In the past, we have considered the idea that there are three people in every relationship - the two individual partners and the relationship itself, as a living, breathing thing that is part of the collective partnership.
Our experience and perception of that relationship also has three sides - the concrete, the ideal and our relationship to relationship as a construct. Understanding each of these aspects can help us not only to get a clearer picture of our relationships, but also to provide a staging point for developing healthier and more productive relationships as we, ourselves, evolve.
The concrete relationship is that which is before us - a friend, a lover, a colleague, a spouse, an organization. The fabric of these relationships is defined by their conditions, which then provide us with a context for our expectations.
Let's take a romantic relationship, as that is something that our society tends to focus upon. Are we just dating our partner? Is s/he a lover, or a spouse, a friend with benefits, a potential mate? Each of these relationships is different and each has its own set of conditions, which then portend our expectations. We do not interact with a lover the same way that we interact with a potential mate. We do not give the same social considerations to a friend with benefits as we would a spouse.
It is when the ideal of a relationship bumps into the reality of it that we get into trouble. Not crashing depression, going to jail, psych ward trouble, but rather the confused and muddled kind of trouble that infuses our experience with a subtle sense of discord, discomfort and uncertainty. This anxiety may not even be obvious or wholly evident, but may feel more like a well-worn pair of jeans that don't quite fit right any more, or a familiar object that suddenly and inexplicably feels awkward in your hand.
Let's say that we are in a relationship that we believe is headed toward marriage, and that belief and expectation is supported by our partner. If we live off the ideal and don't pay attention to the concrete, we may tend to ignore red flags of which we would normally take note, or accept conditions or circumstances that might, in another case, be baldly unacceptable to us.
In this instance, we are letting our ideal of the relationship overshadow the concrete reality with which we are confronted and we become trapped in what the wisdom teachings call maya, the darkness of illusion. Our sight, and insight, is literally stolen from us by our grasping for what we think is front of us, but, in fact, is only a product of our own needs, wants, desires and projected expectations.
This is the point we must consider the meta-relationship -- our relationship to relationship. Stop and think for a moment; what are your relationships to your own various relationships? Our assumptions, expectations and ideas about the way the world works motivate our relationship to relationship and also provide a template for our idea of relationship. That template in hand, we will overlay it upon social situations that we encounter in our day-to-day lives.
If we expect that all police officers are aggressive and authoritarian, then, when we get pulled over for speeding, we are immediately defensive and aggressive ourselves. If we expect our supervisor to be a tyrant, then we may posture ourselves to either provoke that behavior or create other conflict because s/he is not tyrannical. If we meet someone on-line, trade a few emails and talk on the phone, then the false intimacy created by that interchange colors our expectations and we may fall into the trap of starting a relationship in the middle, rather than at the beginning. If we fail to recognize the degree of our partner's passive-aggression and inability to confront his/her own interior conflicts we may be blind-sided by a break-up, rather than having the opportunity for an adult conversation.
Without looking inward to understand our motivations for choosing a particular relationship - which often have nothing to do with the concrete relationship that is before us - we are lost to our own illusion. The consequence of that can range from nominal - you get a speeding ticket for not playing nice -- to devastating - you lose the love of your life because you, by virtue of your own illusions, failed to notice something was amiss and confront it.
All relationships have three sides, the concrete, the ideal and the meta-relationship or relationship to relationship. Bearing this in mind, we can develop a clearer perspective of our relationships and, by that default, engender a more authentic experience of our lives, our loves and our understanding of both our own personal social fabric and, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, the larger warp and woof of our lives.
© 2008 Michael J. Formica, All Rights Reserved
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