Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions has this to say on relationships:
Here's a list I find helpful of useful qualities in relationships, to strive for oneself. If one cultivates these, one will attract others with those qualities.
Emotional maturity:
Here's a list I find helpful of useful qualities in relationships, to strive for oneself. If one cultivates these, one will attract others with those qualities.
Emotional maturity:
- Equanimity: not being bothered by things, being placid and proportionate in responses
- Boundaries: knowing I'm responsible for me and you're responsible for you: full stop; no interference, invasion of privacy, control, fixing, changing, bulldozing, reliance, neediness, blame, preoccupation, or argument
- 'Yours; mine; ours' (Tradition IV): each having their own private space over which they have dominion as long as it does not affect the other, plus a common space subject to joint agreement (Tradition Two: group conscience; Concept XII: discussion, vote, and substantial unanimity)
- Self-sufficiency: making requests not demands; not asking others to do what one could and should do oneself
- Tolerance and patience: declassifying others' faults as faults and seeing them instead as characteristics
- Common sense: being governed by reason, observation, knowledge, principle, and experience, with emotion informing not controlling perception and action
- Pragmatism: using principles to achieve ends, not standing on principles when the ends are thereby confounded; not being overly organised; simplicity and practicality
Selflessness:
- Flexibility: occasionally stands have to be taken, but essentially yielding and working round the other person
- Industry: if it needs doing, do it now; making a valuable contribution in all areas; being a giver not a taker
- Concern for others' welfare: being alert to the needs of others and acting accordingly
Fun, whimsy, irony: no one likes a misery