The evolution of relationships.

You’re relationships just aren’t what they used to be? Of course not. That’s not the problem. How you respond and move forward could be.

Because our sense that a relationship is over is actually just the experience of a relationship evolving.

Introduction — The Beginning

Imagine, if you will, some of the relationships which compose the terrain of your life. Parents, siblings, and extended family connections; childhood friends, co-workers, and maybe the plethora of people who share brief moments of contact on any given day.

Of these relationships, have any of them stayed the same through the duration of your life?

Despite a possible sense of cohesion, the technical answer is, “No.”

Quite simply, the very nature of human existence and human interaction is that things constantly change; even our relationships.

The (Old) Debate on Change
Musings on the possibility of change through some old philosophers

Part One — All Relationships Have a Beginning, a Middle, and an End

The experience is common — a relationship that holds a particularly high amount of prestige in a person’s mind starts taking on a different shape and, in response, you may sense a bit of grief or antagonism or angst that things just aren’t the same.

Yet, it might be that we are not thinking about this relational dynamic appropriately — because a basic component of relationships is that all relationships have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The beginning of a relationship is usually quite obvious and rather simple. There is a moment where you do not know a person exists and then you do. Thus, the relationship has begun.

The end of a relationship, in contrast, is actually quite rare. Even if someone adamantly proclaims the relationship is over, a relationship doesn’t technically end until there is absolutely no interaction or influence exerted. The extermination of another’s presence can occur with a very permanent boundary in place that completely removes the other from your life, but the most common way a relationship ends is, to be rather plain, death.

Just because you do not see a person any longer or you blatantly removed yourself from their proximity doesn’t mean that there is no relationship anymore. The relationship, though different, still exists.

This means that most of our relational experience is spent in the vast expanse between the beginning and the end.

In other words, the middle.

We may benefit from understanding this ardent difference between ended relationships and changed ones.

Part Two — When Relationships Feel Like They are Over

Pretend, if you will, that I have a childhood friend.

The doldrums of early education provided a space for connection in which this other person and I became close. Many afternoons were spent meandering the world and, beyond knowing this other person existed, a bond was formed where the middle of the relationship took on a strong familiarity, proximity, and closeness.

As time endured, the middle of the relationship continued until, one day, relational networks became more complicated. My friend and I both befriended many others, but a particular romantic relationship caused my friend to spend much less time with me. Eventually, the shared space of education is lost and, as my friend entered into a new setting, the romantic relationship took precedence leaving me with a sense that the once-close bond is now nonexistent.

The same experience is even more common among family relationships.

New couples often develop a bond exuberated by the onset of children. They go on vacations, share holidays, and are deeply entrenched in each other’s lives only to find that, as the children grow, the complexity of schedules, the limited resource of time, and the distance created by divergent experiences cause the families to see each other less and less. The relationship, as it goes, feels like it is over.

But is it?

And if it is not over, how ought the people in question respond to what feels like a lost bond?

Though this may sound trivial, such an inquiry is at its most important when it comes to a relationship such as marriage. Many times, I have sat with couples who express discontent as their marriage just isn’t what it used to be. Their partner has changed, the setting of their lives has changed, and they feel as if their relationship no longer exists.

Yet, this common experience in marriage is simply a microcosm of what happens with all people in relationships. As one goes on the adventure of life, the accompanying relationships will look different every day because the person you are with is changing every day.

Marriage — as it is with all relationships — is the infinite journey of souls where two people who are constantly in the process of becoming must continue to change together. Marriage reveals the necessity of constant renewal among participants; or else the relational difference becomes relational distance to the point that the bond feels lost.

In a relationship where there is an actual legal commitment, this relational awareness is incredibly necessary.

Yet, the same awareness is conducive to the existence of any relationship.

The Middle Has Lots of Beginnings & Endings

The middle of a relationship — where we spend most of our time — is a constant ebb and flow of experiences which begin and end and require us to rediscover bonds that are certainly not static.

As we and our lives change, once familiar experiences come to a close. While we often claim this ends the relationship, it simply marks the end of one version of the relationship and invites us to note that a new form of the relationship has now begun. The relationship has continued, it is just out of the demise of one version turning into a new one.

Essentially, the middle of a relationship’s story is made up of lots of ends and lots of beginnings.

Sometimes these hurt, sometimes they are beautiful and, often, they are complicated, disorienting, and ambiguous.

Always, however, the cascading rise and fall of relational middles are simply different.

Part Three — What Causes Our Relationships to Change?

Consider, again, the vast array of relationships in your life. Of those that you would claim are the most intimate, what would it take for the relationship to change?

Maybe you have a close friend — what would need to happen for you to no longer be close with that friend?

For most people, if they are in a committed, romantic relationship, their answer concerning their partner is that till death do they part. However, for more platonic relationships, there is usually a certain range in which, if particular circumstances changed, the relationship would be altered to a lesser degree of intimacy.

Lee Ross, a psychologist at Standford, formulated a significant theory pertaining to this idea called “The Power of Situation.” The claim is that, despite our eagerness to claim certain personality traits, one’s personality changes based on the situation. A consistent personality simply means that the circumstances of your life are consistent.

The same is true of relationships. Our relationships only stay the same when the circumstances containing the relationship are the same.

Unfortunately, as life goes, circumstances are constantly changing; which is why marriage, for example, is often recognized as being so difficult.

If, then, a relationship is based on the context through which it resides, each person involved brings a certain dynamic that determines the construction of a relationship’s essence. Each person brings a certain experience to the relationship that establishes how it works which becomes familiar over time. As this is based on the specific context of each person and the overall context of the relationship in space and time, any change to those circumstances will now alter the construction of the relationship.

A cornucopia of factors goes into dictating what the relationship is and how it functions in a particular moment. If any of these factors change, the relationship, too, will change.

Someone gets a new job? Someone moves to a new home? The other person adds an additional friend into their life? The weather changes?

Literally, any change means the relationship will change.

Sometimes these are minor alterations with seemingly insignificant impact, but occasionally such a change impacts the relationship to such a degree that the familiarity of the previous experience is gone and, with it, we believe the relationship itself is gone.

Things just aren’t the same.

Literally.

Nor will they ever be.

Therefore, any new situation, setting, or circumstance is like a geological shifting of tectonic plates — we often don’t realize it happened, but sometimes it sends the Richter scale off the charts. Seriously, just as the earth is constantly moving, so are we. In accord, we only tend to notice the shift if it happens to be perceived as inconvenient, dispreferred, or, unfortunately, detrimental.

Part Four — Changed Relationships are Still Relationships

It is worth noting that the cause of the relational change could, in fact, be negative. There could have been a conflict or disagreement that acted as the agent of a tectonic shift. Practices such as conflict resolution or establishing boundaries may be necessary in those cases.

More common, however, is the slow, unanticipated drifting or the unexpected alteration where the closeness and intimacy are replaced by an awkwardness as the relationship doesn’t have the same camaraderie or connection that you were so used to.

Whenever this happens, if we are to avoid the relational fallout that leads to disarray, anger, and animosity, we must be aware that though something is ending, the relationship isn’t.

Being able to cognitively locate changed circumstances allows us to better hold the new terrain of our relational evolution.

Even if the catalyzing change is that someone moves away, that doesn’t mean the relationship is over. As long as there is any contact, influence, or connection, then that is still, technically, a relationship. The interactions and bonds might be different, but they are still there. We may even mourn the loss of desired intimacy, but we ought not to mourn the loss of the relationship itself.

The relationship is still in the middle, despite our altered experience.

A different relationship does not incriminate an ended one.

The End —How We Ought to Approach Changing Relationships

If the evolution of relationships happens all the time, why do we get so caught up in certain changes? Why do we only consider particular changes to be counted as relational endings?

Yes, every time a particular relational form ends, something is lost. The previous experience is now over.

Yet, when the relationship went from acquaintance to intimate friends, no one got frustrated, did they? Even that was, technically, a loss, but no one went around saying that the relationship was over.

We act as if a relationship is over in situations when our preferred experience of the relationship is over — when the relationship doesn’t feel as meaningful or fulfilling or good; when we don’t spend as much time with the person or the rhythms we once knew are discombobulated; when nothing functions the way we wish it did. These are all examples of a relationship changing. They also happen to be experiences we tend to not prefer. But the relationship is not over, it’s just different.

Hopefully, we can see that the real issue here is not dealing with ended relationships, but dealing with relational changes.

We must get better at dealing with relationships when they inevitably change form.

First, because there is a multitude of factors causing the change — most of which neither person can completely control.

Second, because this is the unavoidable nature of relationships.

Whatever the ideal, best, desired state of a relationship, if you do happen to capture that in a moment or for a season, it won’t stay there forever. The earth will keep shifting. When this happens in our favor, we lavish in victory. When this happens in contrast to desire, we become a victim hurling accusations of failure.

We need to be honest that the relationship simply isn’t what we wish it was. We need to just say that things have changed and, unfortunately, the relationship is no longer how I want it to be or how I liked it or what I was familiar with.

Just because we don’t like this specific evolution doesn’t mean that the relationship is bad. When you didn’t even know that person existed or when you were just getting to know each other and there was a certain distance and lack of intimacy, you probably never said the relationship was bad. So, why do we do that when the relationship evolves back into a similar experience? We only make such a claim in response to what was known because it has now lost something we’ve come to enjoy.

That’s the real problem when it comes to relational changing.

You just might not like the current form. That’s okay. Just don’t turn the middle of the relationship into something it’s not. In fact, the relationship is still there; which means it could change again. The relationship could even change into a better, healthier form than whatever you’ve experienced before.

This is the hope of marriage, is it not? I hope my spouse and I don’t only ever encounter each other like we did when we first met. I hope we continue to change and evolve and grow and see and feel — I hope we continue to change.

Because it means the future could be even better than the past.

The unknown can be scary, but it can also be beautiful.

That’s what I’ve found with other relationships, as well. There have been friends who I lost touch with; connections that didn’t maintain their relational pique; sometimes because of conflict or disappointment or disillusionment as the result of changed settings.

Yet, I could still see them and have meaningful moments or celebrate their journeys or be there for them when they needed something. Occasionally, we may even find new ways of evolving our relationship that, though different, creates an even better experience than the now nostalgic past. In fact, if the commitment of permanence is agreed upon, we can always find a way to maintain the middle of the relationship despite the constant evolution.

Because the relationship wasn’t over — it had just changed. Relationships ebb and flow, and that’s okay.

Pay attention to how your relationships are evolving.

Don’t assume that a changed relationship is an end just because it isn’t what you prefer.

And look for the possibilities of what your relationships could still be in their changed form. Who knows, maybe the future evolution could be better than the familiar past.

The awareness and the intention with how we respond to this inevitable reality could be the answer we are so often looking for when our relationships don’t stay the same.