Most Relationships Have Anniversaries But Few Actually Grow
Are You Most or Are You Few?
Growth of relationships starts with if you have fixed or growth mindsets. Fixed means not able to change and Growth means increasing in size so basically fixed mindsets are ones with belief situations in relationships can’t be changed while growth mindsets believe that situations can be better with practise and effort things can improve.
“We take advantage of growth because we see that since we were born our bodies and age just grow without us putting any effort and we think we are growing but true growth happens in the mind” — Jocelyne Msigwa.
The same goes to relationships, just because we are having anniversaries it doesn’t mean our relationships are growing. We need to be life long learners for us to grow.
Whether you have just been dating for a shortwhile or married for 30 years, growth is mandatory for a healthy relationship.
If A Couple Doesn’t Grow Together, It Grows Apart. (Married Couples Too)
“Love and relationships are serious business and hence one needs to learn and keep growing ”— Castory Mrisho.
Growth of Relationships
Growth of relationships doesn’t mean anniversaries but it would be good and it is possible to have anniversaries and actually grow. Statistics show that an average relationship has a span on 2 years and 9 months while marriages have a span of 8 years. Can we make our relationships and marriages last longer? Perhaps we could learn a thing or two from an eagle’s process of rebirth.
An eagle has a life span of 70 years and to reach that life span it needs to make a change in the 40th year or it dies. In their 40th year the eagles talons (nails) can not grab prey (their food), it’s beak becomes long and bent, and it’s old aged & heavy wings stick to its chest which makes it harder to fly. When this happens it has 2 options change or die.
The process of change is painful and long. During this time it goes back to the mountain top and sits on it’s nest, knocks it’s beak on a rock until it’s out then wait for a new beak to grow, which it will use to pluck out it’s talons (nails) and when the talons grow back it uses the talons to pluck out it’s old aged feathers. After this process the eagle can live for 30 more years.
In simple terms it grows, ungrow then re-grow. We humans can learn, unlearn and relearn. Relationships are just like any other things in life you have to learn, unlearn and relearn about it everytime because they need high maintenance.
We grow when we learn.
LEARN; learn your partner, learn new ways to keep the spark of your relationship, learn to manage emotions, learn to behave yourself, learn new ways to express love to your partner, learn new ways to apologize, learn better ways to handle disagreements, learn ways to build healthy relationships.
There are so many places you can learn about these things and more about relationships. You can learn from communicating with your partner, you can learn from books, from seminars, from other Godly couples, we even live in the age of data available in the tips of our hands “the internet” this resource is not to be misused because as quickly as it can build it can also destroy so be careful on the source from the internet. The place where we can learn about growing and building healthy relationships is from the creator of relationships God, through his Word.
“It is foolish to try to operate a marriage without reading it’s proper manual, the Bible” — Dr Myles Munroe.
Mistakenly many of us believe that having a growth mindset is a “personality” thing. Statements like “I am not a reader”or “I am not a seminar person” or whatever sentence you tell yourself you are not is what makes us not to grow. I can assure you nobody was born reading. You’re in complete control of your mind so you can be a reader, a runner or anything you can be. Good news a growth mindset can be developed by anyone who wants to have one.
UNLEARN; most people wouldn’t want to change things in their long-term relationships because they say they know their significant other therefore they don’t need to try new things. Sayings like “I know my partner, they have always liked it this way” or “this is what always works for our relationship” are what brings relationships to “I don’t know what happened, we just grew apart” actually what happened was that you didn’t want to unlearn what you already know about your partner and eventually your relationship grew apart. We need to understand people change interests all the time.
Don’t be a full cup. There’s a saying “A cup that is full is useless” simply because you can’t add anything to it.
RELEARN; we have all heard people say “relationships are always like this” those are words from people whose cups are full and to put it bluntly you can’t afford to have a full cup when you’re in a relationship with someone you will end up loosing your partner to someone else or being miserable in your relationship.
Have you ever tried to add just a different spice to the food you eat often, If you did I am sure you were like “why have I never thought of this before?”. Think of this whole process like that.
Growing is a never ending process.
Even snakes remove theirs skin after sometime in-order to grow and remove any parasites attached to the old skin.
Having A Partner Who Doesn’t Have A Growth Mindset
It is a challenge being in a relationship with someone who has no growth mindset because it might be tiring and draining to lower your standards to be on the same level with them or hope your partner gets a growth mindset and work on theirselves. Here are a few things you can do to help you if you have this type of relationship.
Prayer; I am a firm believer of “Prayer Changes Everything”. Prayer can change your partners mindset but most of all it can change your mindset to accept and love your partner regardless of their mindset. Mark Batterson says “Prayer changes everything from the inside out”.
“Prayer is the difference between imposible & possible, Prayer is the difference between the best we can do & the best God can do.” — Mark Batterson.
Walk Your Talk; be the change you want to see in your relationship. You have to be what you want your partner to be because when you do that you lead by inspiration not by lectures and advice which has high possibilities of making your partner reluctant to it.
Let Them Take It Slow; When your partner starts developing a growth mindset let them do it at their own pace because it’s a process that is never ending let them take it as slow as they can and after all it doesn’t matter how slow they go so long as they are moving.
Know What Stimulates Their Growth; My husband used to not be a reader and I always tried to talk to him about reading which never worked. I love reading books about relationships and marriage so one day I decided to try reading a book about business after I learnt something I shared with him while making stories and not to my surprise he was interested because he is a business man, he even went on to research more about the author and he found out the author had a book series of the book I told him about, now to my surprise one day he walked in a book shop and came out with 7 books from the series, as I am writing this article he has read almost all of them. And now he says he is a better business man because of that.
What stimulates growth in you may not be what stimulates growth in your partner.
Because my husband and I are two opposites (I am a more of a marriage learner and he a business learner) we have Wednesday learning where we each share what we have learnt from a book or youtube videos in order for us to at least share the same level of understanding on different topics. This helps us grow together as a couple and also brings us closer as a couple.
Marriage is easier when both spouses have a growth mindset.
That’s why unmarried people should also know when it comes to choosing your future spouse, love is not enough there are many other factors to consider and one of them being a growth mindset in your partner.
With Love,
Sandrahope M.
