Many relationships break down as a result of saying “non-harmful things” to our partners.
Harmless things are relative depending on who or the relations you have built with one another. Many of us wrongfully and unconsciously say things that we presume are not harmful but in reality are.
In my senior high school days, my close friends as well as our Accounting teacher and I used to call each other “cockroach”. This term came by when we were eating our hot afternoon lunch with our teacher one day in his house. The teacher wouldn’t feel bad if called a “cockroach” by any one of us just as my friends wouldn’t because we all considered it harmless but people standing by would always think we were insulting each other.
We completed senior high and went to our respective places but I unconsciously used the term “cockroach” any time I spoke to colleagues who were this time not the senior high school friends and they didn’t like it. Graciously, these colleagues got used to it and embraced it so we referred to each other as “cockroach”. As time went by, I left that town and I was able to let go with time.
Why these entire cockroach and mosquito or whatever talk? My girlfriend (not intimate, just platonic, not one I am dating or courting but just a friend) came to my work place and as she entered I asked her; “what are you doing here (jokingly)? The reason I asked this question is that my church was having some games and I thought she would be there so what I meant with that question was why she wasn’t at the games?
When I asked that question, the Holy Spirit spoke to me that, “such questions are not permissible and they are tearing relationships apart” he said if she were my girlfriend (intimate), she wouldn’t want to come to my place of work and even this lady also wouldn’t want to come because she would think I would ask her what she wanted even without asking about her health or something a friend would ask another friend. I didn’t even tell her to sit, nor did I offer her water and all I could do was to ask what she was doing at my place. I felt bad even in her presence because the Holy Spirit was talking to me in her presence without her knowledge. Of course she knows I am the playful type but she wouldn’t expect that question because it will mean to her that she was not welcomed.
We also have to be careful about how we speak to our partners, especially when the relationship is very young. It will take time for your partner to come to terms with your jovial attitude. What you take as a joke may be a serious issue for another since you are all coming from different backgrounds. When I meet with my brothers (my best friends), we tease ourselves as if we hate each other but its just our style and would like to behave in same manner with my girlfriend (intimate) or wife (when married) but it wouldn’t be easy in the early stage until she get used to that kind of attitude. The best kind of relationships is one that the parties play as if they are fighting and that eventually will reduce the chances of real fights but such attitude needs to be nurtured and inculcated into each other. A friend once told me that “I always joke with things, for she is okay with that because she is used to that jovial attitude of mine but anyone who doesn’t know such attitude will consider me rude whiles it’s just a joke.
Let us be careful how we joke with things especially in our relationships, they can make the relationship work or destroy it.
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