One thing that can get quite confusing within the complexity of our romantic relationships is the simplicity of a nurturing friendship, period. It gets confusing because if we're attracted to the other person, we're going to have sexual feelings, romantic interest, excitement, and all of those dopamine and oxytocin producing experiences. These experiences are wonderful, but they create such high altitude moments that they are difficult for most people to sustain through the life of a relationship.
The question I ask myself is this: where is the true friendship in our relationship, supposing it wasn't about sex, or need fulfillment, or raising children, or social status, or protection, or money? Where is the friendship? Did we forget that? Do we even know how to form meaningful friendships? Because at the end of the day, if your relationship makes it all the way to the ripe old age of one hundred, when the body begins to fade, it's no longer about beautiful looks and need fulfillment. It's about experiencing other things with that person. Sharing with them, caring for them, listening to them, talking to them, helping them, accepting help, taking interest in their story, spending time together, laughing at things, crying at things, enjoying music, sharing the same ideals, talking about philosophy. And then you can bring all those other things in to take the relationship over the top.
Imagine a best friendship where the attraction is strong, but not confusing, not overriding the friendship, instead bringing a soft essence of physical pleasure and enjoyment. Strip away all the things we were raised to believe about social status and public opinion of us, whether we're in a relationship or not, and just think about how our relationship could help us feel connected to something.
Most of us who have mild or severe traumatic experiences from our family of origin have a hard time creating pure friendships with others, let alone with those we've added complicated things into the mix with. So as a practice, maybe we need to strip down all of the extra stuff, fast from it for a period of time, and go back to the friendship part. Start over. How do we do that? Sit and talk with each other. Enjoy a movie together. Enjoy a sunset together.
A good relationship has intimacy, sex, laughter, children, all of that. But a great relationship has a friendship at the center. I can't tell you how to build a friendship, but if you understand how to build a friendship with someone you're not romantic with, I suppose it's the same thing, isn't it? Can it be held in the heart in a healthy way? Can we think to ourselves that friendship is at the center of our romantic relationships? Not sex. Not physical pleasure. Not mating and procreating. Not money. Not position. Not title. Friendship. Friendship is far more everlasting than all of those other things, and ultimately, it has the most impact on our mental health.