I wrote my last column about the day I stopped liking myself.

In a nutshell – my relationship broke.

And I got lost in someone else.

Or as the classic quote goes – “Be careful when trying to fix a broken person you may cut yourself on their shattered pieces.”

The bigger the problems got and the worse the behavior got, the more I took on additional responsibility. I made our world smaller, planned more family time, initiated marriage counseling and so on. One person being overly responsible for another person’s happiness and behavior and a relationship which by nature infers two people.

We ignore relationships which are broken.

Ironically, there’s essentially no other aspect of our lives where we do this.

If our car overheats it’s off the shop. If our icemaker stops working we call the refrigerator repair service. If a tree limb is down we get out the saw or call someone else to remove it. If the printer at the office breaks we get it repaired. If our tooth hurts we seek a dentist. If that cold won’t go away we stay home from work or call a doctor. If our dog starts limping we make an appointment with the vet.

All other ‘brokenness’ in our lives is a Call to Action.

This is powerful enough to bear repeating.

All other ‘brokenness’ in our lives is a Call to Action.

We typically don’t drive a car into the ground, let tree limbs continue to take over our yards or start reciting presentations when our printers break.

We tend to the mechanics which make the rest of our lives flow.

Just not the emotions which drive all those things.

I think the reason is fairly obvious.

We don’t take it personally when our car breaks, there isn’t any ice or we get a cold. We can’t attach these things to ourselves. We did not cause them. There’s no ownership. We can’t blame ourselves, beat ourselves up or feel as though we missed something or didn’t do enough.

We can’t say we failed. 

What a relief.

Furthermore, the outside world can’t judge us. Everyone has car issues and visits the dentist. Everyone has the mechanical ups and downs of life. No one escapes it. Life isn’t perfect.

But we expect ourselves to be and we want to project our relationships to be just that – PERFECT.

They are not.

And worse, they are a lot more complicated than the other aspects of our lives we do take the time to fix.

Meaning they really do need attention when they are broken – in fact, more attention.

Fixing relationships is personal. 

It means fixing a part of ourselves which is broken.

Even if the other person may be the one behaving badly. We chose them and we ended up in this situation by the choices we made.

All other ‘brokenness’ in our lives is a Call to Action.

Relationship problems tend to be a Call to Ignore.

It’s hard to confront what feels personal.

Even harder to fix what may be broken in ourselves.

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