Struggling with relationships

We so easily assume that everyone is capable of entering into and maintaining relationships. But what actually is a relationship, and what does it take to have one?

I remember that at the beginning of this century, every time someone used the word “connection” as a hopeful ideal, I felt resistance in my body. I didn’t understand that, and over time I got used to it, perhaps even started believing that connection was the highest good to strive for.

And now, just after writing this first part, I read in the newspaper that philosopher Naud van der Ven is also questioning what connection actually entails. “It has become an empty concept” he states in the Dutch newspaper Trouw. He wrote the book Genoeg verbinding. Waarom scheiding zo gek nog niet is (Enough connection. Why separation isn’t such a bad thing), but I haven’t read it yet.

When Naud van der Ven reads that we must constantly seek connection, he wonders what people actually mean by it. “Should we return to the nostalgia of village communities and pillarized society? Weren’t those exactly the things we wanted to break free from?”

Perhaps that is precisely the systemic bind: we want to move away from something in order to become more “ourselves”.

What is interesting about having lived in our society for 72 years is that I have seen new ways of thinking emerge and disappear again. Liberation was the key word of my teenage years. Liberation from everything that had previously been considered normal. Liberation from war, liberation from prevailing standards of decency, liberation from the power of the church, liberation from your parents…

That liberation, however, was rooted in a great deal of judgment. You could say that the entire hippie generation was rather parentified; we felt superior to everything that had happened in the past and to anything that smelled of authority.

Evolution disrupts what exists, creating crises from which renewal can emerge

After the crisis of the Second World War, when all communal values and norms had been shaken up, new movements emerged. “Never again” became the broad foundation for an entirely new way of thinking, in which suddenly young people had something to say and being different became the ideal. Gradually, the idea (the illusion?) grew that we are all individuals, that you can live independently from traditional communities.

During the last 25 years of the previous century, I taught young people. It was amusing to see how new trends constantly emerged among youth who especially did not want to belong, and therefore belonged very strongly to their own group: punks, gabbers, hip-hop fans, new wave.

Looking back now, I mainly see the emergence of the idea of being an individual. And then, in this century, came the reaction of wanting to reconnect.

How do you learn to be an individual?

Perhaps the idea of being an individual is only one or two generations old. And it is based on opposition. At the same time, we human beings so deeply need the feeling that we belong somewhere. A complicated dilemma of pushing away and pulling close.

Schools now use the slogan: “The most beautiful thing you can become is yourself.” But who teaches you how to be yourself? Can you do that on your own, or do you learn it through others? And how much of a self is that, really? And are you not yourself if you are not resisting something?

Then I gave a workshop where many participants were struggling with relationships. “I can’t connect.” “I sabotage my connection.” I asked further: “Connect with whom?” And after a silence, the answer was always: “With myself.” Immediately, the beautiful song by Uncle Rudolf from Sesame Street came into my head: “If you can’t live alone, you can’t live together either”…

Did we perhaps lose our sense of safety by placing individuality above belonging? Did we perhaps lose our sense of wholeness through the movement of resisting? Did we perhaps leave behind our fate, and with it our dignity, in the demand to be “different”? And do we now seek safety and wholeness again through connection with others? “If you can’t live alone, you can’t live together either”…

If people often proclaim that connection is necessary, then apparently connection is not being experienced. When “the most beautiful thing you can become is yourself” becomes the slogan, then apparently people need to learn how to become themselves.

Systemic thinking often asks the reverse question: what might be the price of being connected? What would happen if you were never completely yourself? Might that create space to learn how to deal with seperateness, with not always belonging and belonging at the same time, and with living the life you received through your father and mother while remaining distinct?