relationship. If friendship breaks the other relationship can not survive. Friendship is the fundamental relationship among humans. You walk in the streets, you meet someone, you talk to them. The first possible relationship that can exist between the two of you is friendship.
