The Product Is Shopping Too
Not long ago, I went on a date with a woman.
We took a walk around a lake.
She was in her early fifties and had three children. One of them was fourteen, right in the middle of puberty, and from the way she described it, the relationship between mother and daughter was not exactly easy at the moment.
None of that bothered me particularly.
People around fifty rarely come without baggage. Children, former marriages, complicated families, careers, strange habits, old injuries, mortgages, or a dog that cannot be left alone for more than three hours. Anyone looking for a person without a history is probably searching in the wrong age bracket.
She had a fairly precise idea of what her next relationship should look like.
Her children came first. I could understand that perfectly well. Because of this, she essentially only had time every second weekend. But during those two days, she wanted a man who was completely there for her. Attentive, emotionally available, someone who could listen — really listen.
During the rest of the time, her family had priority. The man should not pressure her or demand too much of her time. At the same time, however, he should be available whenever she wanted to talk or discuss something emotional.
She did not want a man who had children of his own.
By the time she had explained all of this to me, I slowly began wondering how exactly this job description was supposed to work.
She was looking for a man whose own life was free enough to organize itself around hers. He had to be independent enough to leave her alone when she had no time. At the same time, he had to be emotionally available whenever she needed him. And every second weekend, he was expected to switch, as it were, from standby mode to full relationship.
It was quite an ambitious wish list.
Then she asked me what I actually wanted.
And I realized that I did not have a particularly impressive answer.
I do have a few red lines. I do not want a relationship in which I gradually become my partner's therapist or caretaker. I work in social work. I do not necessarily need to begin a second shift after work.
Nor do I want to be with someone who is extremely possessive or controlling.
But perhaps this was precisely where there was a difference between us.
She had told me about experiences that had clearly not gone well. And my impression was that she had developed fairly precise ideas from them about how things should be different next time.
That is perfectly understandable.
Once you have burned your fingers, it is not particularly intelligent to put your hand on the same hotplate again. Experience should have consequences.
I know that impulse myself.
I too have been in a relationship in which I gradually slipped further and further into the role of psychological caretaker. I do not want to do that again.
But when I look back on that experience, I cannot simply tell the story as though something happened to me and I had nothing to do with it.
I played my part.
At the beginning of the relationship, there was no way of knowing where it would eventually lead. And later, I too did things, allowed things, or took things upon myself that helped create and maintain that dynamic.
Perhaps that is why I draw a slightly different conclusion from it.
I do not want to end up in that caretaker role again. That is a boundary.
But I do not want to turn it into a blueprint for the next person.
The difference seems small to me, but perhaps it is not.
Drawing a boundary from experience means: I do not want this again.
Turning experience into a blueprint means: The next person must be like this and this from the beginning so that this can never happen to me again.
Both are attempts to learn from experience.
Perhaps a precise blueprint protects us from making the same mistakes again. Perhaps my own openness is sometimes merely a more elegant way of allowing things to go on for too long.
Still, the boundary appeals to me more.
If a similar dynamic begins to develop again, I want to recognize it sooner. I want to see my own part in it and respond differently.
But even that is no guarantee.
You can enter a relationship with the best intentions and find yourself, a few years later, standing somewhere neither of you ever planned to be. People change. Circumstances change. Relationships develop feedback loops of their own.
You can learn from that.
But you cannot plan the next chapter of your life in such a way that nothing unexpected will ever happen again.
Perhaps the difference really is this: You can draw a boundary from an experience. Or you can turn it into a blueprint.
And we probably need a bit of both.
But within a normal range, I am surprisingly open.
I could imagine very different kinds of relationships. You might see each other often or less often. I could meet someone whose life looks completely different from mine. I do not know in advance exactly what form a relationship would have to take.
I would rather get to know the person first and then see what develops.
That can sound rather vague, of course.
But as we walked around that lake, I began wondering whether this vagueness might actually be more realistic than too much precision.
There is nothing wrong with knowing what you want. Life experience ought to teach us something. If you have spent years in a miserable relationship, it would be rather strange if you came out of it having learned absolutely nothing about what you would prefer to avoid next time.
But there is a peculiar assumption hidden inside a wish list.
We ask:
What kind of person do I want?
What qualities should this person have?
How much time should they give me?
How independent should they be?
How loving?
How interesting?
How emotionally available?
And while we are assembling this wonderful person piece by piece, at some point we forget a slightly uncomfortable question:
Why should this person want me?
Because the other person has a wish list too.
Written down, this seems completely obvious. In real life, I am not so sure it really is.
Modern dating in particular encourages us to think of ourselves as customers. Dating apps may intensify this, but you do not need an app for it. You can walk through life with exactly the same filter in your head.
We develop criteria. We define deal-breakers. We refine our preferences. And eventually we become increasingly demanding consumers of other people.
Except that relationships have one rather inconvenient symmetry.
The product is shopping too.
You may want an attractive, intelligent, emotionally stable, independent person. This person should have enough time for you, but not demand too much. They should be interesting, but not exhausting. Offer closeness, but never cling.
Fine.
Perhaps this person really does exist.
But sooner or later, this person walks through the door carrying a question of their own:
And what do I get?
At that point, the wish-list model begins to fall apart.
But perhaps this market metaphor points to an even deeper problem.
Because it treats both of us as finished products. I bring my qualities, the other person brings theirs, and now we compare the two lists.
But people in relationships are not finished collections of characteristics.
Gregory Bateson spent a large part of his life thinking about relationships, systems and feedback loops. One implication of his thinking is that it is often a mistake to look at people in isolation.
What is interesting is not simply Person A.
Nor Person B.
What is interesting is what emerges between A and B.
A person can be insecure in one relationship and completely relaxed in another. Someone can become controlling with one person and surprisingly easygoing with another. A reserved person may suddenly become playful and funny in the presence of a particular partner.
We respond to one another. We change one another. And over time, patterns emerge that neither person brought fully formed into the relationship.
A relationship, then, is not simply the result of two people.
To some extent, the two people also become the result of the relationship.
And this is where the wish list reaches its limit.
It pretends that somewhere out there exists a finished person with the right technical specifications, and all we need to do is find them.
But some of the most important qualities of a relationship cannot possibly be known before the relationship exists.
Chemistry cannot be written onto a list.
You cannot know in advance what kind of humor will develop between two people.
You do not know which sides of yourself another person will bring out.
You may even discover that something you always thought you desperately wanted becomes rather unbearable once you actually get it.
And something else you had never even considered suddenly becomes indispensable.
The map is not the territory.
Perhaps the relationship wish list is one of the more amusing maps we draw.
We draw the person we would like to have. We establish the conditions. We draw the boundaries. And then we go out into the world looking for a territory that matches our map as closely as possible.
Perhaps we even find it.
But perhaps the more interesting possibility is meeting someone who makes us redraw the map.
By the end of our walk around the lake, I knew, at any rate, that this woman and I probably would not be redrawing very much together.
She knew fairly precisely what she wanted.
I did not.
And strangely enough, I went home thinking that I preferred my version.
Not because it necessarily has to be the better one.
Perhaps she will find someone whose own map fits hers remarkably well.
It is simply not my map.
By now, I know quite a bit about what I do not want. I know a few doors I do not need to walk through again.
But beyond that, I prefer to leave some empty space.
Perhaps a good relationship is not about making two wish lists overlap as neatly as possible.
Perhaps it requires, more than anything, a willingness to remain open to what the other person brings with them, to their wishes, their peculiarities, and to whatever can only come into existence between two people once they actually meet.