| The Evolution Process
Every relationship has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
This may seem a little too clearly defined because the movement of relationships is never actually this neat, but it is still true. The beginning or the end may be ambiguous or may stretch over a period of years as opposed to a single, definable moment on a particular day and the middle may sometimes look more like a beginning or an end than a middle.
But it stills holds true.
A relationship always starts. It always has interaction in the middle. And it always ends.
But just to make reiterate the messiness of this whole process, the different parts of the relationship are never clearly set. What does it mean and look like for a relationship to end? I don't know. Sometimes it is a verbal acknowledgement, sometimes it just seemingly drifts off after not being in contact for a particular period of time. Sometimes the only reason it ends is because of death. And this same lack of clarity is present for the beginning and the middle, too.
Unfortunately, because of the sloppiness of being human beings, we don't have a whole lot of structure to work with here. But even in the midst of all their complexity, it stills holds true that beginnings, middles, and ends are all there.
All this to say that relationships evolve.
They change.
They morph.
They develop and progress and decline and start back up and get reignited and fade and look different and all sorts of other different things that happen when two or more people come in contact with one another.
Chaos may be a good word to use here.
Which means that the important part of relationships, then, is being able to navigate the chaos.
Evolution in our interconnection with our fellow beings is going to happen.
We just have to navigate it.
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| We Like It Static
There is an interesting dynamic to this evolution process that offers some good guidance to how to navigate the various progressions that occur in our interactions with one another:
That we only cause a ruckus over negative evolutions.
There are no interventions when everything is going well. We usually don't even display any particular awareness when everything is smooth. We kind of assume it.
But when things change in what we would deem "negative" - this is what typically leads to awkward and tense interactions.
Maybe we could say that, while we are pros at navigating good developments, we suck when relationships evolve the other direction.
We just don't know how to do it.
A picture would look like this:
You have a friendship. It began because of some sort of commonality or meeting and bonds were strengthened as trust and intimacy developed. A lot of this had to deal with context, place, and circumstances. This is what nourished the relationship. But then you started dating somebody which led to less time with the friend as the romantic relationship experienced more investment and took up more of your energy. And though none of the bonds or commonalities changed in your friendship, the circumstances did. Your original friendship developed under a certain context that naturally led to a particular direction that you both journeyed together. But suddenly, the circumstances changed and a new direction surfaced for you. As your life began to look different, it had implications both for your new romantic involvement and your friendship.
The relationship evolved.
Which doesn't mean that it ends. It just means that the "middle" section is looking differently now.
But, as a result, you talk less. There isn't as much depth and, though you still have the history, there isn't as much energy being put into that relationship.
And it is here that feelings are hurt, expectations are broken, and everything goes "bad".
Yet, what has happened isn't bad. It is just different. Back in the early stages when you began getting closer in your friendship there was no protest that things were changing and were different. Because we only make these comments when it changes in a decline from what we had to come to know as normal.
Usually, the comments tend to be pretty destructive, too. The one friend claims that they are being punished and they want to know what they did and what happened to make things go so wrong. It gets treated as some sort of breakup. And what I find interesting is when the "punishment" card gets played because, when good developments are happening, there is no talk of "rewards". Again, we only notice when things aren't moving in our desired directions.
However, this sort of movement in our interactions is ignorant of the very nature of relationships. Because the person in the example wasn't doing anything to cause harm to their friend, they were simply adapting to the circumstances that they found themselves in. Their context changed and it led to a new direction.
Why are we so opposed to this?
We get upset when we move in new directions, when what was intimate loses its depth. Because we liked how things were. What we had was good.
But we have to realize that this can change.
And that is ok.
There seems to be some sort of assumption that once we develop a relationship and it is "good", then we are then guaranteed that relationship. But that just isn't how relationships work. Which is why we have to have some sort of public and covenantal commitment with a marriage; so that when movement and evolution happens, you are committed to moving together. But unless you take this approach into every relationship, then you can't expect that sort of guarantee.
When things move and change, you have to be ok with it and just call it what it is.
Even with my son Landon, while I hope we are always connected, I'm not guaranteed that we always will be. His direction that he chooses is his choice and that has to be acknowledged.
But this is typically the problem...we don't like acknowledging this kind of thing.
We aren't very good at naming the progressions in our relationship. We don't accept their fluidity and complexities. We want them to be static and ask that they be like rocks more than anything else.
But this just shows that we don't really understand rocks.
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| Rocks
Because our relationships actually work a lot like metamorphic rocks.
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| Evolution of Metamorphic Rocks |
It changes.
It looks different.
It went in a new direction.
And it is ok.
It wasn't a punishment or something negative, it was just the natural movement of the world and the rock adapted.
As it is with us.
This isn't to say that we just throw our connections and bonds away or that we don't act constructively. You can't just get pissed because they made you upset, never talk to them again, and say, "Well its like metamorphic rocks jerk." That would be using this in the wrong way.
But it is to say that as directions morph and evolve, our relationships will go with it.
And the worst thing we could do is try to hold onto the old circumstances and stay an igneous rock when the world has morphed us into something else.
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