3 Questions to Help You Evaluate Your Relationships
By: Alexa V.S.
Tags: Self Improvement, Advice, Relationships, Relationships Love Dating, Love

3 Questions to Help You Evaluate Your Relationships

Photo by Nick Shandra on Unsplash

According to the longest ever study on happiness, healthy relationships are the secret to a fulfilling life. The problem? It’s tough to objectively know whether ours are beneficial or detrimental.

A few months ago, I faced this problem.

Something inside me was off. And though I knew it was a relationship-related issue, I couldn’t pinpoint the problem’s origin or brainstorm ways to feel better.

As an engineer, I set out to discover a system to measure the quality of my relationships, something that could give me a clearer picture of my situation. When reading Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, I got what I needed.

Their book discusses the five values of a minimalist life (health, relationships, passions, growth, and contribution) and offers advice on ways to improve them.

To work on our relationships, they recommend evaluating our current situation. By understanding where we are, we can determine where we want to go and how.

To my inner engineer’s delight, they offer a simple framework adaptable to anyone’s circumstances, including a categorizing list and three questions.

After following their instructions, I discovered the cause of my problem: I was investing more time on irrelevant relationships than on the people that really matter. That’s why I felt unhappy.

Armed with this insight, I reorganized my life to include more quality time with my loved ones. Since then, I’ve felt happier and more fulfilled. Without a doubt, the happiness study is on to something.

Here’s how you can apply it too:

Categorize your relationships.

To start, create a list with three columns: name, signifier, and effect.

Name

To fill this column, think of every person with whom you interact regularly. Your partner, family, friends, colleagues, teachers, that annoying neighbor who exercises at 2 AM.

Everyone.

To do this, I kept a record on my phone. For two weeks, I tracked the people I spoke with every day (not including one-time encounters) and added them to the list. By the end, I had more than thirty names.

However, remember it can be as little or as many as you need. Just make sure you don’t leave irrelevant people out. You might be surprised how often they are a problem.

Signifier

Josh and Ryan define three types of relationships: primary, secondary, and peripheral.

Primary relationships include your significant other, close family members, and extremely close friends. If your life were a book, they would be the main characters. Note: Villains — if they exist — are in this category as well.

include your significant other, close family members, and extremely close friends. If your life were a book, they would be the main characters. Villains — if they exist — are in this category as well. Secondary relationships are your supporting characters. They probably consist of your friends, extended family members, and close coworkers.

are your supporting characters. They probably consist of your friends, extended family members, and close coworkers. Peripheral relationships include people like most colleagues, neighbors, community members, acquaintances, distant family members, etc. They would be the minor characters of your story. They provide enough value to have a spot on your list, but not enough to affect your life’s plotline.

Effect

This column centers on how a person makes you feel. Ryan and Joshua consider three possible effects: positive, negative, and neutral.

Positive relationships help you grow. If thinking of a person makes you smile, assign them this effect.

help you grow. If thinking of a person makes you smile, assign them this effect. Negative relationships are commonly referred to as toxic. These are people that make you unhappy, unfulfilled, frustrated, or dissatisfied. They bring out the worst parts of you. If you cringe every time you need to contact a person, they belong to this category.

are commonly referred to as toxic. These are people that make you unhappy, unfulfilled, frustrated, or dissatisfied. They bring out the worst parts of you. If you cringe every time you need to contact a person, they belong to this category. Neutral relationships are meh. Most of the time you feel ambivalent toward these people. If you shrug when you think about someone, give them this effect.

Discover the underlying problem: Ask yourself insightful questions.

Once you have your list, discover the underlying problems. To do this, consider these three questions:

1. Are you happy with the number of relationships you have?

Some people enjoy lots of company. Others, though, prefer tight social circles. What matters is whether the answer to this question makes you happy.

Is your number enough? Is it too much? This question can help you spot two problems: an excess of relationships that drain you emotionally or a deficit.

In the first case, you can evaluate the quality of your relationships to determine how you can shrink your social circle. Meanwhile, in the second case, you can reflect on what types of relationships you’d like to have in your life and brainstorm ways to meet new people.

2. How much time do you invest in your primary, secondary, and peripheral relationships?

To answer this question, I reflected on the two-week period in which I recorded my interactions. Once I had an idea of how much time I’d spent with each person, I calculated the percentages.

To my surprise, I noticed that I usually spent more time on peripheral relationships than on my primary and secondary relationships combined.

According to Joshua and Ryan, this problem is more common than we think. We have more peripheral than primary or secondary relationships. Nevertheless, we must reverse this trend.

In my case, I blocked time off my daily schedule to call my closest family members or have lunch with my significant other. These small changes have had a huge impact on my well-being.

3. What percentage of your primary, secondary, and peripheral relationships are positive, negative, and neutral?

According to Joshua and Ryan, this question can bring many scenarios:

If you spot negative primary or secondary relationships, work on improving them or find ways to reduce contact (or eliminate if possible).

If many of your primary relationships are neutral, consider investing time to help them grow. Why waste an opportunity for happiness?

For the secondary or peripheral relationships you deem positive, consider whether you can make them a primary relationship.

In other words, increase the importance of positive relationships, improve those that are close to you yet have a neutral effect, and reduce or eliminate toxic people.

Without action, evaluation is pointless.

“If your relationships aren’t growing, they’re dying.” — Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus.

Understanding the current state of your relationships is meaningless if it doesn’t help you improve your life. So after you create your list and determine if the number and quality of your relationships make you happy, remember to take action.

If you believe you don’t have enough people in your life, be mindful of what relationships you want and go for them. And if you’re unhappy with your current relationships, transform them.

Once you understand what’s wrong, the path to a happier, healthier life will be clear.