When I think back to the formal relationship education I was given as a child, it centered around two main ideas: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” and “Remember the Golden Rule: Treat others how you would want to be treated.”
I don’t know about you, but both of those rules have actually gotten me into a lot of trouble. In thinking they would help relationships, they have both actually made relationships more strained.
Let me start with the Golden Rule: Treat others how you would want to be treated. Sounds simple enough, right. The message being that if you treat everyone around you like you want everyone to treat you, than you will have friends, get along with your siblings and even have solid romantic relationships.
The problem is, the Golden Rule has a massive flaw. It assumes that everyone around you, is just like you. That other people want and need the same things that you want and need, and that you should automatically be able to figure them out based on your own experience.
But individuals do not work like that. Individuals come with their own set of circumstances, past experiences, fears, inadequacies, longings, desires, and dreams. When we force them into an assumed mold, it minimizes them and their experience, and strains the relationship.
Let me illustrate.
If you don’t like having people come visit you at the hospital after having a baby, following the Golden Rule, you would not drop in at the hospital when your friends have their babies. But what if your friend really feels lonely in the hospital after her babies are born and she is so excited to share this experience with other people. When you don’t come visit, it sends the message that you don’t really care about her.
Or maybe you grew up in a family where everyone openly joked about and with each other. You knew it was out of love and this is just what your family did. But when you get married to a woman that came from a much more reserved family and doesn’t understand this level of joking, she becomes deeply hurt when you include her in on the joking. Even though you would be okay being treated like that, she isn’t.
The Golden Rule is insufficient, even potentially damaging. When we assume others want to be treated like we want to be treated, it is hurtful and disconnecting.
The rule we should be teaching our children and applying to ourselves is The Platinum Rule, a higher rule, where we treat other people how they want to be treated.
Instead of assuming we know what someone else would want and need, we ask them….and then believe them. Even if it is different from how you would respond in that situation.
Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages implies a similar idea. Just because you experience love and connection through acts of service, does not mean that cleaning the toilet is going to light your man’s fire. Or maybe gifts overwhelm you with a sense of belonging. That does not mean that gifts will communicate love and appreciation to your spouse.
Speaking of gifts, I see this in my young children at Christmas time. I have to encourage my kids to find gifts that the receiver would appreciate – which may or may not be something the giver would appreciate.
This reminds me of a couple I spoke with after their anniversary. The husband was dumbfounded that his wife was upset about the diamond necklace he had purchased for her. In a tone seeping with sarcasm, he related, “Any woman would love this necklace, but no! She’s upset that she’s married to a man that remembered their anniversary and carefully and loving picked out this necklace for her.” The wife looked at me, deeply hurt and resentful and said, “I wanted new carpet. I’ve wanted new carpet for a long time and we’ve been saving up for it. When he asked what I wanted for our anniversary, I told him I wanted new carpet. But he didn’t listen. He bought me this necklace because that is what he would have wanted. It really is a gift for him – not for me.”
This principle applies in all relationships – spouses, children, in-laws, siblings, friends, church members, employees, etc. It helps to ask other people what they would like in a given situation.
- To the woman who is sick in bed, “I would like to bring you dinner tonight. Would that be helpful to you?”
- To the child who is struggling with a teacher at school, “I would like to talk to your teacher. Are you okay with that?”
- To the spouse who is emotionally upset, “Do you need me to give you some time, or can I hold you?”
As you become more and more familiar with a person, you will instinctively know what they do and do not want and need.
But whenever there is a question, ask. Don’t assume. It’s in the assumptions that we generally get ourselves into trouble.
How can the principle of following the Platinum Rule improve your relationships?
I see your point… But that is not what the golden rule is about. I knew this in probably grade school that to get anything done as a society with more than one person people have to show just respect, forms of sympathy, empathy. It’s universally how the origin of any sort of moral code came about. And to base morals off of anything else … Would be pseudo morality. Which is totally contradictory to morality itself.