Relationships

Editor’s Note:  We are pleased to present this once-a-week, all-summer-long series of familycentric essays from Richard Eyre. Today’s essay is number 10 of 12. Look at the “intermission essay” here which has links to the first 6 articles so that newcomers can catch up. And look at essays 7 here and 8 here and 9 here.

As most Meridian readers know, the Eyres, for five decades, have focused their professional lives on strengthening families.  This focus has ranged from writing New York Times #1 bestselling books to speaking to parents in more than 60 countries around the globe.  But their true passion is for an Inclusive, Eternal Family Paradigm that can’t be fully shared or grasped without the insights of the Restored Gospel. And they feel that the reverse of that is also true:  The Restored Gospel can’t be fully grasped or shared until it is seen through an Inclusive, Eternal Family Lens.  The goal of this series of essays is to better understand and have more realistic expectations of both Church and Family. And “family” is broadly defined so that each article speaks to us all, whether we are single or married, parents or siblings, aunts and uncles or grandparents.

Author’s Note: After today, two more essays remain—the concluding essays—which will bring this summer series to its completion on the Labor Day weekend.  I want to express personal thanks to all of you who have been along for the ride and to many of you who have sent me your ideas and observations.  I hope more of you will respond to my pen name email (

dr*******@gm***.com











) where I will read your thoughts and try to incorporate them into the book that this series will become sometime next year. 

Questions

Surveys show that most of us rate our relationships as the most important thing in our lives; and that relationships with God and with family are the most valuable of all.

But finding and forming and maintaining these relationships is hard in today’s complex world, and to we who embrace the Restored Gospel and have the perspective of a two-way eternity (forever back and forever forward) relationships take on eternal significance and are essential to everything we do from temple and genealogy work to missionary work and the cohesion of our wards and neighborhoods.  But the deepest significance, both now and forever, lies in our familial relationships.

Are we asking ourselves the right questions about relationships, and are we looking hard enough for the answers?

Are people and relationships always more important than achievements and destinations? Is it the job of our families to support our work and careers—or is it the other way around? Can goals be set for Relationships as well as for Achievements?   When are we justified in leaving or abandoning a relationship? Is leaving a marriage comparable to leaving the Church? How do false expectations undermine both? How serious is the mistake of leaving something we have not yet fully found? Why can leaving, in anticipation, seem so right, and in memory so wrong?  Does the key to strong family relationships lie in President Nelson’s 3 mantras of “Think Celestial”, “Let God Prevail”, and “Family Centered, Church Supported”?

We know in a general way what the answer to most of these questions should be, but understanding and implementing those answers can take a lifetime (or longer).

And all we can do in this essay is explore the questions—perhaps in ways that lead us each a little closer to finding our own personal answers.

Opening Story

Sometimes one simple example can teach us more (and stay with us longer) than a hundred sermons.  For me, one of those happened with beloved Prophet Spencer W. Kimball who presided from 1973 to 1985 and was the Prophet during our Mission Presidency in London.

One evening the mission home phone rang and when I answered it was Arthur Haycock, President Kimball’s marvelous personal secretary who also served four other Church Presidents. Arthur, in his usual humble, humorous way said something like, President Eyre, the Prophet will be arriving at Heathrow tomorrow evening and staying in London overnight before he goes on to Europe.  I know how busy you are, but could you possibly arrange to meet our flight and take us to our hotel?

I humored him back—“Well, that is quite an imposition, but I suppose…”

When I hung up the phone, I was quite overwhelmed.  Seeing a prophet at any time is a great honor, but to welcome him, albeit for a short time, to England, and to try to express the love that all the British Saints have for him…how could I best do that?

I acted on impulse, something one should probably never do in these situations, and picked the phone back up and called Lord Lew Grade, the famous British film empresario, producer of films like Chariots of Fire, sort of the British Cecil B. DeMille, who I had met and become acquainted with earlier that year.

“Lord Grade,” I said, “The President of our Church will be in London tomorrow night and I am tasked with getting him from Heathrow to his hotel.  He is older, and I’d like him to be comfortable, so I was wondering if I could borrow your limousine for the night.”

Now remember, I was a very young mission president and didn’t think this through very carefully—I just wanted President Kimball to feel honored by the British Saints who loved him so very much, and the limo seemed like a good idea at the moment.  But I began to wonder what I had done when Lord Grade answered that he knew of President Kimball and would be honored to send a car.  Then he asked, “Which limo to you want?”

I stammered something about not knowing that he had more than one, and he just said “Don’t worry, I’ll send a nice one.”

The next evening, as I sat there in the mission home waiting for the car, and wondering what kind of questions I might get about the mission budget from the Prophet, I seemed to experience a kind of eclipse—suddenly I couldn’t see the houses on the other side of the street because they were blocked by a gleaming forty-foot-long Rolls Royce with a uniformed chauffeur. It was the biggest car I had ever seen.

I climbed in and we were off for the airport.  What could I do, what would I say?  All the way to Heathrow I worried about the impression this would make and how this humblest and most unassuming of Prophets would take my strange gesture.

The chauffeur parked directly in front of the main terminal entrance, and I walked to the gate (which you could do in those days).  The plane was late and when President Kimball and Arthur walked off, they looked tired, but my anxiety was eased by the big, open hug the Prophet gave me, and perhaps even more so by what happened next. He was carrying an older briefcase that opened from the top and the hasp must have been broken because it was sagging open, and papers were hanging out. Before I could do anything, Arthur, somewhat gallantly, whipped off his own belt, wrapped it expertly around the briefcase and proudly handed it back to President Kimball who, with the characteristic twinkle in his eye said, “Why thank you Arthur, but are you sure we do not now have a more serious problem?”

When we got to the enormous limo, to my relief, both Arthur and President Kimball simply climbed in the door the uniformed chauffeur held open and walked back to the luxurious seat deep in the rear of the car.  I sat in front with the chauffeur, and we were off down the motorway.

I tell this first part of the story for context and entertainment, but here is the part I will never forget—the simple example that taught all:  About halfway to Central London, I heard a shuffling noise and looked back to see that the Prophet had stood up and was walking up toward me. Oh boy, I thought, here comes the question about the mission budget.  But instead of walking to my passenger side of the seat, he walked up behind the chauffeur, put his hand gently on the man’s shoulder and said, as nearly as I can remember, “Young man, I’m sorry for our delayed flight and how long you had to wait. I’m sorry that it is so late and that we are keeping you away from your home and family.”

Now remember, this was upper-crust London where chauffeurs with their uniforms and caps were like part of the furniture—no one spoke to them, let alone apologized to them.  I’ll never forget the insight that flooded me that night.  Here I was worrying about impressions and budgets and appearances, and here was the Prophet of God, tired and old and jetlagged, worrying about one young man who was not at home with his wife and children. People were what mattered to President Kimball, and relationships, and families. He thought empathetically, he thought celestially, he thought with love, he thought like Christ. He was in the world but not of the world.

A’s and R’s 

Speaking of the world, we live in one where recognition and accolade come from achievements, but real happiness and fulfillment come from relationships.

One exercise Linda and I use when speaking to business or association groups is to ask each person in the audience to write down their three main goals for the current year.  We collect and tabulate them and find that virtually 100% of the goals are about achievements—get the promotion, double the salary, meet the production schedule.

Yet when we ask the group which is most important, achievements or relationships, 80% of them say relationships.

“Then why didn’t any of you write down your relationship goals,” we ask.

The answer we get, in essence is, “I don’t know how to set a relationship goal.  How would you do that, how would you measure it, how would you know if you accomplished it?”

We tell them that a goal is simply a clear vision of how you want something to be at a certain point in the future.  “A-goals” (Achievements) are quantitative, so they can often be set with numbers—earn this much money, close this percentage of sales, lose this many pounds.

“R-goals” (Relationships) are qualitative, so they need to be set with words, descriptive words.  Describe the relationship you want to have with your spouse five years from today, or with your sixth grader when she is in ninth grade.  Use your imagination—write it down—describe how you will feel when you are together, how and what you will talk about with each other, what trust you will feel, what you will do together.  Write it as though you were there, as though it was now.

Some say “Oh I couldn’t do that, I’m not a writer”—but you are not writing this for anyone else to see, you are writing it to set a visualized goal in your own mind.  Others say “Oh I would just fall short of what I wrote, and it would be a testament to my failure”—but that is how all goals are, you set them, they motivate and guide you, and even if you don’t fully reach them, you are further and better than if you had not set the goal.

But its more than that—a goal, particularly this kind of descriptive future R-Goal,

Is a process of creation.  We are told in Moses that God “created all things…spiritually before they were naturally upon the earth.”  We can, by the power of our spirits and our minds, “spiritually create” the relationships we want—in our heads and in our souls—and then make them happen in our lives.

Perhaps setting this kind of Relationship Goals can align what is most important with where we spend our mental energy. Perhaps we can begin to prioritize our R Goals above our A Goals.

Another Story

One night, after I had given a speech on this topic, a man came up and said he had an experience that illustrated how easy—and dangerous—it is to put the A-Goals ahead of the R-goals.  He said that as an entrepreneur in the middle of the formation of a dynamic new company, he felt he had to put all his focus there, but that he had promised himself that once he got it up and running, he would start spending more time with his young family.  He traveled so much that he spent half of his time away from home, and when he was in town, he was at the office so long every day that his kids were in bed before he got home.

One evening he made it home a bit earlier than usual and saw some kids playing in his street as he drove up and pulled into the driveway.  One of the girls, smiling, came up to the window of his car and since he didn’t recognize her, he assumed she was new in the neighborhood.  He rolled down his window, put out his hand, introduced himself and asked her name. As she started to laugh, he suddenly realized that it was his daughter. Then he realized that, in his frantic pursuit of A goals, he had not looked at her—really looked at and seen her—for more than a year, and that kids change so fast that a year was enough that he actually did not recognize his own daughter.  The shock of it, he said, had made him recommit to the priority of family and to try not to miss a day with his children, let alone a year.

The “Inner” and the “Outer”

The problem for so many spouses and parents is the fact that the peak pressure and demands of career come during exactly the same years as the peak pressure and demands and needs of kids and marriage and family.

When Linda and I were in that “peak” period, we found a way to think about it and to divide it that really helped.  I was not long out of an MBA program, so we tended to use a lot of business terminology. A “limited partnership” is a business entity where one of the partners is designated the “general partner” with most of the responsibility. The “limited partner” retains equal ownership but is less involved in the day-to-day.  In high-functioning limited partnerships, the general partner keeps the limited partner fully informed and seeks his or her input.

We decided that, for that peak period, we would essentially form two limited partnerships. One would be the “Inner” comprised of everything that happened in the home and the other would be the “Outer” made up of all that was transpiring outside of the home.  Linda, who by choice and by love, was a stay-at-home mom for that period, was the general partner of the Inner; and I, in the process of starting and building a consulting company, was the general partner of the Outer.

But the emphasis was on the equality and oneness we wanted within each of the partnerships.  Almost every night in bed, and big time every Sunday in our “Sunday Session,” each general partner filled in each limited partner on what was happening in the Inner and in the Outer—questions asked, input sought, assignments given.

It wasn’t perfect, but it certainly never allowed me to not recognize my own daughter. And Linda’s inputs and questions saved me from many mistakes in the company.

In different periods of our lives, we sought different forms of the division of labor and responsibility, but the goal of equality and oneness and communication have never changed

The Overused Option of Leaving, and Why to “Stay on the Porch” Instead

When relationships sour, the easiest resolution often appears to be leaving.

And this is true at all levels, from friendships or business connections to our family and Church associations.  If the relationship is not what we wanted, or what we had envisioned, or what we had hoped, the option to walk away is always there.

But that is usually not the best option.  Particularly not when it comes to the two most important relationships of marriage and Church.

Now in a moment I’m going to suggest some similarities between leaving a marriage and leaving the Church.  But let’s begin with a way in which they are dissimilar: There are some marriages where serious abuse dictates that leaving is the correct course, and often the-sooner-the-better. But despite the endless reasoning and rationale we may have all heard, I do not believe I have ever found a case where leaving the Church, particularly doing so abruptly, was the best course.  Some may argue that mental or emotional abuse happens in the Church as well, but when it tragically does, it comes not from the Church itself, but from an imperfect, human, local leader within the Church, and the greater tragedy would be making that person’s problem our problem by leaving the Church and all it has to offer us.

Having said that, let’s look at some of the ways that leaving a marriage and leaving the Church mirror each other. All of us, either with ourselves or with someone we love, have had experience with both of these two “leavings” and we have seen, in the aftermath of each, similar regrets in the form of:

–remembering and longing for what we used to have…and love
–realizing that the perfection we were looking for was unrealistic
–understanding that we expected too much of the other and not enough of ourselves
–regretting the throwing away of the many years of investment and effort
–wishing that we hadn’t been quite so hasty

Our culture seems to breed an all or nothing attitude.  Make the marriage perfect or leave it altogether. Believe and live everything in the Church perfectly or get out.  Instead, the metaphor that appeals to me on both leavings is staying on the porch after you feel compelled to slam the door.

In marriage leavings (while I’m not fan of legal trial separations since they sometimes feel good temporarily but give way to lonely reality) small steps are almost always better than total abandonment. Because with the latter comes the “seller’s regret”, the loneliness, the difficulty of trying to start over with new relationship, and the memory of what you once loved about this person you just separated yourself from.  So instead of leaving the neighborhood, maybe just stay on the porch, in touch, maybe not communicating, but still thinking…giving it a little time.. just being mentally separate for a bit and pondering unilaterally not what you want from the other but what you could give, and wondering whether you could perhaps, if not start over, at least make a try at moving back toward what and where you once were.

And it’s so similar with the Church.  Of course, my advice and hope is that you would never leave at all—but rather adjust your lens and your expectations to recognize the Church as the means and not the end, as a wonderful support and temporary earthly scaffolding for the eternal family; while still acknowledging that it sometimes manifests the imperfection and mistakes of those who administer it at local levels.

But if you, (or someone you love) for your own reasons, are determined to leave the Church, consider that if you do so abruptly and totally, you are pretty sure to experience some very difficult withdrawal pain, and to realize you have nothing to replace the Church with. Instead, if you just go out on the porch, no drama or declaration or sudden total abandonment is necessary. You don’t have to stop going to Church, in fact, it is best to listen in, and give yourself some time, think about what you once loved about the Church. If you feel you must disengage, don’t do it impulsively or completely—give yourself time to think…and pray. Try to view of the Church not as an end or a judge…but as a means, a help, a support, a giver of answers through restored doctrines.  Yes, it is led by fallible humans, and there are historical and cultural things that are hard to understand and reconcile, but stay on the porch, calm down, be still, see the Church and its programs as scaffolding that can help you with your family and with many things in life. Is there really any point in stripping away that scaffolding, imperfect though it may be?

So, whether it’s with your marriage or with the Church, when things get tough, resolve to spend a little time on the porch; stay close, stay where you can go back in, don’t give it up or throw it over, and you may thank yourself later.

Cleave to your spouse. Cling to the Church. Stay in the boat. Make it through the rapids and into smoother water ahead.

And if you are already long gone, remember that it doesn’t have to be a big deal to go back and sit on the porch for a while, and re-think about it.

Applying President Nelson’s Three Mantras

In some of our writing, and much of our speaking about relationships, Linda and I have tried to suggest the triangular, three-pronged, three P approach of Perceiving our own Nothingness and being humble, Prioritizing family with abundant help from Church, and remembering the eternal Perspective of where we came from and where we are trying to go.

We have written whole essays and developed detailed PowerPoint presentations on each of these three perquisites to improving relationships (For example, see essay 7 in this series on Nothingness); and we really do believe that a humble heart, clear family priorities, and seeing others in the long-view of eternity are three essential keys to the strong relationships that become both our legacy and our reward.

But we have been guilty of making each of the three Ps too long and cumbersome and robbing them of the basic clarity that triggers personal revelation and insight in those we are trying to teach.

It is only recently that we have realized that President Nelson is constantly teaching these same three things, only so much more powerfully and completely; and instead of all the words and explanations, metaphors and stories we have used, he has said it in the profound simplicity of the three crisp mantras he will always be remembered for:

“Let God Prevail” (Perceiving our own Nothingness and being humble)

“Family Centered, Church Supported” (Prioritizing family with abundant help from Church)

“Think Celestial” (Remembering the eternal Perspective of where we came from and where we are trying to go.)

Would it be hyperbolic to say that all our relationships could be repaired and refined simply through living by our Prophet’s three mantras?