Strengthen Relationships

The Healing Power of Family, Friends, and Lovers

After our need for food and shelter is met, we all have two primary psychological needs. One is the need to belong and the other is the need to be special. Our attempts to meet these needs are intricately woven into all our relationships.

This is one of the reasons fundamentalism often attracts people who don't have a solid sense of self. The new member is taken into the fold and instantly has a new set of friends and comrades, creating a feeling of connection, family and belonging that may have been missing. The more the philosophy of a religion (or the specific interpretation of a faith) lies outside the mainstream, the more it gives that person a belief that he or she is special — without having to do anything more than agree with a certain point of view.

It is no secret that how a child perceives himself or herself in relationship to parents and siblings has lifelong ramifications. Unfortunately, few of us have had the blessing of being raised in a family that met our relationship needs perfectly. In fact, some of us have little idea of what it means to be in a satisfying relationship. It's as though everyone else took "Loving Relationships 101" and we didn't even know the course was being offered.

However, it's never too late to learn. Whether we want to have more friends, strengthen our marriage, get along better with our siblings, or simply develop greater communication skills in general, the articles in this section will offer a wealth of information.

One of the special features of this section is the complete book of Letting Go of Our Adult Children: When What We Do Is Never Enough. While it is aimed toward parents who struggle with grown children who didn't "turn out" the way the parents expected, a number of people have indicted that it offers value for many other situations.