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Talking with a friend tonight, we discussed a lot about relationships and how they change over time.  However, the relationship shifts because we are constantly changing too, and this is driven heavily by our environment. It is interesting to consider because we aren't very good at predicting our future feelings about something, and less so how it is going to affect us. Yet, when we go into a relationship with the intention of it having longevity, we don't know what we will face, or how we will evolve. 

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/tarazkp/23wC173bcRt7scD9kpmZZLgJTHQAaeKf7GEH89rgzahYTHSv119xN7tVf2Y2R2K9Crwwv.png)

If we are lucky, we will grow together, rather than apart. However, culture has changed a lot and there is less overlap in relationships than there were earlier. If we think back to the typical "50's couple", the wife took care of the home, which meant there was at least one half of the relationship that was relatively stable. And then of course, the husband was likely working for the same company for decades, so it was pretty stable too. The relationship itself was able to live in a  fairly stable environment, with not too much change.

That has of course shifted (for the better in many cases) since, but it has put additional pressures on relationships, because a more variable environment is going to impact on the way we evolve. And, since there is less overlap between partners, there is more chance that a couple will *grow apart* from each other, especially since there is also other factors in play, including more social availability, technologies that take our attention, and more opportunity to do things separately from each other, with travel and hobbies often being away from each other. 

And of course on top of this, there are also new pressures on us as individuals, where what we expect *for ourselves* has also changed in terms of career, income, and our partners. People tend not to "settle" as much, and compromise has become antiquated, a relic of the past. Now, there is more drive to getting what we want, without having to consider other people at all. 

These complexities (and more) make it increasingly difficult to both build and maintain relationships, because so much of our lives are lived apart. Even sitting down at the end of a workday, is often in front of a streaming show where people watch next to each other, but not really *together.* People tend to spend more time in their own informational worlds, sharing less with the people they live with, more with strangers. 

In reflection, he has been able to workout where the "split" in direction happened, but hadn't really considered why. I posited that it was at that point that he started to gain confidence again through being valued for who he is and what he offers adequately, which brought him renewed confidence, and helped him rediscover who he is. At the same time, his partner stagnated, and had lost their ambition to do something they really cared about, deciding instead to exist, but not really live.  

While the fork was over a decade ago, the gradual movement away from each other without any kind of course correction, meant that at some point, the divide was too far, they could no longer see each other across the space. For all intents and purposes, they were two "too different" people, and if they had met again as singles in these conditions, they wouldn't have chosen each other again.

We never really know how we are going to react to life, but we definitely don't know how we are going to change throughout life. Just think about all the "I will nevers" you might have said as a child, only to do those very things a few short years later. And, why wouldn't you, because when you were a child, you didn't know all that you would know later and with new information, there comes new insights into why doing that very thing can be justified. 

And similarly, when a couple chooses each other with every intention of staying together forever, they don't know what they are going to face, and how facing it is going to change them, as well as the person they are with. Would a married couple say "I do" again, *if they knew who they and who their partner would be in a decade or two from the wedding day? 

We just don't know. However, what *I believe,* is that if a couple does want to stay together in the current culture, they have to find ways to be together and spend time ensuring that there are overlaps in life, there is sharing between each other that includes more than deciding who will do the dishes and take the bins out at the end of the day. If we don't *live together emotionally,* we will start to lose a sense of who our partner is, as they evolve through the events of their life, and they lose us. 

Relationships are conditions of shared experience, and if we aren't sharing with the people we want closest to us, the kind of relationship that is built, becomes one of convenience, transactional - the connection of strangers at the carnival - unknowns, but sitting nexxt to each other on the same ride. 


Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]


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