The relationship work ethic

Social media has negative effects on our well-being for a reason we don’t talk about enough. It’s created a fallacy that relationships, finding friends or partners, finding collaborators, developing community should be easy. When it’s not, people come up with ideas to use technology to make it easier: I know! AI that will tell you your friends are nearby, or that you have the same musical tastes as someone, or you can ‘join a community’ that puts you in a space where you can look at people’s self-promotion and job postings at the same time as other people. (Yes, I get animated about the community platforms, obviously).

But really, there isn’t a way to completely circumvent the process of getting to know other people, figuring out ways that you can be with each other and ways that don’t work, of negotiating all the ancillary aspects of a relationship like your proximity, whether you get along with their existing circles, whether you share enough of a common goal to accomplish something, who is going to do the work of initiating contact or planning things to do, I mean the list goes on and on.

There are interesting ways to facilitate or open the door to the process of forming relationships. Some of the needs we have now are side effects of other technology we have developed over time, and we could look at how to tweak or rethink the ways we’re together as mediated by technology. But making it ‘easier’ or especially ‘faster’ feels a little like abandoning the very needs at the core of relationships, which is belonging, mattering, loving, being loved, none of which make any sense to make “frictionless.”

I have wished before for the kind of learning depicted in The Matrix, where I could just plug something into my head and suddenly play piano or tennis or be a wicked martial artist. How cool would that be? Except that why are skills valuable in the first place? I suppose if I could play tennis well I’d enjoy playing tennis more, but on the other hand, if I enjoyed tennis enough as a beginner, why not stick with it and get the joy of improving? I mean, if I was great at tennis I would need technology to also expand time so that there’d be hours free to go to a tennis court, not to mention some kind of point to playing tennis in the first place, if everyone can just get out-of-the-box proficiency. Would I “win” tennis matches by virtue of anything I was doing or just have a more impressive tennis game upload?

A digression, but isn’t the same thing true about friends or collaborators? What makes us long for connection has to do at least in part with wanting to be known and seen as individual, unique, and special to someone. Or in a group, to be a trusted part of the interpersonal dynamic, and to feel like our presence and our perspective are valued. Even more importantly, we know and value our friends and collaborators. If we didn’t, then why would it matter if they care about us?

There are people working on AI that is supposed to emulate this but it misses something obvious. Probably most people have had the experience of being in a one-sided relationship. Sure, there’s ego validation at some level, but doesn’t it actually feel bad to be the person who is less invested? My experience is that I’ve felt like a bit of a jerk for not caring enough, resentful because I didn’t invite the level of connection that it seems like I was asked to reciprocate, and even a little bit lonely since it’s a situation that puts lack of connection front and centre.

We can create spaces that reduce the sense of interpersonal obligation to the degree that we can feel a generalized sense of connection, and many of those spaces open the doors for people to be vulnerable and feel a sense of belonging, but when the rubber meets the road, we really want someone who will know what we’re going through, who we’ve negotiated challenges with so we know they are in it with us in a serious way.

I have to question myself here, because I do think there’s something powerful about finding people who share passions, values, a mission, or a desire to change and grow. But finding is really such a small part of the work to be done to have connection and meaning. And so the key is starting small, with one or two people, building and understanding the speed of trust within your relationship.

It’s not even the perfect people we need, it’s the people who are willing and open to showing up for one other. But in a world where you can sift though thousands of profiles, of the ads we create of ourselves, it’s easy to think that our job is to pick the right product, rather than to experience the discomfort of early and emerging relationships.

Because it is uncomfortable to not know whether someone likes you, is reliable, will call you back. To not be sure what their reaction will be to your flaws, or just to things about each of us that might not be appreciated by everyone. To reveal things that you’re not sure about yourself, to love people when they don’t always receive it. To know if they’re just busy or have passed on getting closer. So many things are hard.

And getting through the discomfort is what actually lets us know we care and are cared for.

This isn’t very revelatory, but it’s still interesting to me. The last few years have opened so many spaces to me and I’ve met a lot of amazing people. I hope some of them will become friends and collaborators! And it’s also helped me see how, no matter how much time I’m ‘with’ people, if I don’t put work into my deeper relationships, I will still feel alone.