“I do my thing, and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you and I am I. And if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.” (The Gestalt Prayer)
Fritz Perls
I first saw this poem in a book by Fritz Perls, the creator of Gestalt Therapy, perhaps 6 or 7 years ago. It immediately struck me as important. I know this because I remember about what year it was when I read the book, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim and saw the poem on one of the opening pages. I find it comforting in times of having relationship difficulties or endings, despite a certain apparent coldness to it. But is it really cold?
There are 2 basic human attachment needs:
- The need for connection
- The need for separation
Sometimes I think the need for separation is a little more hidden than the connection need. Maybe that’s because “connection” and “attachment” are closely related words, whereas “separation” seems like the opposite of attachment. But in psychology, “attachment” means a healthy relationship, and healthy relationships are not only about connection, but also separation. In healthy relationships we have an oscillation between the two, because we are not only relating beings, but also individual beings. We need separation to come back to our individuality and do things that we cannot do in pairs or groups.
We generally experience loneliness when we are deprived of connection, and we experience interpersonal claustrophobia and even anger when we are deprived of separation.
Not all relationships should go on. Some of them should exist for some time, but then they wane of their purpose and energy.
Fundamentally, we form relationships with others because we are mutually trying to meet some sort of a need. The need could be physical, sexual, emotional, financial, intellectual, etc. But when one or both parties’ needs are no longer met, or the cost of meeting those needs is too high, it’s sometimes appropriate to end it, or create distance by creating more separation.
Guilt sometimes motivates us to keep it going longer than it should. We might have thoughts that we didn’t stretch ourselves enough, didn’t sacrifice enough of our individuality for the sake of the connection. And sometimes that’s true, but sometimes it isn’t. Some of us are prone to trying too hard, and some of us to not trying enough. The best way to know is careful introspection, tuning into the heart and intuition. Loneliness also keeps us in fizzled out relationships, as we avoid being with ourselves by settling for dissatisfying company of another.
I recently had an experience in which this poem was a helpful reminder to me. I participated in a self-development group that was a combination of meditation and sharing. But over time, I realized that the ceiling for authenticity was low, due to a group culture of avoiding confrontation, playing it safe, not wanting to rock the boat. For me, those norms stifled the genuineness needed for building trust and depth past a basic level. After a certain point, I decided that my growth in the group had plateaued and that I wasn’t going to meet my need for authentic connection there and I moved on. The way I see it, my subjective preference for realness didn’t match that of the group. I stayed for as long as I needed to in order to realize that I had to part ways because my needs were sufficiently different from those of others in the group. “…it couldn’t be helped.”
Besides guilt, shame can be a motivator that keeps us from letting go. If we’re not at peace with who we are, we’re likely to feel that we should conform to rules and norms of other individuals and groups. We reason, “if these people think I’m wrong, I must be wrong.” But there is a reason we feel the wish to withdraw. That reason should be examined. If we do, we may discover that there is a solvable problem, or at least we have an idea for an attempt to solve the problem. We might realize that we’re projecting our past onto the present folks we’re engaged with. But ignoring the painful emotions we are having around people and simply continuing closeness anyways, is like keeping our hand on a hot stove without turning it off.
When something feels “off” in a friendship or group, it is important to ask, “how am I feeling about myself right now? About my beliefs, my needs, my morals, and my values? Do I believe that I am lovable? Can I be alone for now while I part ways with this person(s)? Do I have confidence that I’ll find the connection that I need, in which I can also be myself?”
Perhaps most importantly, we can ask, “would it be better in the long run to be without this connection, or to have it? What could be created in the vacant space that will be left, if this relationship is ended or reduced?” We often tend to forget that relationships all have a cost to them, and that creating separation from others creates space and freedom and time with which to build something new.
Sometimes relationships are worth fighting for, sometimes they aren’t, and sometimes they are worth something in between. The more we have invested in them, the more carefully we should inquire and weigh our decisions. As Perls says, relationships can be “beautiful” when we “find each other.” And also, life is too short to be spending it in relationships in which we have to live up to others’ expectations at the expense of our own well-being, in order to be part of a group. It’s okay to part ways, in full or in part, in those cases.
Open-ended partings
And, our minds tend to want to make guesses about whether or not a parting is temporary, permanent, or somewhere in between. I see this as a sign that I’m not being present. I don’t need to know. If the relationship re-blossoms or comes back to life later, that’s fine. If not, that’s fine too. What matters is what we want for now, and what we’re going to do with that now.
I’m reminded of hiking on the PCT. Sometimes I’d see someone, heading in the same direction, many times over the course of a month, as we played a game of leap frog. Other times one of us was significantly faster than the other, and I’d have a brief, one-and-only exchange with them and never see them again. Sometimes someone would be 3 days ahead of me, and then I’d see them again because they stopped in a town for a weekend. Sometimes we’d hike together for a while, and then one of us would want to go at a different pace or in a different direction. With some hikers there was an instant connection, with others there was none at all. It’s all okay. The hike is far more enjoyable being unattached and going with the flow. And that was possible because pretty much everyone out there was happy whether they were hiking solo or hiking in relationship. Similarly in life, a lot of our ability to let go of a partnership wisely when the time comes, has to do with how happy we are when we are alone.