On togetherness (Or, on relationships and distance)

This is a difficult post to write. I contemplate on the subject of togetherness practically everyday, and I don’t seem to gather any insights. That’s probably because I struggle so much to understand what togetherness fundamentally means. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve started to understand this concept better. I will try to articulate some of the insights in this post.

Some history

I am a fundamentally insecure person when it comes to some relationships and some aspects of work and achievement. At the same time, as with most people, I struggle with trying to draw the line between independence and dependence in relationships. Again, that’s because I don’t fundamentally understand what independence means. And, dependence brings with it vulnerabilities which are hard to recognize and accept given that I have such a reputation of being a ‘strong’ person.

Given this struggle between independence and dependence in relationships, it is hard to take distance and recognize what togetherness means.

As girls and women, we are socialized, in small and big ways, to be dependent: someone must accompany us home when it gets late at night. Someone should help out with the luggage and bags if they are too heavy to lift. Someone should pick us up from the airport and help us get to our destination in a new city. Of course, this situation of dependencies is changing in small and big ways in today’s times when women are stepping out of the bounds of home and entering the realms of work and social life more prominently.

I come from a tradition and generation where the eventual goal for girls in my family was to get married (as it was for the boys). In my mother’s family, the goal for girls was to get married to a rich businessman and let him take care of the bread and butter, while the woman procreated and managed the house and children. My father’s family was different because lack of abundance in his fraternity caused all the children of his siblings to strive towards becoming successful and abundant in the comforts of life. In this respect, I had my father’s and my mother’s support in becoming financially independent, and working towards wealth as a goal for success. My mother went a step ahead and encouraged me to experience new places and relationships which were helping me to become emotionally independent. I suspect she wanted me to unlearn the fallacy of the spouse as the ultimate abode of (financial and emotional) security (though she is comfortable with her dependence on my father for financial support).

One would imagine with the above, I’d be a fairly independent and emotionally healthy individual. While that is the case for a good part of me, another good part of me is this person who is always struggling with existentialism, dependencies in relationships, power dynamics, and meaning of success.

I run a business with my husband as my co-founder. The part of me, which has been the struggling self, has invaded most part of me as a result of the struggles and inability to come to terms with dependencies, power dynamics, and the meaning of success. Let’s not even get to existentialism — it was pretty f**ked up until recently when I realized that togetherness involves being able to build a unique identity for yourself without necessarily treating the other person(s) in the relationship as antagonist(s).

Some present

Sometime last year, I came across an article on Medium about a woman who left her successful job in venture capital and decided to learn coding. One part of her motivation to learn coding had to do with ‘being together’ with her boyfriend who was coding up the app for her startup. In this case, ‘being together’ meant being able to stay at the same pace (of the company’s and technology’s growth) and being able to experience it all ‘together’. I suppose this is usually the motivation for a number of couples who now plan to start businesses together – let’s build this together and experience it all together, just as we have built this relationship together. While this is healthy and I have mentioned it earlier that couples perhaps make the best and easiest startup co-founders because the trust is all established (as against when you have to start a business with friends or outsiders), it ain’t that easy in practice. In practice, I have struggled with power dynamics, definitions of success and recognition, as most women (and men) in couple-led startups do. The boundaries between dependence and independence are confused even further when running a business together. It has taken me five years to recognize and put into practice the notion that my spouse, who is my co-founder, is counsel at business (as he may be at home) and not primarily a decision-maker. I believe this recognition and distancing has been one of the keys for uncovering the fundamental meaning of togetherness.

Some insights:

I did not mean this post to be one about gender or startups. I meant to highlight the role of history and the role of gender socialization underlying the truth and fallacies about togetherness. So here are some of the truths and untruths I have uncovered recently:

1. Togetherness does not mean doing ‘everything’ together, ‘all the time’. It does mean doing some things together, sometimes. And these things change too – things you enjoyed doing together, you want to do them alone at some point in life, and do newer things together.
2. Togetherness is a state, not a way of being, all the time. States change as individuals and their minds and world views change. The value and meanings we assign to togetherness also change as our states change.
3. Building a unique identity for yourself in the relationship is not in opposition to togetherness. It is very much in tandem with togetherness for togetherness is not about suffocating each other — it is about bringing uniqueness to the relationship and celebrating it.
4. Running a business with your spouse is not a philosophical or emotional choice. It is a practical decision. And it is important to always be mindful of the practicality of this choice and put it into consideration in every decision you make for your business (and your relationship).
5. Definitions of success (and therefore of identity) are different for men and women because we are socialized in different ways. I don’t mean to say this as a given. I mean to say this as a reminder — men and women struggle in their own ways to realize and maintain recognition and success because of different ways of gender socialization and a number of other factors. Be mindful of the fact that one person’s success and recognition in the relationship is not the subsumption of the other person’s identity. It means that the other person has to be that much stronger, resilient and secure about himself / herself. And that’s a hard challenge because the world is judgmental (and cruel by virtue of its judgments), and we are always driven by our ghosts — real and perceived.
6. The birth and entry of a child and/or a startup in the relationship is a disruption for togetherness. But as the child / startup grows, s/he / it makes you cognizant of togetherness in ways you did not realize. Bringing up a child or a business together is a refresher (as much as a destroyer) for togetherness. Always place your hope in the prospect and mirth of growth — that’s the only way to stay sane and together.

Finally, there is much to be said about ‘pace’ and togetherness. Somehow, pace appears to drive our relationships in ways that we can see and ways we cannot see. Pace — moving along in personal journeys and in the relationship (separately and together) — has come to define togetherness as men and women are almost equally inhabiting the domains of work and public life. Pace is really about who is ahead and behind when it comes to visibility, success, recognition and ambition. Such pacing in relationships is more disruptive than enabling. I don’t have many more insights to share about pace and pacing (as I don’t about space and spacing) except that one has to be mindful of the pace with which one is moving, and the values that one attaches to success, glory and recognition – sometimes being able to given in (and therefore gain more) is a lot more wiser than resisting and fighting.

So much, so far. And, it has taken too far to get here … … …

[I have written this blog post as much in third person as in first person because it has taken that much distancing for me to see what I haven’t been able to see about togetherness. Therefore, pardon the prescriptive nature of this post. The prescriptions are primarily for me. You, the reader, can keep the descriptions.]

[I have also written this post from my own feminine and masculine view points — socialized as a woman by family history and personal experiences, socialized as an entrepreneur in the startup and tech world of Bangalore. It’d be interesting to see what a man (either my spouse or someone else’s) would have to say about togetherness.]