Relationships are like building chairs. And I mean this in terms of all relationships whether they are business, casual, or romantic relationships. Imagine wood parts as being your life experiences. I guarantee that there will be no lasting relationship that is 100% devoid of conflict. With conflict is where we find the necessary points to solidify a relationship. Like a conflict shows weakness, compromise is like nailing the pieces of wood together to form the bonds to build a stable chair. There are two things that can happen at this point because hitting nails into wood is analagous to conflict between two people. When both sides refuse to give in, you end up bending the nail after hitting it. The wooden pieces never get together. But given that at both parties are more interested in resolving conflict as opposed to winning an argument, compromise is made and a clean hit is made to the nail, driving it straight into the wooden pieces. This is an on-going process with no end in terms of finding differences here and there.

But mind you, when the same issues come up repeatedly over and over, there will be problems, regardless of how much compromise is reached. Imagine trying to create one joint in that chair with a dozen nails. Each a clean hit, each firmly binding the two wodden pieces - until the last nail drives itself in. There will be a point where you will simply have too many nails in the same spot, causing the wood to split, break, and become unusable thus rendering your building materials useless and your chair in an irreparable state.

And lastly, there is also the issue of those relationships that seem perfect from the get-go. Though they may go on for years, there will be eventually a point in time where something will happen that will require both parties to actually sit down on that chair. Without conflict and resolution as a regular and integral part of a relationship, it will be as if a child were stacking pieces of wood on top of each other like a game of Jenga. Without any nails holding things together, you will fall flat on your ass when you actually try sitting on that chair.

The main idea? Relationships of all types are processes, guaranteed and there will always be times where something small ends up feeling as something big. But do keep in mind that frequent conflict regarding the same issue as well as no conflict at all leads to unstable relationships.

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