Illustration: Chiara Bautista
What is the purpose of partnership?
I’ve been wondering this much of late. Having lived through the end of a marriage, much of my conditioned story burned down along with it.
Seeking security, getting ones needs met, serving another, finding companionship, raising children. All these can be beautiful and sufficient reasons to enter partnership.
For myself, recognizing the mayhem and urgency of the era, when considering the role of partnership I’ve come to ask a different question:
What might be our highest contribution in service to this time?
This can (and should) mean different things to different partnerships. For some, the answer might still be the raising of whole, healthy children. Or tending a backyard garden. Or doing the myriad of quiet and “unspectacular” things that ensure the world keeps turning.
For others, it might include developing a disruptive technology, or embodying the erotic edge of the divine lovers, or stewarding a particular place so it may have the capacity to hold big ceremonial doings.
The scorpion’s tale of this question isn’t immediately apparent, but it’s not far behind. Should the partnership reach a point where it no longer serves your highest contribution to the time, a hard choice must be made.
Sometimes this answer is to shapeshift the partnership form. Sometimes it means the partnership needs to end.
Ironically, rather than be seen as “something going wrong” this might be the inevitable outcome of a relationship that is committed to service. If you’ve been dedicated to self discovery, to revealing your blind spots, to submitting yourself to the fire of transparency and authenticity — then you are likely to “outgrow” all the reasons that brought you together in the first place.
There is a courageous sorrow in this understanding — that the surest sign you have been walking the path together is the ending of the relationship, or at least in a particular form.
And herein lies the invitation: to bring all that animated the joys of your partnership into loving the ending(s) as well.
May we all be that courageous, when the time comes.