This is really big, I think. Precisely, for you out there that we hope to visit our blog and probably didn’t hear the ultimate issues hour yesterday: Dennis is making the point that there are only a couple of types of relations when wanting to be loved should be the primary “driving force”.
And one is between the spouses, and the other is between friends. And he calls them horizontal relationships. Although there’s nothing wrong with being loved in itself. In all other ones (vertical) it should not be the case.
Wanting to be loved is not gonna make one a good parent, a good leader, a good teacher.
Today, more and more parents think the most important think they should be first of all friends with the children. Dennis uses to say that we raise children, but we should view that as raising future adults. Because we are children for a relatively short period of time only. But adults for most of our lives.
As about friends, I’m not so sure, though. I always thought in terms of “I shouldn’t say that to him, it’s not worth the friendship”. But I think people lose respect for you if you are too permissive with them, when you should step up. On the other hand, friends are very important. The life would not be just as much fun without them, and also would be more difficult.
But I came to believe that not all people are meant to stay our friends for life.
The good point in that? We should be more careful how we choose our friends. The bad one? Of course, we could give up a friendship too easy. But from my experience, it is much more common that people don’t stand up to friends, even when the situation requires it, than to be quick to end a friendship.