The Meaning of Meaning Part 2: Love

(Meaning of Meaning Part 1)

In any intimate relationship when we do things for our partner, we do them for their benefit, for the sake of increasing their happiness, yet our motivation is also our own happiness – because it makes us happy to do things for their benefit and happiness. I think this “for you is for me” dynamic (especially when at the numinous level) is also a kind of relationship ‘flow’ because one’s partner becomes (to a large degree) the set of rules, borders or limitations, a ‘role’,  that one ‘plays’ through and ‘fills’, ‘fills up’ and ‘fulfills’ even (much like water in a garden hose).

I’ve already made some important points about relationship role playing (and here) but I think this “for you is for me” dynamic has a difference akin to life role playing, treating life as a game in which one continually refines a role, or series of roles as the player wishes, interactively, with an exceptionally large cast. In a relationship, ‘role playing’ is a feeling, an awareness of attempting to meet a partner’s expectations within the relationship, and meeting these expectations is akin to ‘following rules’ or a ‘following a script’, and attempting to ‘play by the rules’.

Of course these relationship ‘rules’ have incredibly great flexibility, indeed precisely as flexible as the individual partner is flexible – and willing to flex. One might try meeting their partner’s expectations, giving out the love their partner needs in symbols their partner understands, and decide the ‘role’ is either too difficult or ‘just not for them’ – or vice versa, that despite all their misgivings of it not being who they are’, the once they try it they discover it is not so bad or even lots of fun, or even far more closer to who they are than they ever suspected. Or that because they are so passionately in love that it makes them happy to follow just about any ‘script’, fill any ‘role’ that allows them to help make their partner happy, and themselves, happy in the ‘for you is for me’ dynamic.

In a relationship we ‘negotiate‘ the ‘playing’ these relationship ‘roles’ in good faith (as opposed, I think, to ‘tit for tat’ relationship bargaining or sex bargaining), in the belief our partner desires our happiness, is willing to extend themselves to help make us happy, and that aside from ‘hard limits’, we are each actively working towards giving the other whatever love the other wants in whatever symbols the other understands – because it will make us happy to do so. Thus in a way this underlying interior feeling of ‘for you is for me’ is what we mean when we say we ‘love’ our partner, and ‘to love each other’ that we are mutually seeking adequate playing of, and fulfilling as best we are able, each other’s roles, their expectations, hopes, desires, whims, all those fluid interior ‘scripts’ we harbor and hope for in relationship happiness. Inherent here is the understanding, the belief even, that while both value the relationship greatly and both have emotional needs, the manner in which each values (and expresses) can be quite different just as their emotional needs differ; simple relationship reciprocity won’t always (will rarely) work.

Of course, giving your partner the love they want in the way they will understand it may mean having some awareness of ‘playing a role’ for a little while, until you either acclimate yourself to playing the ‘role’ or adjust the ‘role’ to who you are and how you ‘give’ and ‘play’, from your interior. Or perhaps until you realize that though your playing of this role works for your partner, it just isn’t the kind of role you ‘can do’, or ‘will do’ – that (playing) this role just isn’t ‘who you are’ as a person on your interior. For it is true that we sometimes ‘put a role down’ as something we cannot do and remain who we are at the center of our selves. Sometimes we put down the entire script and walk away, although before we do this we usually attempt many different readings in many different ways in order to make both our partner and our selves happy.

And a loving intimate relationship (only) becomes (‘feels’) ‘real’ to the degree to which two people codependently suspend their disbelief in the roles they ‘play’, that is we play such a part until we are no longer aware of ‘playing’ it and it has become part of who we are. Yet in order for any relationship to grow, advance, become more intimate, more accurate and adequate for the participants, the participants must ‘try on’ different roles and even aspects of roles, ‘play’ different ‘roles’, in order to see what works, and what works better, for themselves and their partner. When they find some new role or aspect that works (better) for the two of them, once again they integrate it into their relationship and ‘codependently suspend their disbelief’ in the new aspect or role, and it ceases to be a role that they ‘play’ (or ‘play at’) any longer.