Shallow is not just one end of a swimming pool!
Been listening to John Eldredge’s podcasts and him and Craig have been discussing the quality of your relationships.
How do you relate with people, and why you do it the way you do.
Are you the sort of person that engages fully into the conversation?
Is it a 50:50 sort of situation where you equally give and receive?Or do you meet for an hour, 59 minutes are spent on you,30 seconds to ask how they are and thirty seconds to pay for the coffee? (His joke not mine!)
How are you relating and why?
I notice that I do not like to talk about myself, I am really good at talking about you.
How are you doing? What’s going on with you?
Once people are given this platform they run with it, they talk and talk and talk…and this helps me hide who I am very nicely and cosily 🙂
Why do I do this? Well…do you really want to know? 🙂
It’s easier to not be involved. I do not want to be involved a lot of the times with the people I am speaking to.
So really I’m basically cheating people by seeming interested but really I’m letting you talk so I don’t have to talk. (wow, just threw myself out the deep end there.pun intended.)
What does it also say about people being given a chance to talk and they can go on and not realise that the other person is not really listening beyond the ‘uh huh’ and the ‘oh really?’
Our relationships are shallow.
We are not relating with each other in a good and honest way.We all do it.Some people are not available, and as I have admitted I have not been either.
Sure we have those relationships that we take more seriously,but we also have those that make us look up to the heavens and groan loudly when the phone rings and their name flashes on your fancy smart phone.
How can we love to love each other better?
We all want to be asked how we are doing, what our dreams are.
When you are asked, do speak your mind, open up, but remember the other person wants to be asked the same way.
People can tell by your responses whether you care or not.
Offering quick advice? ‘I read in so and so that what would work is…’
Uh, no..how about if they just want to be heard?
‘How are you dealing with that?’ ‘How has it made you feel?’
….or, of course, the guy that has to make a joke about everything..
Are your friends moving away from the conversation as if it never happened?
When someone opens up do you get awkward and the other person vows to never open up again?
What is it about your relationships that really bug you?
You are after all the other half of the relationship.It requires some self-awareness, if you are not present to your own life, you cannot be present to someone else’s….
It feels awful to give quick answers or cliche answers is what John says…and I agree.
Well I completely agree with you on the points you and John Eldredge mentioned. And I also noticed, that (maybe suprisingly?) the people offering shallow relationships are often those who we concider ‘close friends’. Sometimes it just takes a while for us to realize that.
Oh and I think you just call it ‘touch screen’ 😉