January/February 2010 Spirituality
Share the Love: 5 Positive Relationship Messages

by Paul and Patricia Richards

Everyone needs positive messages, just like the body needs food.

Equally important, negative messages are poison to the personality — they starve and deform it. It’s the business of all sentient creatures to avoid both internalizing negative messages and offering a negative message as sustenance to any other person.

Each person must receive at least five key kinds of positive messages every day. In addition, men and women each have their own set of message requirements. They are vital to the creation of powerful intimacy and are just one of many vastly underestimated stumbling blocks relating to need on the path to great intimacy.

The necessary five messages tend to build on one another — for example, most people need to feel seen before they can really hear an apology. That said, each message is a stand-alone, and all are equally important.

  1. I see you. Tell your partner, and everyone else in your life, that you see them fully and completely. Let them know that you really are seeing them by paying careful attention and delving into details beyond what they might expect. Tell them your impression of their hopes and fears, their special talents, and when appropriate, their deeper feelings.
  2. I regret your pain and suffering. Next, express regret. Tell your partner, and anyone else you care about, that you regret their misfortunes and sufferings. Feel free to apologize for the pain life itself may have caused them, if it seems appropriate. You can apologize for anyone, for anything, without taking the guilt or blame on yourself, and your apology will have value. Think of an apology as the expression of regret rather than acceptance of blame. Remember that only about one out of every thousand needed apologies is ever conveyed in our world.
  3. You are loved and a part of the pack. The third message to give freely to everyone is the message of unconditional love. I always think of this message in concrete terms. I want people to know that if I were the helmsman of a crowded lifeboat in frothy green stormy seas, and if they were to fall over board, I would go back for them. This third message is a lifeboat message for me, rather than a syrupy declaration of emotion. The message you give your partner is an ultimate version of this message. When expressed to the rest of the world, the message is free of gender context, and the pack is the fellowship of human beings everywhere.
  4. I appreciate your contributions and achievements. People need to hear that they are appreciated for their contributions, achievements and victories. Here too, people rarely receive the messages that they have earned. Most of the incredible feats achieved by human beings are internal. People suffer in silence, they struggle internally, they face demons and dig deep inside for hidden resources. Great things happen inside the human heart. Look there and don’t hold back when you perceive something wonderful or amazing in your fellow creatures.
  5. You are safe with me and from me. Finally, people need to hear that they are safe, really safe. Watch over them, and tell them that you are doing so. Incredibly, many people I meet have never been effectively told that safety exists. Most people believe only in degrees of jeopardy and live in degrees of greater or lesser anxiety, but never in true relaxation. The assurance of safety is a vital and wonderful resource that we need to share with one another.

A great many contentious behaviors in the world are attempts to compensate for the lack of needed messages. People ask for raises because they haven’t been told they are appreciated. People sue other people because they haven’t received an apology. They destroy and even kill because they have never felt seen, and it seems as though any attention is better than none. Knowledge of the messages and their role in human life is one of the simplest and most precious things to have come my way in a lifetime on this path.

Paul and Patricia Richards, pioneers in the rapidly developing field of energetic seeing, are the founders of the Ashland-based Senté Center for Energetic Studies and the authors of Wild Attraction: A Ruthlessly Practical Guide to Extraordinary Relationship. Visit www.sentecenter.com.