Friends and Lovers are Better When They’re Strangers

Why Not Knowing is Our Best Path to Knowing

To know and be known. This is one of the most primal desires we possess. And it likely began unconsciously while we were yet in our mother's womb. Though we can theoretically tap into this connection with a number of people, it doesn’t simply rise from the raw materials lying dormant in our relationships. It is our ability to build, not simply find, something with one another that brings out this longed-for place of deep knowing. This means that beyond the sometimes mysterious and unquantifiable qualities of attraction or fascination, it is left to us to decide if we will pour into that vessel, if we will actively move toward mutual self-revelation or instead, allow what has been awakened between two people to stagnate and slip into the realm of mere existence without life.

It will conceivably sound like madness to you then, when I say that one of the great boundaries to intimacy is not distance but nearness, a certain kind of nearness. One of the strongest enemies to knowing is knowing too well. More accurately, assuming we know too well.

In friendship, just like in marriage, where this tendency is even stronger, we find ourselves frequently concluding that there is nothing we don't know about our friend or lover. Or perhaps, that there is nothing left worth uncovering. Which of these is worse, I'll leave to you. But both of these assumptions reveal a nearsightedness, a smallness of imagination, and a deliberate ignorance of the wider and higher potential of each relationship we are given. In our own minds, we’re limiting the potential for someone else to surprise us, to spark intrigue. More than this, we're placing boundaries around what and who we believe they are allowed to become.

We want them as we've always known them. We want them as pleasing and familiar and predictable as we can get. We'd like them to inhabit the places they've always inhabited, speak the way they've always spoken, get excited or displeased about the things we already understand. We want them bite-sized and easily consumable. Not so big as to require effort, not so small that we are not satiated. We want them to be our possessions. Though we know inside that complexity breeds intrigue, that depth begets intimacy, we settle for routine and assumption because at some point along the way, our passion for exploration and wonder is absorbed by our desire for tranquility, even stasis.

I want to let you in on a secret. No one was born for the sole purpose of bringing you satisfaction. Not your best friend, your husband or wife, your mother, father, or sister, not one of them holds the distinction of being fashioned solely for your happiness. The beauty in our relationships isn't that we must but that we can. The power is that we choose to do so, that we choose continually to love each other with our actions. We are gifts to one another if we choose to be. And what a beautiful thing it is to decide to be the one who brings a unique, lasting happiness and satisfaction to another human being. Even more, that these bonds hold the potential to ignite great change and carve out significant growth in each of us.

Slowly and with great predictability, we lose interest in what our friend or loved one might still become and what he or she is even now, beneath the layers we've already peeled away. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this but you don't know your loved one as well as you think you do. And they don't know you as well as they presume. This fact, something we sometimes quietly ruminate on, frequently pushes us toward fear responses instead of those ignited by love or fascination. Where once we had longed with such fire to dive into the unknown, to wander the wilderness of someone else, we now want them to simplify themselves, to draw their life inside the lines we’ve designated as their existential boundary. We fear that as they develop or reveal new complexity, they will get bored with us, even leave us. We think that by controlling the degree to which they can reveal and change, we can perhaps stave off some perilous offense or betrayal, that we can keep them here by keeping them small.

Friends and family members frequently place themselves in a predicament. When one member of the family or friend group begins showing an interest in things not shared by the other members, something thought to be far outside the group’s “normal” range of interests, more so, something aimed at a higher level of maturation, the others grow suspicious and afraid, believing the individual thinks they’re better than those around them. And we think, "If they grow then they will grow beyond me, beyond the need for me." And we set about doing what we can to discourage this growth, to cut back the new seedlings or blossoms which have already begun showing themselves to the sun.

And what a perverse thing this is when we truly look at it, when we own up to it. Among other things, is not the essence of love the desire for another's highest good? If it is in fact love that we are talking about, then we will want them to grow, to gain wisdom, to expand, to finally touch and set to flight the places inside which have lain dormant for so long. I'm not saying that behaving this way now and then makes us horrible. It makes us human. I am saying, however, that to do so with any regularity reveals something about the manner in which we choose to express our declared love for others. It reveals how serious we are about our relationships, how deep or shallow our wisdom runs, and whether we are in this merely for ourselves or because we want to love another human being well. It should be said that I'm not referring to the occasional distraction and negative detour that sometimes afflicts any one of us, those seasons when someone we love is stricken by some mind virus leading them down unhealthy and even dangerous paths. But most of us understand the difference between a healthy and interesting new source of revelation and something purely distracting or addictive.

I'll admit, the choice to invite into our world, the full range of human complexity found within another being, is at times a frightful and daunting thing to take on. There is much to be unearthed in each of us and though beauty in abundance lies there, so does terror. But it is also one of the most exciting choices we can make. Our willingness to welcome both the complexity of others and their capacity for change allows both existence and relationships to remain dynamic and living, not static and increasingly irrelevant. This outlook makes way for both people and life to surprise us, and in so doing, once again reveals itself and our loved one, to be worthy of exploration.

It's also a great shot of humility. We are reminded that we're not the only thing going on around here, that we are not simply the main character of this story while others remain mere players on our stage, a cast of supporting actors in a big movie about us. How sad will we be toward the end of life if that's how we choose to relate to others, when and if we finally see that we spent decades limiting both ourself and the one we loved? And how much more profound, more exciting, and more fulfilling would that relationship have been if we'd instead opened wide our stagnant mind and shrunken heart to the possibility of something deeper?

Something else we miss out on during our attempt to limit the scope of our loved one is their ability to teach and inspire us. We aren't merely curtailing their life but ours. We certainly have the potential to mature without external help, but even relatively healthy relationships have a way of accelerating the growth process and allowing us to access parts of our being unavailable by any other means. In short, we reveal new rooms in each other. The uniqueness of one human is revealed more completely by the light of another soul, another mind. There are certain things we can only learn within fully functioning relationships, certain truths about ourselves and others that get stirred up by the strange tango we dance together through this world.

People are beautiful and terrifying, creative and broken, awe-inspiring and hilarious. And life is better when we encourage one another to be entirely ourselves, what we are now and what we will become tomorrow. Your choice to welcome the complexity of the one you love will not destroy your relationship as you might now fear, it will renew it.

That's what I was implying by the title of this piece, that we should, no matter how much we know someone, assume that we know only a fraction of the whole, that there will always be more to uncover about that person, be it the one at your table, by your side, across the battlefield, in the boardroom, or in the bedroom.