Suggestions for discussion among your immediate family, friends, fellow faith seekers, and co-workers: 

What’s important? What do people really want and need in order to establish a healthy sense of peace. Please, add your insights: 

• A safe place to make and call home. A healthy and diverse diet. Regular exercise. Outdoor time.
• Fulfilling and growing relationships. Someone to listen. Someone to hear. The trust of others and people to trust.
• Meaningful work. Measurable goals. Long term ambitions. Short term successes. A community of like-minded colleagues.
• On-going and life-giving connections with blood family and family of choice. Opportunity to enjoy long-established friendships, even friends from early childhood. 
• A meaningful role in a faith or service community. Engagement in a beautiful vision.

What do people really not need? What undermines peace? 

• Threats, real or imagined, to safety and security. Growing financial stresses.
• Ambiguous relationships, those that are conditional, a trade, tight-rope, unpredictable relationships. Come-here, go-away “friendships.”
• Responsibility without authority. Shifting goal-posts. Being blamed.
• Working under fragile or sensitive leadership — a threatened boss. Leaders or bosses who have favorites, Leaders who bring fragile domestic circumstances to work.
• A faith community with controlling leadership, rigid rules, operating from gross or subtle platforms of manipulation and blame. 

Things to start if you have not already….

Open a savings account. Put some money away every month. Never touch it. You have never heard anyone say they’ve saved too much money. 

Talk to your mother and father as much as possible. Do this even if it is difficult and even if they are. You seldom hear anyone say he or she regrets being close to their parents. 

Tip well. Tip often. Be friendly. Compliment friendliness. Generosity is a life-style. It’s a habit worth developing. It’s rare to hear people complain that they spent their lives being open-hearted and generous.

Open doors and opportunities for others. Alert others to possibilities. Do this even if it means they will get ahead of you (whatever that means). Be the shoulders someone else can trust and stand on. Very few successful people are afflicted by helping others to succeed. 

Refuse to talk about people who are not present to defend themselves or present their side of any story. This is, of course, unless you are lavishing someone with genuine compliments.

On a personal note….

I am deeply encouraged and flattered by the invitations I have received to speak at your church, school, or event in February. I know it is late notice but let me know via email if I may be of service to your cause.

Dear Mr. Smith,

Despite the fact that the MERCURY newspaper has shrunk to 8 pages including 1 page dealing with crosswords I have kept up my subscription in order to enjoy your daily inspirational messages.

My wife and myself were especially happy this week to read:

• No Marriage escapes the challenges life brings
• How to have a sacred relationship

They should be compulsory reading at every wedding celebration. I would appreciate you giving me permission to use them at a suitable occasion, quoting you as author.. Many thanks in advance for your co-operation.

Bythe way, my wife grew up in Red Hill (born 1952) and knew your tearoom and the surrounding area well. She was also a bridesmaid at a wedding you conducted at the Parkhill Hall.

Best regards,

Dieter

Ballito KZN

I would suggest that if you are a living breathing person you will be challenged with all of the following at least a few times every 24 hours. 

I hope you meet the challenges and come out on top. 

In the event you do not come out on top, well, as I tell myself, life has a way of giving people fresh opportunities.

One can always try again tomorrow:

The temptations: 

• To compromise your integrity for popularity, profit, or the semblance of peace.
• To spend more money than you can afford on things you do not need.
• To be quiet when it is time to speak and to speak when it is time to be quiet..
• To appear to be listening when someone is talking.
• To ask questions without listening to the answers.
• To eat more than you need and waste food a hungry person would crave to enjoy.
• To speak ill of another and say things about the person you would probably not say were you face-to-face.
• To nurse relationships bruises and wounds and damages you thought you had already forgiven.
• To waste time and opportunity and resources without giving it too much thought.

Causes of joy…..

1. Generosity – giving more than you can afford.

2. Faith – in God and in the humanity of others.

3. Forgiveness – absolute, and especially when undeserved.

4. Transparency – living without deceit or hidden agenda.

5. Openness – willingness to try new things and new adventures.

6. Awareness – of the impact left on others and on the environment.

7. Kindness – treating others in a manner that fosters their highest good.

8. Assertiveness – finding your way without impeding the growth of others.

9. Usefulness – finding a meaningful place in a community.

10. Love – deciding to love without expecting recognition or reward.

High maintenance people require constant attention and seek constant approval. They crave to be the center of almost every conversation and will often become moody, resentful, loud, threatening when they are not. 

They analyze every move, thought, word and action of others, and then read more meaning into statements, looks, sighs, attitudes than was ever intended. 

They are easily hurt, quickly offended, quick to rebuke when they do not get the kind of attention they think they deserve. 

Threats of withdrawal or desertion become a way of life. 

High maintenance people are difficult, sometimes impossible, even in the most relaxed of circumstances. They pick fights, find fault, and personalize almost everything. They argue with people who are closest to them for no apparent reason. They often pick on strangers (waiters, helpers). They often live in a world of cut-off relationships where others are idiots and no one understands.

What can you do if you are in a relationship with a high maintenance person? 

You can do very little that will not hurt, offend, or get a reaction – but you must make a stand. 

High maintenance people seldom benefit from pity or patience or empathy. 

They will only benefit from being constantly challenged to grow up.

(Please do not use this post to “assess” others…… look only at your own behavior).

It may be comforting to know….

People are often stronger than they realize or know. Put to the test, people can accomplish amazing things and overcome huge hurdles. You can read such stories in the press most days — where “ordinary” people accomplish amazing things. Your inner-resources are probably largely untapped in the rhythms of day living. They will rush to the fore when you are under inordinate pressure. 

The inner-person within each of us has a vested interest in being well and in thriving. A lot depends on it. Do the right thing as you know it to be, and your inner-person will feel better, become an ally and will assist you in your search for greater emotional health. The smallest steps routinely employed toward greater emotional health will immediately begin to pay off and make a huge difference to your life. 

Your inner-being has a natural urge to connect, to make a difference in the lives of others, to create and then leave a legacy (large or small) and so it should not take a person by surprise if isolation from others is painful to the extreme. We were created for strong and lasting relationships and when we are deprived of them we feel it within our whole beings.

“I am in a cross-cultural and cross-religion marriage. Neither of us is active in our religions. He is, in his mind, the ‘master of the house.’ I am here, in his mind, to serve him and meet his needs. This attitude has come to the fore over the two years of our marriage. This is not the issue. I can handle this attitude and I can handle him. There are even times we can laugh about it and he is very nice. What is an issue is how he treats my family. He treats my parents and brothers and sisters as if they are second class citizens. He is rude and expects to be served. He’s better with the men in my family (my dad and brothers) but he is arrogant with the women. Please help.”

I am not sure culture or religion has anything to do with the predicament you describe. The manner in which your husband treats women reflects his character, not his faith or culture. There are men of diverse faiths and cultures who are paragons of virtue when it comes to respecting and treasuring women. Your husband is apparently a complicated man in need of help, face-to-face professional help.