Relating-ships

I have often shied away from using the word “relationship” when talking about 'mating & dating' issues. It seemed like an overused term in pop psychology, and frankly I just didn’t want to come across sounding like a caller on the Delilah radio show.

However, I’ve come to a place where I can say I really like the word. The reason is because it gets at the substance of the issue. When two people come together to date, marry or some other arrangement, the entire experience is one of relating to one other—how they communicate, make decisions, the energy between them, and the outcome of this—how they feel about themselves and grow through this interaction.

The opposite of a relationship would be a purchase. In that, you would select someone who has certain traits, and you pick and choose between favorable and unfavorable attributes to “get” the person you seek. Think of a White Knight swooping in to scoop up the blushing princess who he has spied from afar and fell instantly “in love” with, despite only looking at her. She's "in love" with the whole scenario, too. For some, that is a romantic dream. The truth is that it is the definition of Hell. It is utterly mechanistic.

Most of us would exclaim that we would never look at our partner as a "purchase", but I think we all fall into that trap from time to time. All of us can get caught up focusing on the particular traits of a person and not enough on the dynamic between two people. Those individual traits do play a role in that dynamic as well as in the long-term sustainability of the relationship. But the truth that when two people come together, there is a bit of mystery and magic that just can't be boiled down to a list of attributes and compatibility criteria--no matter what eHarmony says!

Understanding this as a relating-ship is key to reminding ourselves that it is not about the qualities of one person or the other, it is about the space they create when they come together, what happens naturally and what they choose to build.