A Perfect Relationship Exists in the Pursuit of a Process, Not in an Ideal Person

Thoughts on the expectation of perfection in romantic relationships and beyond…

There is a couple I work with who, in their conflict, allow me to see some of my own maladaptive thought patterns.

We have lots of cultural messages these days that are contradictory. One is simultaneously supposed to be “whole” and “love themselves” before being able to enter into loving partnership with someone else — to be entirely “sovereign” — AND — to find someone who accepts and loves them for all of their flaws.

This idea that we’re supposed to have landed in a place of perfection before we’re worthy of love — and that we’re not supposed to tolerate anything but complete unconditional love from another person — sets people up for dashed hopes and constant battles. “The person I’m supposed to be with would do X,” “if he really needs that maybe he should go get it from someone else,” “I wish he’d have figured this out before he met me.”

These things manifest in both deep and shallow ways. Heterosexual women often want their male partners to have had enough therapy and study of emotional language to be able to converse with them like other women do, tending to one another’s feelings and listening without offering advice. Men often want their partner to be so sexually fulfilling that they’re not tempted by porn or other women, and when attractions still spring up they’re worried they don’t have a mate that can fulfill their needs.

“Needs.” How do we work with that? What is a “need” and what’s really more like a want? What are the things that we should strive to find acceptance for, and where are the areas where there’s more of a call to growth, to self-advocacy?

These things don’t just come up in relationships. They’re maybe easier to spot in the courtship phase. When you’re swiping through strangers it’s very easy to be ticking off boxes and disqualifying people who don’t meet specific standards. And I’ve run into plenty of people who want to hash out whether we’re meant to be together on date one. Or just… decide I’m it for it on date one. Last Sunday I had a great first date with someone — very vibe-y, sparkling discourse — who proceeded to get very in his head as we talked on the phone daily in the week since, poking at me for potential deal breakers, quizzing me about my proclivities, my bad habits, whether I wanted my kids to go to public school or private school. It was way too much attention. It freaked me out. I found myself so joined with his needs, his thought patterns, it was harder to center myself in my own life.

I ended up canceling our next date. I just need a little room to breathe, to be with myself, to remember my own values. I’m not opposed to seeing him again, I just want whatever this feeling to have time to settle — it’s like his intensity of focus has stirred up this anxious sense in me that I am bound to disappoint him. if I am not all of the things he hopes I am, that he has projected into me, this will be a repetition of a pattern I’ve found myself in before — where someone puts me on a pedestal and a few weeks, a few months in, realizes I’m not the embodiment of all of their feminine hopes and then they flip into hating me for the distance between me and who they imagined I was.

Here’s what I value:

I value method over form. I want to engage with the present moment with curiosity. I want to let go of the archetypal idea I’ve formed of another human being and be open to being surprised by them as they unfold in front of me. I want to be with someone who is equally present, who’s really there with me, not an idea of how I’ll mother his children or worries he has about how my body will change.

And yes, of course, presence has its limits. Discernment is necessary, vetting is necessary. Uncovering shared goals is useful, too.

But in early courtship I’m not searching for whether someone is the beloved I’ve dreamed up in my head — I’m searching for whether they’re a good person, with a decent heart, who I might learn something from. I’m wondering if they’re companionable.

The rest can unfold over time. It’ll have to. And bringing some curiosity about how people evolve, bringing some awareness to the present, sensory moment, that pays dividends in long term relationships, too.

I always been aligned with that couple I counsel by spirituality, by a focus on meditation and developing states of attention. So I shared with them the ways I apply the same focused still set to the practice of the development of unconditional love: Whenever you decide to be in relationship with someone — friendship, romance, whatever — you allow what you enjoy about them naturally to please you, to tickle you, to stir up whatever positive sensation arises for you naturally — and when they disappoint you, you use those emotional triggers as a key. You search for the parts of yourself that judge, and develop more calm discernment.

The process is something like this: you feel a rush of negative emotion, and then you slow down and get curious with it.

Am I angry because of what’s happening right now, or am I angry because of what I’ve made it mean? And what have I made it mean?

I’ve made this man’s focus upon me mean that he’s delusional, and that frightens me because I have been proximate to delusional/obsessive people before, and it disrupted my life.

I’m angry because the weight of the burden of expectation of women feels like too much of a cross to bear. I feel incapable of being as beautiful as I’m supposed to be, as successful as I’m supposed to be, as agreeable as I’m supposed to be… and, oh yes, there it is, the anger that this is pinging is my resentment at all of the microcosms of patriarchy I’ve encountered in the course of my life. I’m mad at a collective trauma, not a person.

And then I breathe or I move or I bathe or I cry. State-changes are good for releasing emotions. And when I’m calm again, I ask myself what do I actually want, in this moment? And try to ask for it, lovingly.

I don’t always do this perfectly. I am human, I get impatient, I get reactive. This, like all things is an ideal to aspire to, but when it’s done well, every discrepancy between you and the person you’re engaging with becomes an opportunity for growth.

There are caveats here — it works best when both people are engaged in the work. It works best if there’s an established degree of positive regard, a commitment to positive regard. For most people this is only comfortable after some time, but I think the ideal is to approach it the way the Stoics do, with a sort of brotherhood for all mankind. This can get extreme. If you’re feeling really edgy you can meditate upon why you’re triggered by warlords, and breathe through that too, but when you come back to baseline nervous system states you can still take action against injustice. That’s my definitional distinction between judgment and discernment — judgment is charged, and implies a hierarchy — moral superiority — discernment might circle back to a similar place, a recognition of values, but it lacks the heat that comes from the pain body, all of those emotions of the past.

I think that in deep relational experience — whenever we’re willing to go there, whether it’s with someone we’ve known forever, like family, or just someone we’re newly dating — I think it contains the infinite. We can be triggered to the absolute limits of our capacity to feel by whomever we’re in relation to — and that’s personal experience. Notice patterns, and well, you have a map of whether that personal experience is sustainable or healthy for you — but for people who are quick to retreat, they’ll probably just encounter the same triggers with the next person they interact with.

There’s more discernment here, a sort of balancing act: how much discomfort am I willing to tolerate? Is what’s going on abusive, or indicative of a difference in entrenched values that I have no desire to shift? Well then, it’s probably time to step away — this isn’t someone with whom it’s safe or wise to do deep work with. Deep work changes you, brings intimacies, brings you closer to embracing the totality.

Is this a feeling I’ve felt before? Do I wish this pattern of reaction would change? Is it possible — possible — that maybe I could learn something if I open myself to the opinion of the person on the other side of this? That’s when you meditate upon it, breathe through it, and let the discomfort move as the conversation moves.

Perhaps this is something that has to be experienced to be known. It’s very subtle, embodied. Sometimes when I’m listening to someone share an opinion I disagree with, I can identify the place of tension that arises in me as they’re speaking. If they’re someone I really trust, I can ask them to slow down. If I physically relax, I’m better able to take it in, but this is subtle, too. Sometimes the tension is big enough to require distance, or talking about directly. “While I listen to you, I can feel this gripping sensation around my heart, and I think it means I’m afraid you don’t actually like me.” Vulnerable shit.

And that’s been profound, at times. I have the sort of friends into things like “authentic relating” who can get curious about embodied tensions, who’ll slow down long enough that there’s space to cry about the old stuff, or just acknowledge it, that it’s there, and come back to the conversation. I’ve had big releases that way, let go of ways that I’m closed off, that way. Sometimes it’s like, in those moments of intimate conversation, reality itself sort of dissolves and I feel the way in which human beings are so connected, how we reflect each other back to ourselves. Sometimes I’ll even see it, like in eye-gazing meditation, where someone’s face distorts slightly, and you can see someone else in their eyes.

I think love is like that, the real stuff, that in moments of deep connection we are open to the totality. The tricky thing is — fear is like that, too. And when we’re frozen, it makes sense to slow down long enough to make sure we aren’t calcifying ourselves further, closing ourselves off not just to one person, but to the possibility of loving everyone well.

Perfection exists in the pursuit of a relational process, not in a person.