It’s Not You… And, Apparently, It’s Not Me, Either.

Dear True Love:

I know you weren’t expecting to get this letter from me, but there are some things I’ve been thinking about and I think it’s important for our relationship that I tell you them. 

First of all, I never did actually win you that teddy bear from the fair last fall – I waited until you went to buy some cotton candy, then I paid the ring toss guy $20 to pretend that I’d won it. Sorry. But you liked the bear, so that worked out fine.

Second, I don’t like avocadoes. Never have, never will. Every order of extra-guacamole nachos we’ve shared for the past four years has been a lie.

Third, I’ve been thinking a lot about our relationship lately, and I’ve come to realize that my identity is being shaped by who we are together, and how/whether or not we belong together. For instance, when I asked you about an engagement, I think you thought I meant something different (or I assumed so, judging from the way you ran from the room). What I meant was that we have to devote our energies to building something together, to sharing something, so that other people start to see us as a couple, and then we can meet other couples that also like to watch 80s movies or take their cats for a walk. I need you to start to contribute to the ways we are as a couple; if you do that, I’ll be able to start seeing myself as part of a couple. This relationship is a two-way street, you know.

I also need you to start being more imaginative (and no, I’m not talking about using the camcorder like that). I mean about taking risks, about seeing new possibilities for who we are and where we might be heading. Here’s a quotation from the book I’ve been reading, so try and think about it like this: “Imagination requires an opening. It needs the willingness, freedom, energy, and time to expose ourselves to the exotic, move around, try new identities, and explore new relations” (Wenger, 1998, p. 185). If there’s no imagination, I don’t think there can be an engagement from either of us in our coupledom. Basically, I’d like to play more with you. 

I also need you to put your energies with mine to move in the same direction, to align with me. I need to be sure that we’re on the same page, but I don’t want to bully or threaten you into anything you don’t want to do. I know that visiting my parents for dinner every Friday night, and hearing them list their friends’ illnesses, is a little bit boring, but I think that deep down, you want to be part of my family and you really care about them, too, so that’s all right.

If we can negotiate our relationship like this, by taking responsibility for it and making it what we want it to be, then I think we’ll be able to learn a lot. We have to see ourselves, and our relationship, as part of a social network that is constantly changing (unlike your habit of never refilling the toilet paper roll – what do you do when it runs out, anyway?...) and that affects the way we learn.

But, I would add, I think we can only work if both of us recognize that we don’t learn in a straight line. By which I mean, learning isn’t always about moving ahead, or reaching a goal, or totally commanding everything there is to know about a topic, or even a person. Learning is like a tide: it ebbs and flows, sometimes really strongly and sometimes so quietly you can’t even hear it coming, it trickles down like rain or it pours for hours, sometimes it pulls out things that were already there, and sometimes it throws something up at your feet you never thought you’d see. 

I know you don’t like it when I speak abstractly like this, but I’m actually trying to reach out and connect with you through this language, and these thoughts, and this letter. Listen to this: “a more plausible scenario is that all human cultural institutions rest on the biologically inherited social-cognitive ability of all human individuals to create and use social conventions and symbols” (Tomasello, 1999, p. 216). As a couple, we're also a symbol, but in order to make the idea of a couple work, make that symbol work, then we need to be engaged, and imaginative, and aligned. If we are, then we become part of social convention (like winning teddy bears at fairs or sharing plates of nachos), which involves ongoing learning processes. And I think we have to look at learning as a part of belonging together: we might learn new things (are you sure your tattoo says ‘belief’ in Japanese? Because it looks a lot like the word for ‘toothpaste’…), or something we never meant to learn (I had no idea your mother loved karaoke that much), or even forget some things (the dishwasher really isn’t going to empty itself, ever), but we’ll keep learning.

I want to keep learning, with you.  

Forever yours,

Pookums

PS. I know that this is important to you, so when we come home from work tonight, we can start to talk about us; we can even stay up all night if you like…

References:

Tomasello, M. (1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.