Interestingly enough, I have come to find that these brain patterns affect my relationships. Going back to high school, I can remember being awake at 6:30am to get ready for school. Awake, but not alert.

Family secrets can have a powerful effect on us and seriously change the way we view people we love or ourselves. According to Psychology Today, there are three types of family secrets: individual, internal, and shared.

Do you find yourself overreacting to little irritations? Your spouse forgot to pick up something on the way home, and it sets you off in a bad mood for the entire evening. Your child tracked mud on the new carpet, and you explode.

What might this look like in your own life? Well, consider your relationship with your parents. It’s quite possible that one of their greatest goals is to keep you safe while one of YOUR greatest goals is to try new things and see what the world has to offer. All sorts of arguments and conflicts can grow out of that.

Nature provides us with indicators that the seasons are about to change. One day you look outside and the leaves have started to change colors, the next day, you feel the nip in the air or see frost on the ground. Have you ever noticed subtle changes in the relationships around you?

What comes to mind when you think of the words “date night?” Do you picture a young couple at a fancy restaurant, or maybe a married couple out on the town? Does date night always have to involve a romantic relationship?

Just three letters, s-e-x, and yet that one little word packs an explosion of thoughts, feelings, memories, and beliefs. It’s a loaded word that we would do well to redefine. Your immediate reaction to it probably carries either an undercurrent of embarrassment or intrigue, possibly both.

Discussing your physical relationship with the important person in your life is perhaps awkward, but definitely healthy for both of you. This conversation is important no matter your age or relationship with the important people in your life.

It means talking about your religious beliefs and how they relate to the important people in your life. You may not share the same beliefs, or perhaps you do, but the depth of your regular practice varies.

Family can mean many things. It can refer to your immediate family, extended family, the family you create by living with someone, or the growing family you may hope to have one day.

If you have relationships in your life, then it is almost guaranteed that you will also face conflicts from time to time. Ignoring difficulties or handling them in harmful ways, can affect your mental rest and even rob you of sleep at night.

Ten years ago, I received some good relationship advice that I still apply to my friendships and marriage today. I call it “The 5.” Five topics to discuss with someone you are in a relationship with that will help you both remain honest and keep things healthy between you.

We all know the scene. A certain person in a crowd catches another certain person’s eye. They glance at each other nervously, move around on the fringes, and finally come together to talk.

But the truth is, my parents didn’t have some strategic plan for getting the family together each evening for a meal. We were all home anyway and didn’t have the money to eat out. There was no ulterior motive or hidden benefit they knew about.

Yet despite the incredible connectivity across the world, people feel more lonely and more isolated than ever. Rather than meet our neighbors across the street, we sit alone and meet neighbors around the globe. It’s easier to scroll through social media

So why am I talking about this? And what is a rift? A rift is a crack, break, etc. in something. I call this time in our relationship a rift because that’s exactly what it was. Something fell from the sky, made a crack, and wedged itself in.

Over time, those relationships became strained and eventually toxic. I never learned to have grace and never allowed others to redeem the relationship. As I grew older, I had a hard time working with others and forming friendships. Because I never truly understood how to properly resolve conflict. 

There’s a strange and rarely spoken of dynamic in our culture that often questions the validity of mixed gender relationships. As one journalist put it, it’s as if, “they cast us as romantic time bombs, rather than people who simply care about each other and enjoy spending time together” (Gerson, 2020).

I wish this weren’t the case, but until you’re an adult, there are things you may not have a say in that will always drain you. That was the case for me as a teenager with my parents visitation schedule after their divorce. Packing and switching homes every week was exhausting in a way that went bone deep.

There is a little secret to it. And it’s all how you see the other person. What if you saw the other person as someone who needed just as much grace and love as you do? Because, like I said, if you’re breathing, then you have been wronged—meaning you have wronged another person.