We’ve Forgotten How To Be In Relationship With Each Other
Why I refuse to give up this sacred human trait
My line manager passes me on the corridor this afternoon, “Minty, did you see the form I have asked our team to fill out?”, he says. Oh, I saw it alright. I saw that it had asked me to rank my week from 0 to 5 (0 being terrible, 5 being awesome). I saw that it had asked me to select which of my colleagues had been “helpful” to me this week. And I saw that there was a box for me to voice “honestly your concerns and feedback”.
What happened to conversations? What happened to our very humanity when we start to replace people with tick boxes?
Relationships are dying and I want to revive them from the dead.
I recently spent a week in Wales with friends. On this trip, I became acutely aware of how many people I wanted to form a connection with. There was the community I wanted to go into the business of buying land with, there was my Lover with who I wanted to spiritually connect with, and then there were new friends — delightful human beings that I had heard so much about that I wanted to form new friendships with.
What I was aware of was that my time and capacity were limited and true connection requires these very things — attention, presence, listening and being with another person. We, however, live in a world where these things appear to be scarce, and it has become more apparent to me that we’ve started to substitute real and necessary connections with technology. Technology, which, has enabled relationships to die.
It pains me to bag technology, I’ve sustained, and continue to sustain, many a long-distance relationship because of it. What I am wary and of, and want to flag, is technology fully substituting authentic connections.
I’ve noticed within myself that in romantic relationships, for example, when the foundations of the connection have been supported solely by text messages or face-time/zoom conversation — I actually end up developing a delusional idea of the person I am in a relationship with. I experienced this first hand in a two-year long-distance (Singapore to Egypt) romance and can now admit that I spent many days imagining who my partner was and buying into the illusion that they were this perfect ‘other person’ that suited my very needs. It becomes a fantasy and sometimes addictive one at that. And of course, the reality is much farther from the truth.
The truth appears to be that we often don’t seem to want to see people for who exactly they are. We either want to see them as an illusion or fantasy of who we wish for them to be, or we want to see them as robots: people who serve a function for us. I see this as blocking us from empathy, seeing life from other perspectives, challenging our way of viewing the world and accepting that we aren’t always right. That our Lovers, friends and partners aren’t perfect, that they are flawed human beings just like us, or that our employees/employers have feelings and full-bodied lives.
When we are with each other, in all the joy and all the difficulties, we start to realise how beautiful we all are despite all our trauma, bullshit and mess. We build compassion and forgiveness, and in return, we might feel more accepted and forgiven. The pedestalling stops, and we truly see each other.
In a society where it is so easy to run away, hide in our own houses or rooms without the need to engage in real human contact as we connect solely to our smart phones…
We need to relearn how to be in right relation with each other. And let me tell you, its not easy.
So I’m in Wales — and I’m realising that I’m withholding my feelings from my Lover because I’m afraid of how he might perceive me. I’m withholding speaking my mind to my friends because I’m scared of creating a fuss. I’m also shit scared of receiving feedback because I’m scared of hating myself. And yet, when I leant into all of this — all the difficult conversations that I needed to have, all the difficult feelings I needed to sit with — I came into right relationship with myself and right relationship with others.
In the act of wanting to be with, communicate and connect authentically with others (as opposed to running away and hiding) the veils of stories were lifted (you know, the ones you have in your head about everyone else?). In its place, a deeper understanding of how each of us is moulded, what each of us carries in our little baggage of life and most importantly, how I could help cradle and shaped with care each delicate relationship, like a spider weaving new webs, comes to grow.
My friends Julyan Davey and Will Franks always told me: “You heal by being in relationship with others”, and although this concept initially confused me, over time it has evolved to become a mantra of mine. The more I seek authentic connection, in real life, in real-time — getting into the mud and muck of life with each of our fucked up selves — the more I fall in love with human beings.
I wish my boss hadn’t sent me a form today asking me to tell him how my day was going. I wish I lived in a world where he and others might feel empowered to simply pop over and have a conversation with me. Ask me about my life, my interests, my sadness and my joys. And although I appreciate there are many amazing new companies, enterprises and start-ups that are already embodying this kind of culture — I believe we still have much to learn about the art of connection. The craft of listening. And the gift of presence.
Connections and relationships take the kind of time, care and attention one needs to give to growing basil on a window sill (they are delicate little shits), or seeds in their garden. Yet I am up for this work of relationship tending, relationship composting* and relationship growing.
I’m all in, in relationships. Are you?
*Relationship Composting: a term my community and I have come up with to describe sitting together in open and honest dialogue to discuss tensions and conflicts before they erupt into a larger disagreement or passive-aggressive behaviour.
