Respectful Relationships – what makes them tick?

Most of us depend on our friends and loved ones for lots of things. Happiness is just one thing that goes hand-in-hand with healthy relationships. But while relationships are arguably the most important part of our lives, it’s easy to take them for granted. We rely on those who mean a lot to us, we enjoy their company, we learn from them—they help make us who we are. But have you ever stopped to think about how relationships are made? How do we choose the important people in our lives? How do we get to know people well? What makes relationships resilient—able to cope with the ups and downs of life?

We also know how we feel when something goes wrong. When relationships fall apart we can feel anger, sadness, loneliness and a mixture of many other feelings. But can we reverse a relationship that is going badly? How can we keep relationships happy, healthy and respectful?

Respectful Relationships is a very simple tool that helps us explore and have conversations about the elements of healthy relationships. Being able to identify the dimensions of a relationship is perhaps the first step in knowing how to make good choices in the connections we make.

And thinking more about what makes a good relationship can help us avoid the sadness of things gone wrong such as bullying, loneliness, despondency and manipulation.

When we are visited by strangers

 Sometimes knowing how to connect with someone new can be very difficult. It might be a new person who joins a class or sports team. It might be going to a party where there are people you have never met before. Or it could even be that cousins you don’t know well are coming to stay or that mum and dad are foster parents and will sometimes care for children who are complete strangers in your home.

How we make connect with others can be a tricky business at the best of times. But when new relationships are thrust upon us and perhaps threaten other long-standing relationships or routines, negotiating a successful pathway into a new relationship can be difficult indeed.

Rather than just accepting that new, ‘imposed’ relationships will work out somehow, Respectful Relationships provides a way of taking preemptive action. The introduction of Respectful Relationships into a classroom or family conversation before the new arrival appears can provide a positive context that may well increase the likelihood of mutual acceptance.

In foster care, for example, sometimes it is the children of the caregivers who feel put out when new children arrive and they are expected to share their home, their toys and their parents. Respectful Relationships provides the opportunity to build a positive expectation of what new relationships may mean and to talk about ways of connecting even if the foster children disrupt some family routines.

Respectful Relationships is a tool that can be used by:

• Parents—to build conversations with their children about safe relationships (and how kids and their parents can stay friends!)
• Teachers—to develop healthy cooperative learning environments and conversations about values that can prevent bullying and self-harm
• youth workers—on camps and adventure activities to build trusting relationships and celebrate the friendships that have emerged
• family workers—to strengthen sibling relationships and prepare caregivers’ children for the pressures of foster care
• sports coaches—to develop teamwork
• social workers/school welfare staff—in problem-solving and decision-making activities
• pastoral care workers—as a means of dealing with loss and grief

Some of the questions you can ask to help build conversations around the meaning and significance of relationships might be:

• What are the most important things you think friends should do together?
• Do you do different things with different friends? How does this feel? Is it okay?
• How do you go about making new connections with people?
• Can you have good relationships with people who are very different from you? How does this work?
• Have you ever lost a friend? What happened? Is there anything that you would now do differently?
• Why do you think some relationships last a long time and others just seem to fade away?
• How is it that some people seem to maintain relationships for a long time even when they don’t see each other much?
• If there was a series of relationship awards to be handed out, which of the 35 Respectful Relationships cards would you like to win the award for? In other words, what do you think you do well with the people in your life?