Relationship is Responsibility
How Then Shall We Live: in love, in intimacy, in humility
Over the weekend, many celebrated Valentine’s Day —a day dedicated to romantic relationships. Lately I have been thinking about relationships (everything in the universe is relational….), and considering the pleasures and duty of relationships. I observe myself, my friends, and general society living increasingly independently, taking responsibility for themselves, but noticeably not for others. It is especially striking when I view my friends in their early 30s who have good relationships, yet eshew taking real responsibility for one another: to marry, and to have children.
I opened this note with the charming, saccharine piece, Flirt, by the formidable Helen Frankenthaler, a favorite artist of mine. To flirt is not the same as to love: to flirt is fun, light, joyful. Flirting takes no responsibility. But to love —to really love— is fun, solid, and joyful. The light drops away, and the adventure begins, because relationship is responsibility and responsibility is adventure. But we are in an age of flirting: an age of non-committal, self-centered love, free of responsibility or burdens.
It is also an age of being very responsible for ourselves, and we are proud of our ability to provide for ourselves, and of our freedom to explore endless people and places and scenarios. The constant burden of our individual lives has spawned countless coaches, techniques, and tools to help us manage —so that we might show how capable we are in carrying that burden. But what if we took less responsibility for ourselves, took more responsibility for another, and allowed others to take on more responsibility for us?
It would certainly cure the loneliness that plagues our era. I think we would discover intimacy. Not just romantically, but also a new intimacy among friends, neighbors, and community. But let’s begin with romance:
Toulouse-Lautrec’s lovely (really, it is so lovely) In bed the kiss reminds us of the beauty and intimacy of the private sphere —a sphere that ought to be honored and elevated by two people enjoying it fully, together, and not sharing it willy-nilly with random others in a search for a semblance of intimacy. I am genuinely shocked by how many of us are insouciant about pursuing intimacy, readily choosing faux intimacy, instead of pursuing the real thing. There is no possibility of deepest delight and intimacy between lovers, when there is not genuine commitment. And commitment is assuming responsibility. There is of course also a faux commitment, when even married partners quit acting out their daily responsibility towards one another. That is a mockery of marriage, and in no way does it honor the insitution or the people in it.
We all know faux intimacy: for example, those who think they do not owe their spouse regular physical intimacy… Let me say it plainly: you are selfish and take for granted the gift offered you. Go, clean your bedrooms. Make the space holy. Return to a time when you delighted in your bodies, together. You are responsible… Take it earnestly.
I also have no patience for partners who prioritize their children over one another. It is an inversion —or a twisting— of responsibility. Children are not your creation that you need to manage well to assure yourself of your own virtue. They are the outcome of your love to one another, so prioritize that love. Your children will thank you. Your children will have identity in that (and not in their hyper attentive mother who is then too exhausted to enjoy sensual pleasure with their father). Let’s get it right, people.
But of course, it is not easy. Even the most committed and most responsible sometimes are confronted with the eerie sense that the other is other —unknowable. Responsibility, though, is not dependent on the other’s reciprocation or participation. This is the great tension in any relationship: taking responsibility without trying to control. I have been reading Levinas through my PhD studies, and so I quote him here: “I will say this quite plainly, what truly human is —and don’t be afraid of this word— love. And I mean it even with everything that burdens love or, I could say it better, responsibility is actually love,…” (Emmanuel Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind)
I suspect our wariness to take responsibility is why relationships are weaker, why we are cynical about love, and why we are ever more enthusiastic about machines and calculating programs helping us navigate our very independent lives. (But machines can never be responsible in the way that we are, which is why our relationships to machines can never be genuine love relationships… But this is the topic for another time.)
The truth is, we come to the adventure of our lives through responsibility. When we take on responsibility, we accept that outcomes are not fully controllable. Responsibility accepts the risk, and with this risk comes the adventure—not a romantic thrill-seeking, but of —as comedian Jimmy Carr says here — a life of higher stakes. A life without responsibility can seem to be safe, (and we are increasingly programmed to choose safety), but a life ruled by safety and reduction of uncertain outcomes is a very thin, pallid life. Of course it takes courage to take on responsibility. And courage is out of vogue in our world. We treat it as a relic from a time past.
In our ever more optimized lives—as we refine techniques of prediction, measurement, and control—what room is left for courage? What need have we for it? Our longing for courageous characters amongst us is fading, and we are hardly dying to develop courage in our own character, preferring a well curated and well managed existence to the risk (adventure). In relationships, we have labels, psychologists, memes that help us identify “red flags” so that we can quickly —almost eagerly—separate ourselves, our selves, from negative outcomes.
But all our calculating and rationalizing does not do away with the reality that I am in relationship to others —be it my romantic partner, my child, my neighbor, my boss, or others less specific. When dismiss my role (my responsibility) towards the other and towards the whole earnestly, I isolate myself, and I hurt the whole. When I take my responsibility and carry it out, be it making a full commitment to my partner or paying my bills on time, I am living with dignity and supporting the whole. And so, to conclude, I especially encourage my friends in their 30s, old enough to know themselves, and young enough to build a long life up together, to commit, to take responsibility, and to go on the greatest adventure, together.
But may we all have more courage to carry one another’s burdens, allowing ourselves to be a burden and for others to be burdens, and in so doing, find the romance, the intimacy, and the adventure that we long for.
