Choosing to Be Close: Fill Your Life With the Rewards of Relationships

All of us want friends.Most of us want to become better participants in our friendships, dating relationships or marriages. Yet so often our efforts to become closer to others yield disappointment and frustration. Rather than building higher quality into our relationships, we often find ourselves destroying them.What are the keys to establishing and maintaining deeper relationships? Which approaches and responses ought we to learn. . . and to avoid? None of us is a vicitim of our own personality or past failures. We can choose to be close to others if we are willing to learn how. Gordon McMinn helps us discover how to effectively build health and intimacy into our relationships by reminding us that the principles to follow were clearly demonstrated by Jesus Christ Himself.Gordon N. McMinn is a professional counselor at Beaverton Family Counseling Center, Beaverton, Oregon. He is the author of TAKING The Dynamics of Personal Decision Making and numerous articles. He and his wife, Donna, have two children.Larry Libby is a graduate of the University of Oregon School of Journalism and an editor for Multnomah Press, Portland, Oregon.