Skip to main content

A Bridge Metaphor

 Ideally, a relationship lets the people in it have and achieve more than a single person can. How well this works depends on both partners holding up their ends of their agreements.


A bridge is a good metaphor for a relationship, since it is literally a physical version of one. Strong bridges, like strong relationships, have much in common. 


The simplest kind of bridge is a plank over a creek. It has two support anchors on either end with a bridge in between.


If the plank is too weak for what it needs to bear, it will break.

If either support the plank sits on is too weak, the whole thing will fail.


In this metaphor, the bridge anchors are the people involved. The plank is the relationship between them. 


The durability of the relationship is dependent on the strength of the relationship between the people who “anchor” it.


Each person in the relationship has to hold up their part of it.


 If a partner's commitment to their agreements weakens over time, the relationship can eventually collapse.


Commitment to the relationship is demonstrated by making and keeping good agreements. 


A good agreement is one that is not too loose, or too rigid. If agreements are too loose, they can be hard to trust. If they are too rigid, they can break down under pressure. 


There is no “perfect” kind of agreement, except for the kind that is “just right” for the people involved. 


As time marches on and circumstances change, so too must the agreements. Being able to adapt and communicate one’s own needs is a requirement for longevity.


The medicine finds you where you are.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends

  I had just left a friend's house, and as I made my way back to the Dead Presidents Highway to get home to Chicago. Thoughts about who I had just been with began to roll through my head. I realized that when I spent time with these people I felt angry a lot. I couldn't really say if the cause was the air of stagnant frustration, or the stubborn kind of simmering anger, or the insensitivity, or the drugs, or the.... The litany went on, and on, and on, in its familiar negative spiral. It was like a bad tape I had run so many times, and was beginning to get a kind of perverse satisfaction out of tearing these people apart.  Suddenly an idea slammed into this smugly self satisfying explanation. Maybe, just maybe, I wasn't really angry at them at all! Perhaps these infractions were really parts of myself I was seeing in these people. Maybe this was something like being your own voyeur and not realizing it. As I looked down that long stream of traffic ahead it dawned on me that ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dreaming

Sleeping adjacent to an all night Women's Ceremony Circle, I have a dream. I am standing with a small gathering of people. We are, as a group, using clear light to adjust the taste of a sound, to encourage it to be smoother to the touch. Of course we are all dressed in some unusually sunny, foreign clothing I can’t quite identify. I woke up and realized that this is like eating carrots. Seeing the vivid color of a raw carrot, the taste and subsequent crunching flood the mouth brightly. As chewing proceeds, the texture becomes granular, even if chewed for a bit. When a carrot is cooked using light as heat, rendering it softer and more yielding, the warmth spreads the broader sweeter taste, perfectly retaining a small but satisfying crunch. A smooth buttery feel and texture forms as it is slowly cherished between the teeth. Sight, taste, sound and feel emerge merge from layers of a thing born in mother dirt, (Butter sold separately)
Post a Comment
Read more