Thoughts on Relationships
Mirroring Maturity
Throughout my life, my relationships have always been a reflection of the type of person I was at any given point in time. For instance, in my adolescence and early college years (skipping the playground for now) my relationships were surface and shallow. Driven by good times, physical appearance, and transactional interaction (he came to my party so I should probably get invited to his). Makes sense. I was a surface and shallow dude.
In my twenties, this evolved slightly as I focused more on dating and work. Putting more time into the quality of my intimate relationships and career pursuits, I had less time for the quantity of what college so amply offered. Natural “maturation” process.Unfortunately for me, I was still very much surface and shallow.
My default ways of being had a hard time evolving past the socialized mind. This created a slew of relational issues for me. I struggled with boundaries with my family. I had no interest in commitment to a partner of any kind. Friends remained contingent on social behaviors and events, rather than deep connection and conversation. I definitely crossed lines that I shouldn’t have with co-workers. All the while, I wasn’t learning from these unhealthy relationships and was failing to recognize the value and importance of developing a relationship with myself.
Then Deb came along…
The Energy Exchange
Life is made up of an endless number of choices (apologies for the cliche, but theres a point). Each of these choices is essentially deciding where we believe our energy is best spent. Cooking dinner or ordering take out? Shower now or just keep smelling like shit? Turn out the lights or a few more Tinder swipes? Read a book or watch another Big Bang Theory re-run?
Every decision is an energy exchange of some kind.
Am I going to put my energy into this thing, that thing, or choose neither and conserve my energy for later?
It may not be so obvious to us, but the relationships we choose to be in are actually some of the biggest energy exchange decisions we make in our lives. Relationships, whether with family, friends, coworkers, or our romantic partners, consume more of our energy than just about anything else we do.
That is of course if we are deciding to do them with intention and have them actually help us grow as human beings. You could mail in a relationship if you wanted to and choose to not give it the energy it needs to thrive. A lot of us do this because we deem other things more important (career, sports, the bachelor, etc). Sadly, however, without intention, that relationship is going to suck for you and eventually die (or make you want to).
If we choose to be intentional about them, relationships have the power to evolve us as humans more significantly than any other choice we make. We can learn so much from another person who is actually invested in a reciprocal energy exchange.
Unfortunately, and far too often, we find ourselves going through the motions in our relationships. We default into the way we are with our family members. We fail to recognize the reason, season, or lifetime status of our social relationships. Most detrimentally, we follow scripts into romantic relationships and end up not giving our partners the type of energy required for long-term, sustainable compatibility to develop.
Breaking each type down, I think it is powerful to deliberately assess the familial, social, and romantic relationships that we have in our lives. Understanding our own relational experiences and the energy we put into them can help us choose to spend that energy wisely and create mutually developmental journeys with those whom we choose to be in relation with.
Family Relationships
I start here because these are our first relationships. Our core family makes up much of the longest lasting, most influential, and initially impactful relationships that we have. These relationships have the potential to be energetically fulfilling or energetically draining, something I am sure we are all very familiar with.
What we aren’t so familiar with, however, is that we have a choice in what to do in response to the way energy flows for us in a relationship. Depending on which we experience, fulfilling or draining, should determine how much energy we end up reciprocating. Particularly once a child enters into adulthood, they have the potential to deliberately determine whether or not their parents are a wise allocation of precious energy. This isn’t always the popular opinion, but take a step back and be honest with yourself about what you think you have to do versus what actually best serves you.
Ultimately, the determination should depend on how much our parents are able to handle their own anxiety, without forcing it on their children. It depends on how mature our parents have decided to become.
You see, children naturally depend on their parents to a certain point. The relationship is forced, so to speak. Yet the extent to which a parent deliberately works on their own self awareness of stress and anxiety determines the strength of that relationship once a child is no longer a child. Family relationships and a child’s desire to give their parent their energy once they become an adult should depend on how much energy a parent decides to put into their own maturation.
This is where familial boundaries become most challenging and familial relationships most threatened. Does the parent understand themselves enough to not need their children to play certain roles? Are they deliberately working on their own issues and voids so as to not need their children to fill them? The recognition of a parent that their child will eventually have their own adult life to live and do not owe any part of that life to that parent is key to their connection as adults.
If a parent is demanding energy from their child to make up for their own lack of deliberate growth, they are demanding that child to not put that same energy into themselves. This is true of a young child or when those children become adults. Healthy family relationships cannot be transactional. The way parents relate to their children must grow up as their children do.
My focus here is on the parents because they set the tone for the way anxiety passes through the family system. While the parental nucleus certainly has an impact, the important role of the nucleus is for the individuals of that nucleus to be able to reduce the amount of stresses and anxieties out on their children. No one is perfect, this is why reduction is more plausible than shielding.
The more anxiety that a child is forced to hold on to from their parents, the more emotionally stunted they can expect to be as adults. This will inevitably impact the relationship a child will have with their siblings (who have taken on their share of parental anxiety and dealt with their own form of emotional stunting as well).
Parents who aren’t giving that energy and doing the work on themselves will have shitty relationships with their adult children. Spin it any way you like. An emotionally immature parent may have an emotionally immature adult child who stuck around and “did the right thing” by continuing to fill the role the parent set for them.
Two emotionally immature people will have a shitty relationship, family or otherwise. Another alternative is that the emotionally immature parent is fortunate enough (they wont see it as fortunate, but trust me, it is) to have an emotionally mature adult child. Their now adult son or daughter will not want a relationship with an emotionally immature parent because it will be toxic to their own growth journey. Ipso Facto, shitty relationship.
For our family relationships to be strong and healthy, there must be emotional maturity coming from the parents. This will lead to strong boundaries, honest communication, and children who are able to truly grow up. Grow up as individuals ready to be themselves in the world, ready to author new roles for themselves.
Social Relationships
Let me make something clear as I begin this section. Social relationships are important. Relative to family and romantic relationships, however, they pale in comparison when it comes to the amount of energy required to maintain them. This is an important recognition when it comes to the determination of where our energy is best spent, in the context of our own growth journey.
Friends, co-workers, acquaintances, as Jay Shetty writes in Think Like a Monk, they are either lifetime, season, or reason. The amount of energy we put into social relationships should be in line with the time, circumstance, or need for which a person comes into our life.
It is important to know this as a part of our energy exchange processes so that we can allocate to the right people at the right time for the right reasons.
Sticking with those three high-level reasons, the seasonal relationships are those that come and go, but for a reason. It could be a teacher who inspires us to learn or a time we deliberately choose to teach. It could be a mentor who helps us in mastering a skill or a mentee we are fortunate enough to take under our wing.
It could be a wise neighbor who we seek wisdom from through the backyard fence or the young couple who moves in next door and is amazed to see how loving you and your partner still are. These seasonal relationships can be incredibly valuable but will eventually need to end. The energy spent should be on the growth and learning processes so that both sides of the relationship leave it better than they started.
Relationships for a reason are a bit more transactional than I typically care to promote but important to recognize in our spectrum of social relationships. We can have reason-based relationships with people who offer us their services in exchange for us not being a total asshole (hair dresser, mechanic, security guard, etc). It can also be how we connect with co-workers, who can fit this role on a more consistent basis.
Same “don’t be an asshole” rules apply. These relationships are important for our own self awareness and therefore, the energy should be spent in reflection, rather than in developing the relationships. How do we act around people we need things from or with those who need things from us? What kind of people are we in the transactional relationships and what can we learn about where we may have room to grow?
We should look at these people as though they have come to assist us through a difficulty or us assisting them. They can provide you with guidance and support, as we can in return. They may even be able to aid us physically, emotionally or spiritually, no different than what we may be for them. The reason can be anything either side needs it to be.
The most efficient use of energy would naturally be with our lifetime social relationships. Our closest friends, extended family, people we trust, these are the relationships that teach us lifetime lessons. The energy we put into them is seamless. Like a flow. They don’t demand or pull but they have a way of naturally exchanging over time. In turn, this flow is our best social teacher. We can learn language, values, loyalty, and a slew of other vital components of our growth from life time friends with whom we trust and connect with.
These “easy” connections also allow us to build a solid emotional foundation. Our work is to learn from these people, love these people, and put what we have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life. We likely would drop just about anything to be with a lifetime social relationship, not because we have to, but because we truly want to. This is energy well spent.
Romantic Relationships
Of all of our relationships, our romantic relationships require the most energy. Sorry, Mom and Dad, but it’s the cold, honest truth. We cannot half-ass the effort for our life partners. If at the most basic level, we want it to simply work, our romantic relationships must be a priority over the other relationships in our lives.
Something tells me that this is more obvious than most of us actually allow it to be in practice. A theory I have is that marriage rates are so low and loneliness rates so high because we become complacent in our romantic relationships over time and thus, allocate less energy towards their development.
Think about it. In the dating or courting process, the romantic interest is all-consuming. If you’re into the person, and I mean like, really into the person, there’s very little you won’t do to make sure they know. Up all night texting or talking. Weekends together. Dates, events, and activities galore! Giving our full presence is almost effortless.
Then what happens? Time happens. All of the energy spent at the beginning is hard to maintain. For those who realize this early on, the relationship ends and back to Tinder they go. Happy swiping!
For those who keep pushing, however, the decrease in energy for the relationship can be masked, however. Before long, you get engaged and your collective attention is on all of the pictures and planning and bullshit that goes into how amazing and important your engagement is. Venues, the band, invitations, each one more important of a decision than its predecessor.
Then you have a wedding, your honey moon, your career paths, and your first kid and your next kid and… yup, it becomes quite clear. More collective energy successively being put into things that are not each other.
Our romantic relationships, our partners, have the capability to be our greatest source of learning and understanding ourselves. The mirror they can offer is unlike any other. Our partner’s ongoing ability to watch our growth from the outside, to see our strengths and our weaknesses, is unparalleled. Yet, more often than not, we fail to understand how powerful our romantic relationships can be as we’re blinded by our own self interests or lack of maturity.
Sure, the beginning was fun. The energy we spent getting to know our partner was rewarded with all that dopamine and happy stuff that instant gratification brings. Sadly, for so many failed partnerships and marriages, we hold our romantic relationships to the veneer of success that this blissful immediacy offers. Instead, we should be maintaining the level of energy we put into this person that we’ve chosen to be a partner.
We should set aside the need for instant gratification and instead, commit to the evolution of ourselves and our relationship over the course of time being a source of long-lasting meaning.
There’s actually a wonderful irony to this commitment. The conserved energy from committing to a partnership vastly outweighs the amount of energy we would have to spend going through that courting and dating process again. This is energy we can now use on our own growth. On the joys of parenting. On life-long learning. On the process of understanding someone else to a point where your collective energy is a conduit of evolution.
A Deliberate Choice
When Deb came along, my whole understanding of relationships changed. All of a sudden, I started to grow up. I began to understand the energy exchanges that existed in my life and started the journey to learning how to best manage them.
It has been in my romantic relationship that I have better understood relationships in general, and of course, myself. I am forever grateful for this process (and for her patience in allowing me to experience it).
Like everything else I have written about, relationships require a deliberate approach. They are also a direct reflection of the deliberate work we have done and continue to do on ourselves. Our on-going self-awareness and pursuit of maturity allows us to better understand the best ways in which to use the limited energy we have. The health of our relationships are a core component and reflection of this pursuit.
We, as humans, have the essential need for love and belonging. These relationships should not only be a good reason to give our energy for them, but should feed us energy as well. We have that choice. If all a relationship does is pull and take, it is toxic and not in service of our development. Commit to the right partner and choose supporting family and social relationships, however, and watch how the flow of growth inducing energy offers a beautiful way to live.
