Naturalist Life

Relationships have many faces. We have relationships with our friends, relationships with our family, and relationships with our lovers or partners. Relationships are not a limited definition in its essence. Relationships means the connection between two or more people. Some do even consider the relationships between people and things, between animals, and even relationships between things. However, for the sake of this piece we will stick to the definition of relationships between people.

So, what is a relationship? A relationship is a connection that you build between yourself and another person. You can not only have one relationship. In fact, you can have as many as you’d like. Relationships can be as deep as you want them to be. The only constraint is the time and effort you invest in building each relationship. Some people believe that you can only have one relationship in your life, as they define a relationship as being the connection between two lovers in a monogamy relationship. Though, this is not a natural way of thinking.

Some cultures, developed through many years of programming, have taught us to strive towards finding the one and only partner that we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together with. As often said in church; “… till death do us apart”. But if you take a natural standpoint and look a tad deeper into the nature of life and our species, among others, this is not necessarily true at all. We’re not meant to only build a single relationship. However, naturally, there is nothing wrong with focusing on only building a single relationship either.

Relationships are fluid and they are many. Only we, ourselves, choose which kinds of relationships we seek to build and advance. We often categorize relationships, whether they’re lovers, friends, acquaintances, family, etc. and how close these relationships are. This can make sense to focus our attention on people who align with our own personal values, and thus, the relationships that we seek to develop. However, relationships are more of a spectrum. A spectrum of relationships moving between categories. This is our nature.

As relationships are all on the same spectrum, relationships can move freely up and down the ladder and between categories, as the connections evolve, and our prioritization changes through life. This also means that naturally, any relationship can move into the ‘lovers’ category, just as any relationship can move into any of the other categories. The ‘lovers’ category can be accompanied by one or several relationships. What really matters is the connections being built and the time and effort put into continuously building these relationships.

All relationships may change categories over time. New ones come; old ones go. That is life, a natural life. Any category on the spectrum of relationships can be a group of any number of people, of any gender, of any age, and so forth. That is our nature. Nobody can dictate who, how many, or why we categorize our relationships and focus our attention, time, and effort as we do. This is a personal matter – not a matter of the public society. We’re whole in ourselves and the relationships that we seek to build are enhancements of our lives. That is how it should be – and that is how it is. That is natural.