Sustainability should be a major focus in any serious relationship. There are many important considerations pertaining to this topic. In this article, we will discuss how you can naturally focus all your energy on your relationship through a common set of ideals that will inspire you both. We learned in our article, Conflict Management, that most couples exhaust all their creative energy in unnecessary conflict. Structural conflicts are generated by tension-resolution mechanisms that have opposite resolution points.
Your relationship with food is the most common example of a structural conflict. If you are overweight, the most common way to relieve that tension is by not eating. If you are hungry, you relieve that tension by eating. You cannot eat and not eat at the same time, so you consume all your creative energy managing this internal conflict. This leads to the common patterns of yo-yo and crash dieting. Health is a personal creative journey (intra-creative). Your relationships are a co-creative journey. For your relationship to be sustainable, you must consider the tension-resolution mechanisms of your significant other, as well as your own. This is the greatest opportunity of your life. Your awareness of these dynamics will transform your relationships.
Before we start, it is important that you let yourself off the hook. You have never lacked intelligence or motivation. Rather, you did not have a clear, co-creative vision. You expended too much time and energy stuck in conflict. But with your awareness of this process and these tools, you have the insight to bypass conflict and concentrate on what you want. Creative tension is the method of focusing all your energy on a preset goal. Tension-resolution goes in one direction, the direction of your choosing. Do this, and you will never waste energy in conflict management again. You are always creating and recreating your life. With these insights and tools, you are directing the process in a predictable way. You will easily create a sustainable relationship.
