Relations

What does it mean to be in a relationship with someone? Is the act of encountering a person enough to constitute a relationship? Is some type of verbal or physical exchange necessary? Or is it something deeper?

I like to think of relationships as interactions with people that I know. Still incredibly vague, but it's all a bit subjective anyway...I need to feel like I know the person; not incredibly well, but enough to recognize who they are and feel somewhat inclined to say hi to them if our paths crossed in a foreign setting. Relationships for me start at the acquaintance level. My relationships span co-workers, neighbors, front door help, friends, and family. If I've met you and had a few interactions with you, I'd consider us to have a relationship; a very tenuous one but nevertheless a social bond. 

This social bond is so fascinating. There are so many different forms of relationships and yet we can boil it down to a single word to describe these interactions. We have evolved to need relationships to function as fully developed individuals. We need people in our lives and the deeper we can make our relationships, the more fulfilling our lives become. As I type this, I think about my strong ties to the people in my life. I think of the ones who make my life worth living: the ones who would throw my life out of balance if they were suddenly gone. They all enrich my life differently and I am so grateful for who they are...to me. 

To me.

It's interesting to look at your relationships for what they really are: a series of interactions with another person, interpreted by you. The bonds we establish with other individuals are important because of the interpretations we give them. Sure, we share obvious affinities like "I like how funny you are" or "I like how I'm always able to talk to you about anything", but if you stop to analyze what you like in a relationship, our unique interpretations of events make our enjoyment of a relationship inevitably different from the reciprocating party. You may both like spending time with each other, but one of you likes it because it occupies their mind and acts as a distraction from dealing with internal conflict while the other likes spending time because they feel more brave and comfortable doing things with another human being. The nuanced enjoyments of a relationship are so vast and complex.  I would love to know fundamentally why the people in my life like spending time with me and compare that to the reasons I like spending time with them.

I read this book recently (mentioned in a previous post) that describes the aspect of trustworthiness in a relationship as a bank account. With every interaction with a person, we are either making debits (borrowing from the trust account and asking for the person to trust us) or credits (investing in the trust account and showing that we can and should be trusted). Everything that we do is either a debit or a credit. I think this analogy can be applied to the entire quality of a relationship and works as a succinct reminder of how to enrich our relationships. We are always enhancing the relationship and bringing value to it (credit) or taking advantage of the relationship and using the quality of it for our benefit (debit). We must always be making credits to our relationships to ensure we don't "go negative" in our accounts. It's fine to take out debits, but always remember to make regular and meaningful credits to sustain a deep relationship. 

Some may be offended by the binary approach with which I conceptualize the fundamentals of a meaningful relationship. There is no denying the many and varied facets of a relationship and I do not aspire to discounting these complexities. I simply suggest a concise reminder for building and maintaining a strong bond with a person: Remember to add credits. You do that and you will be rich.