Over time, I’ve built up a framework for trying to understand the difficulty an individual faces when trying to keep up with all their responsibilities to the things they care about most. Maybe that isn’t the right way to put it, but the idea will become clear as we progress through. This may also be some known philosophy of maintaining relationships, but it’s something I came up with myself when trying to understand my own attempt to be the best I can be to those I care about.
I’ve found myself repeating this concept to people when describing life today and it has yet to not resonate with folks. So I’m spending this time trying to flesh it out in my mind in the vein of writing to think.
This is a generic view of the progress of life and when various types of relationships enter into an individual's life. Of course, this mold doesn't fit everyone, but that's not the point. So don't be pedantic if you have an example outside of this description, follow what I'm saying overall.
Here we go…
Tl;dr: So in general, an individual has to maintain a number of relationships to be fulfilled. This number changes over time as one gets older. At some point, that number grows to a point where there isn’t enough available energy and time to completely fulfill everything.
This is where most things break down for folks: Improperly caring for a core relationship in their life, and then a subsequent cascading effect when that relationship dies (gets past the point of recovery without trauma).
Let’s start with these relationships and how they change as you grow older. When you’re young and growing up, it’s quite simple. Your fundamental relationship is your family. Your parents and siblings if you have them. Family dynamics come into play hard here and shape your conception about what relationships actually are in the first place.
As you get a bit older (teens, pre-teens?, earlier???, you get the idea), you discover your relationships with yourself. You’re an individual with self-referential feelings and a motivation to “be somebody”. Then friends come along as relationships you need to maintain. These are different than you family and can actually quite dramatically shape your other current relationships (self and family), depending on the circumstances.
Now I’m going to group family and friends into the same group. Why? Because in many circumstances, they play the same role. In some cases, friends play the standard role that family members play. It’s the group you can rely on for support for issues you’re facing. It’s how you originally shape your idea of love, support, and camaraderie. In any event, you rely on both groups to grow and understand who you are, and both drastically shape your self image as a young adult.
Outside of traumatic experiences (which unfortunately is more common than most of us would like to recognize), all of these relationships are maintainable with the time and energy you have at your disposal. They all influence one another, but you can typically handle it.
Let’s label these simply for the purpose of being explicit. As a teenager or young adult, you need to maintain the following relationships with the following groups within your life:
- yourself
- your family/friends
As life progresses, many people take on two extra relationships. Not all take on both, but most do. One is a spouse, the other is a career. Let’s stick with statistics and the majority of folks and say that over time, an individual will take on both. Save you arguments for when you’re done reading, the point will become clear later. Just work with me.
Society pushes us to do both of these things: support ourselves to remove that burden from our parents, and find someone to go on that journey with (and the natural sex drive to be with someone play a role here). So we’ve quickly doubled the number of relationships we should be maintaining to:
- yourself
- your family/friends
- your spouse
- your career
Now you can arguably still maintain all of these things with the time/energy you have available to yourself. There’s certainly an on-going shift in prioritization and focus depending on the life events that are happening, but nothing is suffering.
Here’s where it gets interesting, and what I would call a fundamental shift in a human’s life.
If you’re one of those folks that has a spouse, is naturally inclined to procreate (naturally or artificially), and decide to remove the goalie to increase the human population, then you quickly add another relationships to the mix: a child. Now we’re at maintaining the following relationships:
- yourself
- your family/friends
- your spouse
- your career
- your children
My main argument for this article is at this point, you are no longer able to fully maintain all the relationships in your life. There simply isn’t enough time to adequately nurture the needs of all of these people and their attachment to you. However you decide to allocate your time and energy, something will suffer.
I’d like to also argue that this is where most things break down for people: they simply can’t properly deal with this situation and allow something to be neglected too much.
Examples you ask? I’m super glad you did:
- Infidelity in a relationship because you’ve neglected your spouse to pursue your career while also trying to be a good father.
- A terrible relationship with your kids because you are bitter that you’ve reached this threshold and you still want things to be simple.
- You become a recluse to your friends and family because you want to be a loving parent while maintaining the spark with your spouse, providing a good example of a healthy relationship to your kids.
- You become depressed and unhappy because you’re constantly serving others while never paying attention to yourself and your personal needs.
- You enter maintenance mode in your job because your personal life is more important to you, and get flagged for “not being a go-getter”.
Need I go on? I’m sure you can craft your own stories from this concept, or relate to ones I’ve already mentioned.
So what to do?
In my opinion, the move from here is to accept the truth. You can’t simultaneously nurture all of these relationships to fulfillment with the time and energy you have available to you. The best you can do is prioritize what’s important at the time based on circumstances, and constantly re-assess that prioritization based on new things happening.
The goal is to make sure nothing gets neglected to a point of severe detriment, and continuously assess and shift focus. This is fucking hard.
I’d argue that neglecting any of these relationships to the point of it dying quickly poisons the other relationships as a consequence. Cheated on your spouse? Have a fun time with that divorce, or just re-gaining that trust if they decide to stick with it (seems low-probability these days…). Lost your job? Good luck providing for that family. We could do this for days, you get the point.
In order to do this properly, communication has to happen with those that find themselves in a state of neglect. The relationships you’re not prioritizing should understand why they aren’t getting the attention they deserve. If they care about you, they’ll understand. But they can’t do this if it isn’t communicated.
That’s basically it, check in with those you love, including yourself.
Think about how you’re dividing your time and energy and maybe adjust it if something is being neglected too much. If you’re feeling neglected, then bring it up and use this as a language to explore what’s going on with the other person in the relationship.
Now I have a shit load of derivative thoughts on how someone gets their needs met, and the relationships they rely on to get that done, and how that may differ from conventional wisdom, but I’ll save that for another day. This seems like a reasonable place to stop.
Love y’all, hope it serves you as well as it’s served me in trying to be a good person to those I care about (including myself). Hit me up on X if you have thoughts and criticisms. If you know more more personally, hit me up how you already know how to.
Addendum: After writing this and thinking a little bit, I realized that I left out a big piece for many people around the globe, that that’s their relationship with their faith. I don’t really have one, which is why I never really considered it. But this is a very important part of the majority of people’s lives and it deserves to be included. A person’s faith has a huge influence on their other relationships and also takes up time and attention which could be used elsewhere. So the actual (reasonably complete) set would be:
- yourself
- your family/friends
- your faith
- your spouse
- your career
- your children
Furthermore I would introduce it before a spouse or career comes in. While for many, a true faith doesn’t come until adulthood, the influence and introduction to a faith brought on quite early in a child’s life, if not immediately. In many circumstances, it completely shapes what the other relationships look like by the constraints the faith puts on a person’s ethics and practice. Certainly, something to consider.