“Who are we to each other???”
by Mira and Charles on October 3rd, 2007It happens a lot more often than you might think. People enter a kind of love limbo where the boundaries and definitions of who they are to each other get confused. Friends with benefits (interesting new research here), marrieds who don’t sleep together, people getting divorced who continue to sleep together, relationships where working together and loving each other get blurred and tangled, and lots of other ways to be in the no-man’s-land of relationships. Is this freedom, or is it a mess? First of all, we’d love to hear what you think. Can these over-the-borderline relationships ever really work? Are they just transitional? Most of all, what’s been your experience?? Let us hear.
But we need to say this.
Every relationship, from the most normal (whatever that is!) to the most creative mixing of expectations and roles, has two things going on, always.
First, whether spoken or unspoken, there is a real dialogue over “Who are we to each other?” Do we really care about each other? Is our caring balanced? What are are roles, and what do we wish they were. In a very real way, everything that happens in a relationship is a sorting out of these issues.
Second, can you talk freely and openly about who you are to each other, and who you want to be to each other? If you can, then things can be great. Everything is possible. But if you can’t, or you don’t, talk about how you want things to be between you, then you’re just setting yourselves up to be the victims of the events or emotions of the moment.
For some help on how to talk about who you are to each other without getting into conflict, check this out. Also, check out our book The Weekend Marriage for tips on how to talk when you don’t have much time to talk. And look for tips in future blogs on how to talk about difficult things you really gotta talk about.
‘Cause fun as it is to just drift, if you don’t deal with what you want, there’s a good chance things won’t turn out the way you want.
