Keep Your Love On: Connection Communication And Boundaries

The intrusion of technology into our lives has increased the time spent interacting with machines and reduced the time spent interacting with people. Because developing healthy relationships take time, the reallocation of time away from development of healthy relationships has contributed to declining civility and increasing violence, both at home and in public places. Against this rather bleak environment, an emerging role for the church in these postmodern times has been to teach the basic relational and social skills that can no longer be assumed to exist: enter Danny Silk. In his book, Keep Your Love On, Danny Silk starts by writing: “I wrote this book to help people build, strengthen, and heal their relational connections.” (11) Silk sees three themes as components of healthy relationships—connection, communication, and setting boundaries (12)—and he structures his book around these three themes. Let me turn to each of these themes in turn. Connection. Silk starts his discussion of connection by distinguishing powerful people from powerless people, writing: “You need to be a powerful person. Powerful people take responsibility for their lives and choices. Powerful people choose who they want to be with, what they are going to pursue in life, and how they are going to go after it.” (20) Being powerful is important in relationship because: “A healthy, lasting relationship can only be built between two people who choose one another and take full responsibility for that choice.” (20) Powerless people are driven by fear and anxiety in making choices and look to other people to fill in for their perceived lack of power (21-24); powerful people realize that they can only control themselves and do not look to others to solve their problems (25). Consequently, it is powerless people who feel a need to role-play as victims, villains, or rescuers (23), because these roles focus on sharing power that powerless people feel they lack, as Silk writes: “Powerless people use various tactics, such as getting upset, withdrawing, nagging, ridiculing, pouting, crying, or getting angry, to pressure, manipulate, and punishing one another into keeping their pact” [in being victims, villains, or rescuers] (24). Real love is a challenge for powerless people because being deeply insecure in themselves they approach relationships as consumers (21) who have trouble being full partners in relationships … Obviously, a lot more can be said about the subject of connection and relationships. Communication. Silk sees communication as a transaction between the inner and outer life, citing Jesus: “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45 ESV; 81) Silk sees powerful people insisting on assertive communication where: “My thoughts, feelings, and needs matter and so do yours” (86), not motivated by fear. Powerless people are governed by fear, trying “to hide what is really going on inside” (81), not able or willing to communicate on an equal basis. Instead, powerless people adopt a passive communication style (you matter, I don’t), an aggressive style (I matter, you don’t), or a passive aggressive style (you matter, but not really) (82-84). Silk offers some helpful advice on dealing with these three powerless, communication styles: “A powerful assertive communicator responds to a passive person with, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ They respond to an aggressive person with, ‘I can only talk with you when you decide to be respectful.’ And they respond to a passive aggressive person with, ‘We can talk later when you choose to be responsible and tell me what is really going on.’” (87) Clearly, not everyone starts out as an assertive communicator—Silk himself admits that he started out as a passive communicator married to an aggressive communicator. Because he had to learn to be an assertive communicator paying attention to the needs of others, there is hope for the rest of us. Boundaries. Silk begins his discussion of boundaries by observing: “…not everyone should have the same access to you. You are responsible to manage different levels of intimacy, responsibilities, influence, and trust with people in your life.” (124) Silk starts by recounting several stories about Christians who did not understand this issue of levels of intimacy and counters these stories by observing that “Jesus prioritized certain relationships over others”, as in (most intimate) =>God the Father=>John=>Peter, James, and John=> the twelve disciples=>other disciples=>spectators=>everyone else (125). He goes on to state: “I love lots of people through my ministry. I counsel them, pray with them, laugh with them, and cry with them. But that’s it. They don’t get the bulk of my time, attention, or money. They don't get to know my heart and influence my decisions. After our few hours together, I leave those people at church and go home to my family and close friends.” 128-129) This insight into Silk’s own relationships might come as a shock to many Christians who have trouble establishing such priorities and maintaining them, especially Silk’s comment about the “God-spot” (126), reserved only for God—not spouse, not work, not kids, not political causes, and so on. You get the idea—if not, remember how the Ten Commandments start out: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. "You shall have no other gods before me. "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” (Exod 20:2-6) Danny Silk’s book, Keep Your Love On, is an important resource for church groups, readable, and interesting. Before I had finished the first 20 pages, I started thinking of all the people that I would like to share this book with, especially newlyweds and family members. Read it; discuss it; share it. You will be glad that you did. [1] [...]

I loved reading Keep Your Love On so much and have already recommended it to several family members, as well as friends. The book cuts through so many barriers that have kept me from being a “powerful” person who loves like Jesus and fights for connectedness with all my relationships. I have gained verbiage for behaviors I have fallen into but also tools and ways to change from familiarity to a bold, liberating way of living as Christ lives inside of me. I have learned the power of boundaries, the depth of loving others, as well as knowing what I can control and how to live accordingly. Every chapter gave so much wisdom and Danny Silk wove the love of God into every page of this book.

I was looking for a book like this one. Thankful God inspired Danny to write it. Whether you are struggling in your relationships or flourishing in them, it's worth owning this book. Relationships require continual effort on our part and who wouldn't want more information on how to improve those relationships. There are so many dog-eared pages and notes, too many to recite here. I did want to highlight a few things included that were quite beneficial and great reminders. 1. Did you learn to love? God will want to know if we learned to love, for love is the greatest commandment. I truly believe our culture is misguided on what love is; this leads to heartache and dysfunction. Danny outlines what love is and what it is not. 2. Love languages, boundaries, and setting limits. These are very crucial parts of relationships. Danny does a wonderful job of summarizing info from the 5 Love Languages book by Chapman, and including tools to help you set boundaries and limits with others. 3. Communication and the pillars of a healthy relationship. These sections were especially helpful. Danny gives you insight on how to communicate your needs and how to deal with conflict in healthy ways. Aside from giving you tools to improve your relationships with others, this book has moments of hilarity. I laughed loudly on several of the points! You will not regret buying this book. I plan on reading it again and buying a copy for my loved ones. It's a must read and easy read. I finished it in one sitting. Buy this book!

This book is an inspired and brilliant tool to help you to tackle the deep issues affecting all relationships and to help build healthier ones. It is also, in my opinion, the start of a revolution. The use of control and manipulation is so deeply entrenched in Western culture that most of the time it seems to us to be utterly appropriate and reasonable. We were likely all raised by parents, taught by teachers, pastored by ministers and governed by politicians who believed that it was their duty to control us. Whether it was used with subtlety and within the parameters of the law, or whether it was outrageously abusive, control and manipulation have sunk their teeth into our deepest and most treasured parts and are actually ripping the heart out of our God-dreamed, God-given, God-paid for freedom to be who we are and let others do the same. This book is wonderful, but it's not for the faint-hearted. Personally, it has set me on a journey to change. I suspect it is going to take some time to even come close to where I would like to be, but I am so grateful and would whole-heartedly recommend both the book and the journey.

Great book

good book. challenges you to love and to establish the right connections with people. Love is what makes us different from other species!!

When my fiancé and I started dating, our relationship was extremely unhealthy. One of us was raised as a victim and the other as a helper. As a result, I always wanted to dump my problems and responsibilities on my girlfriend, and first she gladly took them, only to realize that soon she would be crushed under the weight. So, we both wanted to work and improve on our relationship, and were so happy when we started reading KYLO. I cannot thank Danny Silk enough for this book. I've read most of his other books and they are great, but this one I'd say, is by far the best. Everyone who is in any kind of relationship should read it at least once in their life. Through this book, Danny Silk gave us great tools: 1. to become powerful people who tell themselves what to do and what not, 2. he explains the five love-languages in a way that helped us use them to seek connection and remove stress and anxiety from the other person, 3. he reveals how a heart-to-heart connection is so much more important than the need to agree, 4. to see the value of healthy boundaries and how to set them properly. We found out, as we practiced these tools they have shown to be extremely helpful. We have overcome the victim-helper co-dependency, we discovered the beauty that is in connecting with the other person and appreciating that they are different in the midst of conflict. We have seen that a seemingly small act of service, like sweeping the floor, can reduce a whole lot of anxiety, and how boundaries protect relationships, increase their quality, and let them flourish. One thing from all the things that helped me stood out to me especially, the definition of responsibility. Previously, I was taught that responsibility was to do something you don't want to but you do it anyway. Therefor, I always fled anything that had this tag on it cause I knew it would suck. Danny Silk however likens it to a sat nav that guides you all the way to the destination that you WANT to reach. When before responsibility looked yucky and slimy and smelled funny, now it looks bright and colorful and has an attractive smell. So, if you don't want to improve your relationships, better avoid this book.

I’ve just finished reading this for the second time. It is a book I highly recommend as a resource for doing relationships well. Danny’s style is easy to engage with and biblically grounded. I will be making sure I read this book every year as a reminder to me of how I want to manage myself and my relationships.