Relationship Success - Your Word Reflects Your Family Name!

by Jim DeSantis

It's difficult to live up to the expectations of others, especially Adults, if you are a young person. Individuality is so important these days. Going with the flow, with your peers, is called the "herd mentality". Follow this simple rule and you will be a leader of the herd, not merely one of the herd.

When I was a teen I was a "greaser", a rebel. I had the "pegged pants", leather motorcycle jacket, belonged to a car club, played in a 50's Rock n' Roll band, slammed a few beers, and dated the "chicks". It was a typical life, right out of the movies, and real.

In the 60's I had the second chopper motorcycle in our city. My buddy "Spesh" (nickname for Special) brought his custom chopper back from California and I went wild over it. We all did. Within several months about 10 of us had choppers. The cops never saw one before and just didn't know what to do about us. It was comical, really! But, I digress. Back to the topic at hand.

One thread ran through our lives back then - "a man's word is his bond". This applies to women, too.

My Dad would say - "If your word is no good, you are no good!". No matter what we did, no matter how much trouble we got into, that one thing could not be avoided - Word! We could pull all kinds of tricks, even lie when needed, even bend the Law when needed but that one thing could never be broken - giving one's word. It was never to be taken lightly, ever!

Giving one's word was a trap, of sorts. It was a trap because, once your word was given, and no matter to whom it was given, it had to be kept - period! It was how we were measured among our friends, relatives, and loved ones. It determined our reputation as someone who could be trusted or not trusted. It opened doors when kept and slammed them in our face when broken. So, what does this mean to today's teen?

Truth is a habit and so is giving one's word. These are habits that will serve anyone who develops them, serve that individual for a lifetime. They apply in every facet of life, especially in loving relationships and, of course, in our careers. A mate wants to know we can be trusted and we want to trust them in return. A boss wants to know he/she can promote us or confide in us. The only way to build trust is to keep one's word.

A businessman friend of mine had a rule about giving one's word. We were in his office one day, he ran a used car lot, when a friend of his came in and needed to borrow some money. My friend Johnny was glad to do it but said this to him - "Now don't tell me your going to pay me back at the end of the month and not pay me. If you don't pay me when you say, I'll never lend you another dime. I'd rather you tell me you don't know when you can pay me back so I won't be disappointed." This was a great lesson for his friend to learn and one you should learn as well. Be careful what you promise to do.

By now you're wondering what this has to do with the Family Name, right? Well, it's simple really.

When you break your word or get into trouble with the law for that matter, you are telling everyone that you have lousy parents. Maybe you do but do you really want everyone to know that? Do want them to hear your family name and think - "liars, can't be trusted"? What is worse is if you have really loving and caring parents. You will damage the good name they spent a lifetime building.

Do you want someone to tell your boss about your habit of breaking your word? You know how nasty office politics can be. Why give your enemies an excuse to kill your chances for success? Do you want to disappoint your significant other by not keeping a promise and destroying the trust between you? Breaking your word will do just that!

Jesus, of the Bible, said - "Let your Yes be Yes and your No be No. Everything else comes from the evil one". Pretty strong stuff, eh?

James, of the Bible, said - "The tongue is the most evil organ in the body". Wow! And, in another place in the Bible it says - "Life and Death are in the power of the tongue".

Let me ask you - Do you want to be someone everyone can count on, can trust? Do you want to be someone that people confide in with their secrets? Do you want to be someone that anyone would feel comfortable loaning money to?

Keep your word!

Jim DeSantis

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"Secret Life of Girlfriends" | When Friendships End.

By Lenore Skomal

The "Secret Life of Girlfriends" started as the brainchild of a man, my publisher, with all his preconceived notions of what that might entail. The challenge: To write this book without sounding like a feeble rip-off of Hallmark.

To do justice to the topic of the intricacy of female friendships took a lot of soul searching. One thing I knew to be true: It had to ring sincere for all of us women. To feel valid, it had to discuss the delights as well as the pains of being friends. And then not being friends.

In my book, I led into the chapter on breakups with a bit of an overview:

"Friendships end for a variety of reasons -- all of them are universal but still as unique as the two women involved. These are not the friendships that just dwindle over time, whether it be because of maturity, geography, negligence, or lack of interest. These are friendships that are active, ongoing, living, breathing things; relationships that for some reason have reached a point where you feel compelled to make a decision. The truth is -- either you make it or someone else will."

According to Liz Pryor, self-proclaimed lay expert on when female relationships break up, I am not too far off the mark.

"I love it that we think these relationships are impervious," said the 44-year old Los Angeles-based author in a recent telephone interview. "If you ask someone, 'how long will we be friends?' the most common answer is forever. But it is highly likely that that is not the case. And when it does end, it hurts so much. And when it happens to you, you not only feel betrayed, you feel loss and mourning, on top of that, and many people don't understand."

Pryor wrote her book and set up her interactive Web site, www.lizpryor.com, based on a breakup with a longtime girlfriend that was not initiated by her. The pain of losing that friend forced her to look carefully at her own friendship patterns throughout her life. "This catapulted my thoughts back over my life," she said. "I found out much to my shock that I was a serial dumper and had never paid attention to it."

Now that she was the dumpee, it was a different story.

Final straw/Out of Nowhere

There are two sides to every story, Pryor found in researching her book, "What Did I Do Wrong?" (Simon & Schuster, 2006). And when interviewed, she found both parties viewed the breakup differently. Yet the dynamic in all breakups was eerily familiar, case after case.

"The initiator, or the one doing the dumping, always says that the breakup is the final straw, following a long list of small irritating things that just seemed to pile up," she said. "The receiver, or the dumpee, on the other hand says the breakup was sudden -- that it came out of nowhere."

This dichotomy points to perception and therein lies the solution to helping friendships stay together. "Here is the real key: If you don't tell your friends when the little things happen that bug you, they will accumulate and possibly lead to the point of no return -- the breakup."

What to do?

If you want to end a friendship, Pryor suggests doing it directly. "Once you reach the point that you are done with a friend, it becomes a subconscious, knee-jerk reaction. We say internally, 'I don't want to be friends with her anymore. I won't return her calls, and frankly I don't have to,'" she said. While this is common, Pryor said, it doesn't honor the friendship and what it once meant.

"There was a time when the friendship was good. By acknowledging the ending, you honor that," she said. But if you're too chicken to sit down and end it in person, a letter will do.

"I think a lot of women try to fade out of each other's lives, but it's so much healthier to point out that while the friendship was good, it no longer works for you. Don't get into finger pointing or listing flaws, because that will just elicit a response or put the person on the defensive. You just want to say that it's time for you to move on," Pryor said.

Go on the defensive

But what if you're on the receiving end? If your gut is telling you that a friend is trying to dump you, trust it, said Pryor. "Some of the clues are unreturned phone calls, lack of invitations, begging off of socializing, being too busy. You know when you are being blown off."

What do you do, then?

"You write the letter and state the obvious. It looks like the friendship is over," she said. "The receiver can take the ball herself and finish what the initiator has started, saying to herself that I will be the person who acknowledges the ending of this thing. Then, like a smoker trying to quit, pick a date and send it."

Then what?

Then, you move on. "Pick yourself up by your bootstraps and put it behind you," she said. "But as women, we always leave a little window cracked, because part of us believes that in 20 years, we might hear from this woman again, and maybe it might work the next time."

Lenore Skomal can be contacted through Her Times Magazine!

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