Relationships are just expectations
How do we form relationships? How can we avoid conflicts? And, is there such a thing called unconditional love.
Introduction
One of the major sources of trauma, stress, and grief is the need to maintain relationships. These connections allow us to relate to others, whether they are humans, animals, objects, or even God.
What does a relationship even mean? It simply means to “identify with”. But whose identity?
Ever since I was a child, I’ve been fascinated by crime stories. I used to read the crime beat section on page 3 of the newspaper. As I grew older, I was drawn to true crime stories on television. It was only recently, about 2–3 years ago, that I started to understand my fascination.
All this time, I was trying to comprehend people’s intentions. Along with this, I had a good all-around social life that gave me plenty of first-hand life experiences. After nearly 20 years of this personal research, the nature of relationships finally clicked for me. I still remember the day this understanding dawned on me. It was a beautiful day in a village just outside Bucharest, Romania, and it felt like all my research came together in an instant. Eureka!
The ‘mother’ of all relationships across most living organisms is that of a mother and child. We cannot guarantee that a mother will love her son unconditionally. Neither is the opposite guaranteed. This can be said for all relationships. For every good example, there is a bad one right there to throw it in your face.
The key factor in determining the strength of a relationship is the degree of conditions placed on it.
Conditions and Expectations
We will always have unconditional love for our own child or even pet animals. That’s easy. But what if the child chops off your ear one night while you are asleep? Worse, what if the child kills the parent? Parricides constitute lesser than 2% of all homicides in the US. That’s a probability.
Will there still be unconditional love? Even though I hope for it, it seems rather unlikely.
We learned from our research on the human experience that the cycle of expectations plays a very important role in our lives. Relationships would be straightforward if there were zero expectations. But how do expectations form? They come from the labels we give each relationship — labels like father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, husband and wife. These expectations are heavily influenced by culture, religion, geography, and social media.
Relationship Constructs as an Identity
All relationships form an identity by themselves. This relationship identity is formed based on past memories, expectations, and one’s own identity(Belief).
Let’s take a simple one: friends.
We develop an ideal construct of what a friend’s identity is for ourselves. Then, we try to either fit others into it or project that identity onto someone else. As time passes, if the other fits this relationship identity, then the relationship is maintained; if not, kaput.
So essentially, isn’t it our beliefs that we are projecting? This applies to all relationships. Simply put, no relationships are based on the actual— they are projections of our expectations based on the construct of the relationship formed in our identity.
Relationship Conflict
Just as a person’s identity is based on a static ‘identity’ or memory of the past, so too do we create identities of others in relation to our own. In many cases, people are not in relationships with the “real” human but with an ‘image’ of them in their memory based on the relationship construct.
We understand the cycle of expectations based on human experience. If our experience aligns with this image, the reaction is positive; if not, it’s negative. These expectations often lead to the breakdown of relationships.
So, what can one do to avoid conflict? Well, you cannot see the image of yourself within the other person. So technically, you cannot do anything. But what you can do is try not to build constructs of expectations for all your relationships. Focus on maintaining a healthy identity and have zero expectations from your relationships. Then, even the smallest gesture would feel wonderful.
Unconditional Love
This is a hard topic to discuss. Relationships are an integral part of the human experience. Idealists aim to have unconditional relationships, while realists have certain conditions.
But the truth is that a ‘person’ identifying as an idealist only hopes for unconditional relationships, hoping that the other person will fit this static relationship construct. Perhaps it is a projection of their own unfulfilled needs from their past relationships. In contrast, a realist views relationships as opportunities to advance their own goals.
A balanced approach is to maintain a dynamic relationship construct that focuses not on labels but on the genuine connection with the other person.
There is another way of looking at this. It is radical! Let’s consider a person that has not been able to establish meaningful relationships. Perhaps this person is attached to a magnificent piece of art hanging on his wall. The art is an image that is a representation of his version of unconditional love.
Is he in love with the image? Or is he in love with himself?
I have found in my own experience that the only true unconditional love is represented by the fact that no matter what we do, who we are, where we are, we are still able to awaken to experience this life. It’s the same unconditional love for the murderer sitting in prison as for the priest praying in his temple.
