Principles for Lifelong Meaningful Relationships

I just wrote these two principles because I’m thinking about my son and his fiancé who are about to be married, I’m thinking about my two other married sons and their relationships with their wives, I’m thinking about my 43-year marriage with my wife, I’m thinking about the multi-decade partnerships with my partners at Bridgewater, and I’m thinking about my many other long and deep relationships. These relationships have been the best things in my life, and I’m thinking that I should pass along the principles I learned about how to have such meaningful lifelong relationships.

Principle 1):

What creates and sustains truly great relationships (like great marriages and great partnerships) is the unwavering belief that nothing is more important than the relationship.

That’s because in all relationships there will be bad times and disagreements including very big and important ones, and what is required to sustain relationships through those bad times and large and small disagreements is the belief that no issue is more important than the relationship. It is that belief and the mutual demonstrated commitment to it that creates the willingness to work things out so that the bad times and the disagreements are gotten through together. Each needs to give that type of commitment and to see the other give it in order to have the great relationship. If you both believe hard enough that that’s true and operate as though it is true, it will probably become true, and if you don’t believe it’s true or you don’t act as though it’s true it doesn’t have a chance of becoming true. It is that demonstrated that is true love. 

Of course, in the early stage of a relationship there is no reason to believe that nothing is more important than the relationship and that the mutual commitments are there because that hasn’t been well tested. Because of that, you just have to have faith that it’s true and act as if it’s true and then see if the other person does the same. And of course, just the belief that the relationship is more important than the issues will not matter if the issues are really more important than the relationship. So, when facing those challenging bad times and disagreements in a relationship, and when making those important calls of what’s most important, you need to think hard about how important the relationship you have really is relative to how important getting your way is because the decisions you will make at those times either strengthen your relationship or weaken it.

Principle 2):

If you need to assess the value of your relationship, think hard about whether your most important values and principles are aligned, putting the really important ones ahead of the not so important ones. 

In doing that assessment, please remember that a) the greatest things to have in life are great relationships, especially your most important relationships, b) you won’t be able to have great long-term relationships if you can’t get past the the disagreements and the imperfections because all relationships have disagreements and imperfections, c) no relationship will work in the long run if your most important values and principles are not aligned, and e) it takes a whole lot of trying and figuring things out in order come up with the best path.  

Principle 3):

The key to all good relationships is to a) be in sync about how you should be with each other, especially how you should disagree and get past your disagreements, and b) give far more than you demand with those who will do the same with you.

The biggest source of problems in most relationships is that one or both parties have some notion about how the other should behave and they get angry if the other doesn’t behave that way. In their arguments they exchange accusations in the form of “You should have” - e.g., “You should have done A, B and C”, “No, you should have done X,Y and Z.” - yet there is no rulebook that makes clear who should behave how. Some people do this a lot with relatively small things — e.g., “you should have given me a call”, “you should have been on time”, “you should have asked me first”, etc. That will make the relationship intolerable. What should you do instead? First, when you are in one of those disagreements, step out of the disagreement for the moment to see if you can establish an agreed-upon principle about how you should be with each other. Then go back into the disagreement and be that way, keeping in mind your new principle. In the future a) operate by that principle, or b) modify the principle in the same way. Second, when in doubt, give each other slack rather than be prickly. At the end of the day, you will have a good relationship if you make the other person happy and they make you happy, so please drop the scolding “should haves.” Chances are that repeatedly and angrily scolding the other with “you should have done this,” especially without empathetically considering the other’s perspective, will lead to the loss of the relationship (unless you are a person, or you are in a relationship with a person, who is comfortable being subjugated).