Ego and the Transformed Relationship

Today I came across a quote from the publication Psychology Today. It reads, “Great relationships require hard work.” And we all know that nothing we desire happens without hard work. Right?

Well, I think there’s a better way to look at this idea of a great relationship, and it has to do with understanding the distinction between content and context.

One way to look at this distinction is that content is what happens, and context is the meaning we give to what happens.

As a relevant example, suppose I have an expectation that people are unreliable. That expectation is then the context in which I view another’s cancellation, say, of a lunch date. The cancellation serves to reinforce my expectation, and that particular relationship will likely suffer as a result.

If, on the other hand, my expectation is that people have busy lives and we will get together when the timing is right, the cancellation will likely not adversely affect the relationship because I will simply ask to reschedule the lunch date. In a sense, what happens is just what happens, but my experience of what happens is determined by the context I’ve created for that particular happening.

Now, we can generalize this principle: it is the context we create for our lives, and not the content of our lives, that determines our life experience.

Well, what is the general, over-arching context we create for our lives? See if this rings true for you:

We are separate beings, blessed with the capacity for rational thought, trusting the evidence provided by our senses, on our own in life but able to make connections with others who can help us make the best rational decisions we can to deal with our problems. Oh, and we each have an ego, but if we do enough work on ourselves we can set it aside and act for the good of others anyway.

What I’ve just proposed is how most people live their lives, and it doesn’t serve us. It leaves us ineffective at solving our problems and unsatisfied with the quality of our lives and our relationships. What other context would serve us better?

Let’s return to the subject of great relationships… and, to the Ego.

The ocean of Ego we all swim in

Let’s not take our egos so personally. We usually think of “my ego,” or “your ego.” In that personal context, the ego is usually thought of as a character defect, which we somehow have to make up for with apologies and/or resolutions to put it aside and thus be more present, truthful, or authentic. Let’s try thinking of ego as something we’re all submerged in. Suppose we say that every love relationship takes place in the context, the ocean, of Ego.

We can consider the Ego a global phenomenon, the water we all swim in, that colors or distorts everything we look at. In that case, we don’t feel the need to apologize or make up for our habit of following the ego’s dictates, because we’re all in it together.

Ordinarily, relationships live as content inside the context we’ve created for relationship. We human beings live inside an unrecognized, unidentified container called Ego. That container, the Ego, determines how we see everything we look at while inside it. And it’s a mess.

In a transformed relationship, however, things are reversed. The Ego lives inside the context of the relationship instead of the other way around. The Ego is then seen to be a Thing, an ocean of shared viewpoint, transmitted from generation to generation as parents teach their children language. It doesn’t ever disappear or even become negligible. But it can be recognized and processed in the context of a mutually honest and trusting conversation about any and all disagreements that may arise.

When two people agree to hold themselves and each other as creative beings dealing with that mess (a global set of inaccurate assumptions and mistaken ideas), they can work together to reveal those misunderstandings and progressively clear up the mess for themselves. In that process, the Ego is gradually revealed to be what it really is: a story whose apparent power is a superstition. And that “recontextualization” changes everything. The relationship itself becomes more truthful and authentic… and so do we.

Learn more

For more, I invite you to check out my new book, Hoodwinked: Uncovering our Fundamental Superstitions. It will show you how to recontextualize your entire life!