The Three Facets of Relationships
We got a text from a young family friend. He wanted to know if we were available as he had some unexpected free time and could come out and visit for a weekend. We were thrilled about getting together so we could catch up. Then we got another text. He wanted to bring his “partner” and said “they” were really nice and we would love “them.” We said that’s ok, yet we didn’t know if the partner was physically a girl or boy. As our social circle doesn’t currently have a same-sex couple, we knew if the partner was a boy, we’d have to have a conversation with one of our younger kids a bit earlier than we anticipated about modern relationship dynamics and sexuality. Our friend’s partner wound up not coming with him. Over the weekend visit we politely inquired about his life and we had a good conversation about the happy relationship. Ironically, the big mystery of the partners sexual orientation was the most interesting part of the conversation. It was when our young friend said “They treat me better than my old partner.” That made me think about relationships and intimate partnerships. It led me back to a question that was rolling around in the back of my head for a while: What makes a good life partner/spouse? In my mind success revolved around three things.
I kind of like how the new generation refers to their significant other / spouse as a partner. Obviously part of this is because they typically don’t follow the traditional marriage model so words like boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, husband, and wife don’t quite work for even traditional cisgendered couples. When you consider that we live in a world where both members of a couple need to share the burden of living to maintain a lifestyle of even moderate quality, a couple today is a partnership and really, if you think about it, it always was. I think the difference today is that the partnership needs to include similar roles versus generations past when there were clearly defined, and very different roles for traditional male and female couples.
I ultimately determined the three facets or categories that makeup a modern relationship are Social/Sexual, Risk Aversion, and Load Sharing.
Social / Sexual
There is clearly a huge need for sexual compatibility in an intimate relationship. I’m not going there. Sorry. It’s definitely a rich subject with so many areas to explore, but the topic of sexual compatibility has been done to death by a million different outlets. If you want to talk about sex, sexual compatibility, odd sexual picadillos, and how intimacy changes over time and with age, then that’s typically a dialog fit for a Friday night at a local craft beer place. In that environment I’ll be happy to discuss the topic with pretty much anyone except my Children and Father-In-Law (for obvious reasons.) Suffice to say, physical intimacy must match up between partners because if it doesn’t, then there will be huge biological and emotional issues that enter the relationship.
The social aspects of social / sexual are, in my opinion, much more ripe for exploring. There was a period of time when famous celebrity couples would have their names truncated together in the pop media. ‘Bennifer’ (Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez), ‘TomKat’ (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes), and ‘Brangelina’ (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) may have been great brands to compliment the marketing needs of media power couples, yet I think that’s not the real benefit. I think that these combination names illustrate how a couple, any couple, has a personality that’s unique from the personalities of the two constituent parts. This happens because each member will impart their own values onto the other partner. As an example, in some cases, Partner A may suppress their more outspoken opinions in deference to Partner B who likes to leave a good impression at social gatherings. Partner A may be heavily connected to their extended family and Partner B will have to accept that, or there will be friction. This joint personality has a tendency to attract couples to other like minded couples. Over the years I’ve seen this where the couple has three social circles which don’t interact much. Partner A will have their personal friends that Partner B doesn’t like and vice versa. Then they both have a circle of friends they have that consists only of other couples. These separate circles can also become points of friction. In reflecting on this, it’s easy to see where organizations which demand adherence to strict social codes, i.e. church groups, bring value to couples who are both part of the group.
Load Sharing/Balancing
Load sharing is the element of a relationship that is felt most frequently in that it’s integrated in most day to day activities. For me, and I’m sure for most people who are in the child rearing years, it’s most acutely felt with childcare. One working adult may have a last-minute meeting at work scheduled for when the kids have their dentist appointment. The other adult will step in and take the kids. One will take the kids to practice while the other gets the groceries taken care of. The list is endless and it all boils down to a model where if one person can’t do something, the other is the backup. You don’t have to have kids for load balancing to be an important part of a relationship. There are other needs for load balancing beyond children. One spouse can stop by the post office or the bank while the other is at work. This balancing is the thing that takes the stress out of day-to-day life. I most often see real friction in relationships when, in a parenting situation, one parent takes on the majority of the child rearing activities and, for whatever reason, the spouse is resistant to be involved. The family script / justification for not taking part isn’t as important as the fact that, over time, this imbalance can lead to real problems in a relationship. Maybe this is why so many couples start out with a pet.
Another big area of load sharing, one that is as big as child rearing, is financial balancing. If a couple works well together with their money, they are balancing the load out. This is true even if they have different incomes. In the same way it’s ideal if the job of cooking dinner is seen as a shared responsibility for whoever gets there first, In a perfect scenario, financial resources are also a shared responsibility. Like load sharing with the children, it has to be underpinned by shared values and priorities. When couples don’t share the financial load, even when they have different income levels, then there is tremendous conflict, often to the point of separation and/or divorce.
Risk Management / Aversion
Risk aversion is the biggest benefit to being in a relationship, at least it’s the one that resonates the most with me. I guess that’s because I’ve lived it for several years. I know that life has its ups and downs, and they can be extreme. Starting with health risks beyond a cold or catching the pandemic bug du-jour, there are tremendous ramifications when major health issues appear. Cancer, debilitating medical conditions, and bad car accidents are among countless health related issues which can permanently affect our lives. These types of issues can happen to anyone and all can be life changing. It also goes beyond one’s personal health as there are major issues when healthcare for a child or a loved one with a chronic condition becomes a life changing event.
Then there are career related issues. Often the undulations of the economy are beyond any individual’s control. I’ve mentioned it before but I’ve gotten into a self perpetuating cycle of being employed, and then unemployed by bad organizations. You get laid off or fired through no fault of your own and then you scramble to get another job, which, often the only openings are with other poor employers who experience high churn as part of their business model. Consequently you wind up unemployed again in short order. It’s a cycle that took me decades to get out of. It was only because my wife happened to be in a stable employment situation that we were able to survive and keep a roof over our heads and food on our table.
There are other areas where the risk aversion aspect of relationships comes into play. I see the benefits of risk aversion when one member of a couple owns a small business and has to manage the ups and downs of their own business cycles. The couple are able to maintain consistent income and healthcare as they roll with the economic punches. The bottom line is that bad things happen in life with some frequency. By having two people contributing to the household at a high level, the challenges of life are just that: Challenges. They aren’t complete crises.
Juxtapose all this with a family where there is a single breadwinner. They may be a single parent or because of social morals the couple may choose to have a stay-at-home parent. When there is a healthcare emergency, or an unexpected period of employment the impact to the lives of everyone involved can be substantial. Life is filled with risk, and the best way to protect against the risk of bad things happening is if someone has your back.
Every time I think about a relationship I know, I find that their challenges and areas where they excel as a working couple all seem to fall into these categories. In one way or another nearly all elements of being in a couple can be siloed into a Social/Sexual, Load Balancing, or Risk Aversion category. If you are good in all three, then you most likely have an ideal marriage/partnership. If you are struggling in some or all of these categories, then you are most likely in, to use the current phrase, a situation-ship. As I understand the term, it’s not quite a working relationship but there is some form of strong connection between the two parties.
So back to my friend with the partner. It doesn’t matter if the partner has boy parts, girl parts, or both. If they work well together in all these areas they are going to be a strong couple. Now, if you are wondering, it turns out the partner identifies as “non-binary”. Clearly having a non-binary partner complicates things in a world where the vast majority of the population still classifieds humanity into the traditional “He’s and She’s.” I say that because over the years I’ve witnessed an ongoing trend where communities show hostility, sometimes openly, to the very concept of non-binary. This isn’t going to change as cultures tend to change at a glacial pace and often real change only happens over the course of several generations.
For my friend, over time, I can see where this could cause problems in the social/sexual category. This, I think, is a big lesson from this conversation. Thinking about relationships through the lens of these three categories can help the relationships along. In the earliest days of a relationship, thinking about them can help identify if the relationship is a good fit long term. For people already in a long-term relationship that’s rocky, thinking about them can help focus on the root cause of the issues and hopefully the couple will have more ability to address them.
I trust my young friend will easily be able to navigate any bumps in the road he runs into. That’s good. We all need a quality partner in life to help get us through everything life throws at us. So if they are a good partner, and they treat my young friend well, then that’s all I can ask of them, and really, I guess it’s all any of us can ask of our own partners.
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