Intentional Society: The moves of deepening relationship
Our next orientation video call will be on Saturday, March 11th.
I'm contemplating the "moves" of the process, the dance, of deepening relationships. The process looks outwardly like spending more time with someone, deepening trust, more investment in or commitment to the other person, increasing connection points the weave lives together. The moves that mediate and accomplish that process are... bids?
This discussion arose in the Microsolidarity monthly call today (Intentional Society incorporates MiSo principles in our organizing) in the context of facilitating crew creation. This is also relevant to the "Possibility Engines Game" that some IS folks are playing with our ThinkBetter Network friends in a few days. (I commit to writing that up here, next week.) That's about collaboration possibilities, and it's unclear whether it can usefully be played with people one doesn't already know/trust.
The whole spectrum of relationship "depth" has lots of labels, from stranger to acquaintance to friend to collaborator to partner to roommate spouse or soulmate. (And some of those status labels can span lots of different depths!) Moving between any of those (which we are almost-always doing, in some way, in every relationship) is some sort of trust dance (sourcing language from Malcolm's descriptions).
Our moment-to-moment stance towards, and experience of, someone is a full-system integrated body-mind phenomenon. A "vibe," if you will. This involves embodied cognition, which is why we tend to think that making friends "just happens" and can only be done accidentally. There is truth to this — we can't (and shouldn't try to) make ourselves make friends with a particular person! Our rider is not in full control of our elephant. But, to continue with that metaphor, we can better work with the elephant by being aware, from the rider spot, of where we'd like the elephant to go and which nudges to make!
So here finally is today's crux: When is our elephant/system happy to go in the direction of deepening relationship? Or happy (vs disappointed) to head the opposite way? Or one layer removed, when are we happy to entertain relational bids and/or talk about what kind of relationship we want to have next? What I can come up with currently are:
- we believe we have permission from the other person to make a bid
- we feel confident that our bid will be accepted or well-received
- OR it's safe to have a bid rejected
- OR it feels risky but important so we go for it anyway
- we are aware of what we want and can say yes to ourselves
- we trust the other person's yes-or-no and believe they won't feel coerced into going against what they want
Can you think of more? I could probably blab a lot about those bullets above, but I'll refrain today. I will just say that I think this is an area where we haven't yet figured out "natural"-feeling moves in video-call space as compared to physically-collocated interactions. Virtual platforms today don't nicely support some of the "peeling off from the group" or "starting a sub-conversation that might (or might not) break away" moves we've learned in meatspace, nor the subtle movements closer-to or away-from people as we're standing with them. This (like long-distance romantic relationships, as I recall) forces us, for better or worse, to get better at explicit communication about/around these kinds of desires and moves!
I'm a fan of being able to talk with self-awareness and intentionality and honesty, so I'm a fan of trying to evolve a culture where this works well over video links. Might have to invent some customized moves, though! As well as shift our relationship to dancing, in agreement with our dance partners...
Cheers,
James