Instant Relationships

Instant Relationships

Relationships are important. They are important enough to rearrange your life for them, and they are marginal if we don't rearrange our lives for them.

I may be old, but the foundational principles to good relationships have not changed. Intimate or good relationships still take intentionality and exclusivity in time. By that I mean that in order for me to have a good relationship with Linda, or anyone, I need to make time for her, and she for me, where we do not share our attention with something or someone else. It is not okay for me to carry on a heart to heart conversation with Linda while reading a magazine and watching the news. I need to put the magazine down, turn the television off, and look her in the eyes while listening to her heart.

Exclusivity in the moment is part of a healthy relationship.

That is what gets me concerned. It seems that there are many who are carrying on relationships (at least that is what they call them) with people they say they love, while only interacting with them by chance and with partial attention. It is not unusual for someone to be talking to someone on their phone, watching television or listening to the radio, while chatting or checking out what is going on in Facebook and talking to another friend who happens to be standing or sitting next to them all at the same time. They seem so focused on who is not there that those who are there are like they are not there (if that makes sense).

I think it is time to remind ourselves that healthy relationships require more than a daily Facebook line or a distracted conversation. I would appreciate it, if you are ever talking to me, that you forget you have a cell phone, that you let your answering machine pick up your land line, and that you close your laptop.

I am sure that this is not a new problem and that our forefathers were concerned about the young people of their day looking at the smoke signals from distant villages, while the elders rambled on, but I do think it is different somehow. I think that in the age of communication we have the illusion of relationship without the substance of relationship. We are deceived into believing that we have all sorts of "friends" from across the world, when, in reality, we really know very few people, and few really know us. In reality, we are lonely people in search of significance and we think we are finding it by having multiple shallow acquaintances that are actually costing us the intimate friendships we long for.

It seems odd that in the age of communication we communicate so poorly.

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