Relationship Reflection

Keith and I have been friends since Junior High. We have known each other for 24 years. Over a span of 10 of those years, we kept in touch sporadically. The relationship Keith and I share was built on mutual love, innocence and mutual respect. I really do not believe that it was not until later in our adult life that we really got a chance to "know" each other for the individual we had developed into as an adult. Knowing as much, we still had a sound foundation from which to build a "new" relationship, as I always loved him so very much. Keith is important in my life because I am going to spend the rest of my life with him. Our relationship is important to me because I can draw strength, support, acceptance, peace and comfort from our relationship. Our relationship is a constant source of "calmness" to my mind, body and spirt. With him....I am alright. Our relationship has been able to remain positive and healthy despite a few challenges. I believe the factors that has made our relationship remain positive attribute to our true, genuine friendship, allowing each other to have personal space/time to reflect during disagreements/disputes, forgiveness, respect, ongoing communication and true love. (yes, what we share is rare and it is definitely true love). In order to maintain our relationship, lots of communication has always been required, as for many years, our relationship was a long-distance relationship. For the past four years, we have had the opportunity to live approximately 20-30 minutes within each other! At first, that was a challenge, as we were use to speaking on telephone, email and texts. We were still in that mode! lol! We would spend time together and not say a word and when we would depart, we would burn up the phone and text messaging! lol! How funny when I think about it now! So in order to maintain healthy communication within our relationship, we had to adjust our habits. One of the challenges that we had that was detrimental in maintaining our relationship was time. With Keith being an opera singer and me being a Director of a Head Start program, mapping time out, to spend together, can be extremely difficult. From my experiences, I have learned that all relationships go through stages which include, initiation, rapport building, acceptance, adaptation, establishment of an agreement and scheduling. Special characteristics would be common goals/beliefs, mutual feelings and stability.