RELATIONSHIP REDOX #9: SAYING GOODBYE

How do you process death? Most people struggle with death but what happens when you see somebody you love dying before your eyes while they are still living? How do you approaching the living dead about the choices that brought them to this place in your life?  

How do you process their choices that have imprisoned their thinking and their mindset? 

The causes of death are many and varied.  It might be due to a mood disorder or depression because of life of night shift work.  That chronic depression might lead to a suicide attempt. The very same scenario might not ever get to suicide but it could lead to dementia after 20 years of decline.  The mood disorder might be caused by indoor office work that eventually lead to obesity, diabetes, stroke, that eventually lead to heart disease and an early death.  On the way to any of these diagnosis, your relationship with that person might be radically affected by their choices.  If you love them, do you ignore their choices and let them do what they want as you suffer and watch them die? 

How do you salvage a relationship with a friend or partner who is hell bent on continuing to make choices that will ultimately cost them time......time in their life.  

In survivor training they teach us how to not die when you're helping rescue a drowning person who is anxious and fighting to survive.  If we get this decision wrong, you both drown.  Is this a wise choice?  I think there is a way to help a friend or partner when they are in dying mode while they are actively living and breathing. 

The mode of how they are dying is the key to understanding what your best choice might be.  I don't believe there is any correct answer for any relationship on life support.

THE GOODBYE CHECKLIST

1. You'd be wise to enlist the help of your cicle of six when trying to help another

2. Write them a goodbye love letter

3. Look them in the eyes while handing them an appointment to see a doctor to get a term life insurance policy you as the beneficiary.

4. Ask the dying while living what you can do to help.

What happens if the continue to ignore you? Are you prepared to force them to see a life without you in it? 

Can you walk away to teach them how much you really care?  In relationships, people often get complacent with time because they become imprisoned by comfort and luxury.  They begin to avoid the discomfort of thinking.  This is how "comfortable thinking" creates cognitive biases.  Sometimes those biases can harm you and lead to illness or death.  

Have you ever cared so much that you were willing to create a perfect dismount scenario for your significant other?  Dying while your living comes with many contexts in life.  It is a very tough situation to navigate.  There is no one recipe for all.  

You have to try to got others who pack your parachute help you navigate these rough seas.  These people often can help you help the dying person see their self worth to once again love themselves again.  Without this love they will never be capable of loving you or anyone else.  Don't we have to try help others see the value of time?

Nothing is harder than seeing your best friend kill themselves while they are alive, in my opinion.  

Are you prepared to follow them to their grave?  Are you prepared to dig yourself in deeper into redox hell for them?  Is their a time limit that you'll impose on them?  Or will you continue to give them a pass for their choices?  How long will you give them this pass?  How many of your body parts are willing to sacrifice?  

When you love someone there are a few key questions to consider.  Do you love them unconditionally?  Are you in love with them now after their choices have changed the relationship between both of you?  

Do you believe you can love someone, yet let them go completely for their own good?  Do you accept that it might be regal to release a person you love or loved, when their end is near?  Isn't it true that real love is like a boomerang; it should be expected to come back if it was true?   Cutting your love loose is a wicked game.  Would you gamble this big if it was your only option left?  

People only focus on your wisdoms, until they see the depth of how much you care.  I believe you can love deeply, without being in love, because love does not operate like a light switch.  Once the switch is flipped off, it cannot be easily turned back on.  

Would you still be willing to help as choices continue to be made that will extinguish their light?  What happens when you finally realize the choices of others are the hinges of destiny in our relationships?  

The differences in the stumbling blocks in relationships and stepping stones is in how we use them. 

Are you ready to make them see you are willing to do the hard things to make the blind see again?  Can your actions put windex on the glass eyes of the dying?

You cannot make progress without making decisions in relationships. I have found a peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one.  It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.  How do you value your life?  How do you value time?   When one bases his life on principle, 99 percent of your decisions are already made.  They are made by the choices we make.

How all in are you really?  for you or for them?

Are you waiting for someone to put flowers on your casket or are you willing to plant your own garden to decorate your life right now?

We don't heal anyone's past by dwindling there with them and allowing them to remain imprisoned there by old choices.   We can only fully heal them by teaching them to live fully in the present even it that present no longer includes them any longer. 

As a surgeon I am addicted to helping and saving the person dying an acute death.  It is what I am trained to do.  As a man in a relationship on life support, I found out that saving someone I love, is a lot more like trying to save a person drowning in the sea.  

You have to be careful of how you attempt to save them, because you might go down with them.  This serves neither person or your family.  This is why living fully, while being solo might be the toughest goodbye that contains the best long term Rx. 

In realtionships, actions prove who you really are. Words are just who you pretend to be..............