What we mean to each other

On relational understanding and labels

For me, being queer and non-monogamous means that I have effectively rejected the social script for my sexuality, my gender, and my relationship models. And it means that I have opened myself up to the possibility of creating ways of interacting with all these concepts that work for me. I, my gender, my sexuality and my relational preferences are constant works in progress. Every new person I meet and love and even the people I lose, give me more information about myself, what I want and what I need. Getting to co-create the terms of each individual relationship in my life is favourite thing about adult relationships.

Stumbling through the mess of misunderstanding because someone you care about has a fundamentally different understanding of a relational term is one of my least favourite things about adult relationships. It happens all the time, and can end in hurt feelings, heartbreak, social fractures and lost friendships. And often, we are so embroiled in the hurt and betrayal of these moments – we don’t even consider that the problem occurred right at the very beginning, with how we communicated what we mean to each other.

I think that when we meet people, specifically those that we share identities or social circles with, we assume that we understand concepts in the same way. But the fact is, have developed our understanding of relationships over a long period of time. They have been defined, and re-worked, and re-defined throughout our childhoods, and adulthoods consciously and unconsciously. They are informed by a million different factors. All the trauma and hurt and healing and loss and secure and insecure attachment. The affirmation and safety, the heartbreak and loss. Our hopes for the future and our understanding of the past are distilled into words like friend or partner or chosen family.

Of course, we understand them differently. And, when people enter our lives, and we begin to form attachments – we are taught to ask questions like:

What do you want? What are we? Where do you see this going?

If the answers to these questions are relational labels like: “friendship” “partnership” “lovers” “family” “siblings” I’d encourage you to follow up with two more:

What does that mean to you?
What does that look like for you?

Ask about expectations. Ask about actions. Find our out if there is room for negotiation. Ask about new words and new ways of defining what someone means to you.

And maybe you have never thought about what these words mean to you. Maybe they move through your brain and body as a need or a want or a sensation – that’s okay. Give yourself space to define words like friend, lover, family, sibling, parent, guardian, partner and community. You don’t have to have the same definition as anyone else, all that matters is that you can communicate your needs and wants to the people around you.