What Are Relationships Anyway?
Hello!
When someone asks you about your relationships, what springs to mind? If you're like most people, you probably think immediately of your romantic partner – or the lack of one. In other words, “I have a relationship” or “I’m not in a relationship”. That's completely natural, our culture holds up the intimate sexual relationship as the pinnacle, the pièce de résistance of human connection.
I have a problem with that narrow definition as it risks leaving us feeling diminished, less than, broken or even wrong. It completely misses the highly likely possibility that our lives are rich with meaningful connections and myriad relationships.
The Hierarchy We Don't Talk About
Think about friendship for a moment. Even there, we tend to rank things – who's your ‘best’ friend? It starts when we're tiny. My three-year-old granddaughter recently informed me, quite seriously, that my dear friend of many decades was her best friend, not mine.
At three, she's already absorbed this idea that relationships must be ranked, that there's a top spot and everyone else comes after.
This hierarchical thinking doesn't stop in childhood. I've had friends confess to feeling deeply jealous when their ‘best friend’ shares deeply with someone else. It's fascinating, really. We're adults with huge responsibilities – mortgages, rent, bills, careers, dependents – and yet we can feel five years old again when we sense we're not someone's number one.
The Relationships We Don't Choose
Then there are our inherited family relationships, the ones we didn't choose but either don’t want to or can't seem to let go of. Family. The crew we were given when we arrived.
These early connections create patterns that ripple through every relationship we'll ever have. Some of us come from cultures where duty to parents and siblings is paramount, where boundaries feel almost impossible to draw. Others experience a reversal, where parents feel duty-bound to support adult children emotionally and financially.
Neither way is right or wrong, but both shape how we show up in all our other relationships. The sibling rivalry, the middle child ‘syndrome’, the pattern of always being the peacemaker or the rebel – these aren't just family quirks. They become blueprints that follow us into friendships, workplaces, and romantic partnerships.
The Relationship Nobody Mentions
Here's something that took me years of work to fully understand: your relationship with yourself matters most of all. I don't mean this in a self-help magazine sort of way. I mean the actual, moment-to-moment relationship you're having with yourself all the time – even right now as you read this.
How are you being with yourself today? Kind? Compassionate? Critical? Distracted?
This interior relationship affects every external one. If you're abandoning yourself – ignoring your needs, dismissing your feelings, pushing past your limits – you'll likely also either be abandoning others or allowing them to abandon you.
The question “how are you feeling?” seems simple. It’s common parlance to open every exchange with “how are you?” Folk usually reply “fine”. But if you genuinely want to know the answer, either for yourself or from someone else, it requires you to take a moment to drop into your body and notice.
The answer isn’t how you felt this morning or how you think you should feel, but what's actually happening in this moment – how are you feeling right now. It's harder than it sounds, and it's also one of the most valuable practices you can develop.
Beyond the Binary
We often think in dualistic terms: goodies and baddies, friends and enemies, belonging or exclusion. This lens can get us stuck in difficult terrain, creating winners and losers where there needn't be any.
Reflecting on any of our relationships in this way can lead to more discomfort than resolution. It can be helpful to remember there are other relationships that can help us move beyond this limiting view.
Consider your relationship with place. The city or the countryside or the seaside. Your childhood home or where you live now. These places, often unnoticed, affect your body, your senses, your daily experience of being alive.
Some people extend this further to include their relationship with nature, or the universe, or God – bigger, more expansive lenses that can remind us we're part of something larger.
When Relationships Go Sideways
Not all relationships flourish. Some go off the tracks, reach their sell-by date and need to be let go. The changeability of relationships is both their beauty and their challenge.
How do you grow with them? How do you know when to repair and when to release? How do you recover when something breaks down?
These aren't rhetorical questions. They're the real work of being in living relationship with your partner, your friends, your family, yourself, and the world around you.
A Small Practice
This week, notice one relationship you haven't been paying attention to. Maybe it's with a colleague you see daily but barely register. Maybe it's with the place you live. Maybe, and this might be the most important one, it’s with yourself.
Just notice. See what happens when you bring a bit more awareness to that connection. You might be surprised what you discover.
If you'd like to hear more about this, you can listen to the full conversation on The Sex and Relationships Podcast. Aileen and I will be exploring different types of relationships throughout this series – including jealousy, family dynamics, and what happens when relationships need to end.
Feel free to let me know how you get on with noticing your relationships this week. I'd genuinely love to hear what you discover.
Until next time,
Clare