Perhaps addressing our stuck relationship patterns becomes a matter of greater urgency for those stuck together than those stuck alone. Being up alongside partners, family, or housemates day after day can be a hell or a heaven depending on whether we’re playing out our patterns on each other, or managing to do something different. 

I’m reminded of Sartre’s No Exit ‘hell is other people’ or the Jewish parable of the long spoons, where hell is a place with a magnificent feast but everyone has spoons so long that they are unable to feed themselves and they starve. Heaven is exactly the same, but people are using the spoons to feed each other. I guess The Good Place would be ideal Netflix viewing for folk stuck in together for the duration.

Probably, inevitably, time stuck in together will sometimes be heaven, sometimes hell, and oftentimes something in between. Pema Chödrön talks about the six Buddhist heaven and hell realms as places we’re always moving between in our everyday life. In relation to our stuck patterns we could perhaps see the worst hell realm as when we’re utterly locked into our patterns with each other, retraumatising each other constantly. The hungry ghost realm is about addiction and craving. Perhaps it’s where we’re not in permanent hell, but are still filled with unfulfilled yearning and longing for the other person to save us from our pain. The animal realm is where we don’t realise that the things that bring us short term pleasure often cause us long term pain – like a moth to a flame. So perhaps in this realm we’re still employing old patterns to try to get what we want – from ourselves and others – and struggling when it means relationships flounder long term even if we do get some immediate pleasure or control.

The human realm is where we muddle along with glimpses of connection and harmony with others, and times of disconnection and pain. In the realm of the jealous gods we perhaps manage to see how our patterns hurt us all long term and manage do something different, but there’s still that sense of separation of self from other. The heaven realm could be those sacred moments when we feel our connection and oneness and the sense that what helps us helps others and vice versa. Our patterns have dropped away – at least briefly – and we know what it’s like to relate together without those patterns tugging us down into fear and shame.

As with addressing our stuck patterns when stuck in alone, two vital elements of addressing our patterns when stuck together are time alone and support from others.

The need for space

It is virtually impossible to address our stuck patterns in relationships if we have no space and solitude. We need enough slowness and spaciousness around time together to notice our patterns playing out, and to practise doing something different.

One dangerous idea about relationships is that it is better to spend all – or most – of our time together. This is likely to play out in risky ways at this time as people may be spending all their days and nights together for extended periods of time. It’s easy for us to feel shame around taking our own time and space due to a cultural assumption that we ‘should’ be together, and that being apart is a failure or a ‘bad sign’ about the relationship. This can be especially hard in relationships where one or both people’s patterns involve trying to maximise together time in order to avoid the fear and shame they have around abandonment.

It would be great to reverse this idea and to assume that everyone needs space and time alone in relationships and that it’s okay for people to have different needs and boundaries around this. It could be good, early on, for each person in a shared space under social isolation or distancing to tune into their needs and to communicate them to others. What might be possible in terms of giving people time alone where they know they’ll be uninterrupted? If it’s not possible for everyone to have their own private room, then can shared spaces be allocated on a rota, or private spaces made within shared rooms by blocking off parts of them?

Alone time becomes even more vital when one or more people are activated, triggered, or in a trauma response, as is often the case in conflict. Again, there’s a cultural norm that we must stay together at such times and sort it out to get back to good feelings as quickly as possible, often by making the other person see that we’re right and they’re wrong. Actually when we’re in such a reactive response we are way more likely to act out our stuck patterns and to hurt the other person and/or ourselves in the process. Finding ourselves in traumatic interactions regularly will likely make those patterns play out more, as well as retraumatising us so that we’re less and less able to handle the conflicts and crises that do occur. Over time it becomes increasingly hard to see each others’ perspectives and to look after ourselves and other people in our lives.

As soon as we recognise that anyone present is triggered it’s best to get some space and time so that we can soothe ourselves and/or get support from somebody who is not caught up in the dynamic with us. There’s advice about how to do this in the conflict chapter of my book Rewriting the Rules and in the literature on trauma on and offline.

I love this four elements idea that I recently heard about from Elan Shapiro. Earth stands for grounding, air for breathing, water for salivating, and fire for visualising something safe and soothing: all things that help to calm our nervous system.

Getting support

Another dangerous idea about relationships like families and partnerships is that they should be private and protected from the eyes of anybody outside of them. That means that all kinds of damaging dynamics can begin to play out without anybody spotting them and saying that something doesn’t seem right. For those within the dynamic it can often be hard to spot this happening because the dynamic has developed so gradually over time, and/or because it may be so familiar from damaging dynamics we’ve been part of in the past that we don’t realise there’s a problem.

Again there’s a risk that this ideal of privacy and protection will play out more during this time because we’re stuck with each other and it feels risky to acknowledge – to ourselves or to our friends – that there are any problems. The cultural ideals around families and romantic relationships really don’t help here because we’re bombarded with images of happy families and perfect loves which we can never live up to, but may well feel we have to pretend we’re managing in order to avoid shame.

It would be great to reverse this idea and come to a new cultural norm whereby a healthy family or relationship of any kind is one with the windows open where everyone involved is nurturing their support system and able to talk freely about what the relationship is like for them: good and bad. That means that the inevitable patterns which are present for all of us can be more easily seen and discussed openly, instead of becoming hidden and unspeakable.

It can be useful for each person in the partnership, family, or household to consider what their needs are to get support from outside, and how those supports might be put in place. Again supportive relationships that each of you might consider building in, separately, online if you can, include:

• Peers who are also engaging in this kind of work to share how it’s going and support each other
• Small groups where you all have time to share what’s going on for you at the moment and be heard
• More explicit forms of one-to-one peer support or therapy (Time to Think gives one useful model for this)
• Professional support if you can afford it (therapy relationships are one place where it’s explicitly intended that you can notice your patterns playing out and practise different ones)
• Contact with people in your life who offer you care and/or protection 
• Engagements with authors and communities who are discussing how to do this kind of work – and supporting each other around it – at this time

When doing this work together it’s also useful to consider whether the relationship can be supported, as well as the individuals who make it up, whether that be a partnership, a family system, or a group of housemates. If dynamics have become stuck and/or damaging this is particularly vital. Possible forms of support for this – which can all be done online – include:

• Relationship therapy
• Systemic/family therapy
• Mediation
• Restorative and transformative justice

You might also get creative about how conversations between members of any cohabiting group might be witnessed and supported by others in your system or community, instead of doing such conversations in private. Can it become a regular practice between you that difficult conversations are carried out in front of each other, perhaps with a designated facilitator? Can you agree a structure for such conversations, such as each person getting time to speak and be heard? Can you have a process for what will happen if anyone gets triggered or activated? Such conversations can be returned to over time rather than being a one-off, and it’s useful to have aims like ‘everyone being heard’ rather than figuring out who is right and wrong.

Doing it together?

One great opportunity of being stuck together for extended periods is the potential to do this kind of work together. Very few things bring up our stuck patterns like our close relationships, especially when we’re around each other a lot. What a fabulous AFOG (as Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy call it)!

However it’s very hard to do this kind of work together unless everybody is fully on board. As I stressed when talking about doing this work alone, we’re in for a hell of a ride here. Engaging with our stuck patterns involves facing our deepest fears and shames, and may well bring up tough memories from when these patterns came into being, as well as times when they’ve been most vivid over the years. We’ll likely have to face times when we’ve hurt others badly as well as times when we’ve been hurt ourselves. 

If we’re stuck in with families then we might be doing this work with the very people who we were with when the patterns developed in the first place. If we’re stuck in with partners then we may be doing this work with people who we hoped would give us the things we lost or lacked back when these patterns were put in place. Often part of what we have to face is other peoples’ inability to give us those things – at least not in any completely consistent ongoing way – as well as the impact of their patterns on us.

My own personal criteria for doing this kind of work with others are:

1. Is everyone involved up for doing their own individual work?
2. Is everyone involved cultivating their own support system to help them through it given that it’s hard – if not impossible – to support each other within a relationship where this is currently playing out?
3. Are we broadly on the same page with this way of understanding things: acknowledging that we’re all part of these dynamics with our own stuck patterns, rather than trying to pin it on one person being the main problem?

If everyone involved is up for it then it can be a good idea to start having discussions about what the processes will be within your partnership or group, as well as how these might be supported from outside, and what support you might offer out in return. For example, you might think about making times for everyone to gather together:

• Just to share how they are doing (where each person gets allocated time to share), 
• To address practical aspects of living together during this time
• To address emotional dynamics of living together during this time and what stuck patterns are playing out between people
• To deal with specific conflicts
• To relax and have fun together (because it’s hard to do this work if all your time together is focused on hard stuff)

Addressing our part when others are not on board

Whether or not the people around you are working on their stuck patterns, it’s still worth doing your work. In fact, you doing this kind of work can become a model for others which they may take up if and when they’re ready. Also when one person changes their patterns it can be that the whole system shifts to encompass that change. Harriet Lerner’s work is really helpful on how to shift our own patterns and hold firm when others try to pull us back into old dynamics or systems.

It wouldn’t be consensual to push anybody into doing this kind of work. Also it’s important to recognise what a big ask it is, and how it may well not be something people yet have capacity for.

However, it is also a hell of a lot of emotional labour for one person to work on their patterns – and to try to improve the relationship or family – when others involved are doing nothing. It is hard – if not impossible – to make these changes within a system where others are actively resisting such changes, or unable or unwilling to confront their role in it at all.

If you want to address your own stuck patterns within a relationship, family or group where others aren’t up for doing it together, then you might find my suggestions on how to do this work when stuck alone helpful. Considering how you can carve out time and space within your home to do this work, as well as how to get outside support, will be particularly important here.

Of course the most dangerous end of the spectrum of these kinds of stuck relationships patterns are abusive relationship dynamics of various kinds, including coercive control as well as physically or sexually abusive relationships. Slightly lower down the spectrum – but still concerning – are relationships where one or more people are frequently being (re)traumatised by the degree of conflict or the kinds of dynamics that are playing out.

In situations where there is abuse, damaging dynamics, and/or where other people involved are not up for addressing the dynamics, it is important to consider other options. Of course this may be far more difficult during this time of social distancing and isolation. There’s government guidance for safe accommodation provision here, a useful article about the spike in domestic abuse here, and a list of places to support you in crisis here and here. 

Personally I think it’s useful for all people – whether living alone or with others during this time – to have a sense of what their contingency plan will be if their living situation becomes damaging and their mental health deteriorates because of it. Mental and physical risks need to be balanced. It may be the case that alleviating stress by moving location for a brief period of respite – or longer term –  is less risky to everyone’s physical and mental health than staying put. Also remember the toll that the stress of repressing the pain you’re in – or having regular trauma times – can take on the immune system.

For more about how you might go about shifting stuck patterns, check out my post on being stuck in alone. There’s more about what the patterns are – and where they come from in this post. There’s more about shifting stuck patterns when they are fleeting, entrenched, or overwhelming in this post.

Patreon link: If you liked this, feel free to support my Patreon, it will certainly help this self-employed person to maintain some income during these uncertain times.
Plural tag: This post was written by Beastie.

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The book is packed with a wealth of experiences from experts, celebrities, and mostly everyday folk who have negotiated their relationships to home in a wonderful variety of ways. I like very much the way in which Angela shies away from presenting one version of home as some kind of ‘antidote to Broken Britain’ (p.6), but rather aims to explore the meaning of home in its broadest sense, recognising that different things work for different people at different times. It seems that we need to move away from a one-size-fits-all understanding of relationships, families, and homes, and to embrace the diversity of possibilities if we are to address the various economic, social, and emotional pressures currently facing us.

Separate Togetherness

I was struck by the resonances between A Home for the Heart, and my own book on relationships Rewriting the Rules, not just in the foregrounding of diversity, but also in the theme of separateness and togetherness that recurs throughout the book. Angela began her project of exploring the home because of her own experience of realising that she and her long-term husband were struggling to live together, but didn’t want to give up their shared home. They decided to carry on living together, but much more independently, terming this ‘separate togetherness’. This was their phrase for what others have called Living Apart Together (LAT) which suggests more of a positive choice and recognition that they are still important in each others’ lives.’

In Rewriting the Rules I also found the theme of separateness and togetherness coming up again and again as I located many relationship tensions and conflicts in our desire to simultaneously follow our individual dreams and to find a sense of belonging in a relationship. It seemed that many of the people Angela interviewed in her book have addressed this tension head on and found creative ways of engaging with it. Angela interviewed me for her book particularly in relation to openly non-monogamous relationships, which is one way in which people have been renegotiating the rules of relationships and home. But there are many other ways of doing this relating to the commitments that are made, and the kinds of time and space that are shared and kept private. As Angela puts it there are people ‘deeply committed to each other, but who know themselves well enough to be wary of blending their lives too thoroughly, aware they need separateness to be able to retreat entirely from the presence, requirements, demands, delights, of a partner who is not less loved because of this’ (p.27).

The Meaning of Home: Freedom and Belonging

The part of the book that I found most fascinating was the chapter on what home means to people. It seemed particularly relevant to me because some of my own family members have recently made big decisions about the houses they live in, relating to the shared histories that these have, and their potential for enabling further family memories.

Angela initially explores home as being a place where we, as individuals, can be ‘private, authentic selves’ (p.32). I hadn’t previously make such a strong connection between home and sense of self, but this idea really got me thinking. Perhaps the home space, at its best, can be a relief from the potentially judgemental gaze of others, and our own tendencies to compare ourselves and find ourselves wanting. Wafting from empty room to empty room, vegging out in front of the TV in our pants, or dancing in our bedroom, we can let loose and enjoy freedom from worrying about what anybody else thinks of us. Angela cites Alain de Botton‘s suggestion that the daily rituals of home (washing, cooking, eating, sleeping, tending plants and pets, etc.) also connect us in a fundamental way to the rest of humanity, so home can be both something that frees us and something that connects us.

Freedom and connection also come into the ways in which we create homes. However, big or small our own space, we often fashion it to make it ours, using objects, pictures, music, as a kind of extension of ourself. Alain de Botton calls homes ‘guardians of identity’ in this way (p.44). But we also create homes together with people we share them with, forming joint decisions about furniture or paint, and investing time and energy in creating a place to reflect our relationship, our family, our friendship group, or our community. Again home is something that can reflect our freedom as part of the process of self-creation, and it is something that can express our connection with others and our part in something larger. People spoke to Angela about home as where they belonged and felt their strongest, often due to all of the stories they had built up in the place: with others and alone, happy and sad.

Hard Homes

A Home for the Heart also movingly describes several situations in which home is not a positive experience at all. I like Angela’s idea that it is important for home to be a place to dream and to expand the imagination (p.77). In situations of poverty, social marginalisation, homelessness and overcrowding, what homes there are may simply not be secure enough to enable that. Also, when people in the home are dangerous physically or emotionally, people are deprived of the peace and privacy needed to stretch themselves and their freedom, and any sense of belonging and safety in everyday ritual. Angela compellingly links these kinds of experiences to mental health, physical health, and the intellectual development of children, and questions educational approaches which call for tougher teaching, higher standards, and greater discipline when so many kids are precariously homed: one million living in conditions of overcrowding.

There are other times when homes cease to be nurturing. Like me, Angela is critical of the ‘perfect life’ model that we are presented with in consumer and celebrity culture: the idea that we could be a successful self if only we could get enough money, find the right partner, or create the perfect home. She spends some time reflecting on the ‘trading up’ model where so many people moved time and again in order to get more money, investing in the economic rather than emotional value of property. Like me, Angela cites Oliver James’s book Affluenza which speaks of a set of values that paradoxically increase our vulnerability to psychological distress (p.61). She also recognises the role of pressure to have perfect relationships (and fear of admitting they are not) in keeping people boxed up in very unhappy homes.

There is a further way in which homes can, perhaps, become hard. I’m thinking of times when we feel that homes are the only safe place to be: when everywhere outside becomes scary and we withdraw into the home and find it difficult to be anywhere else. At such times home can become suffocating – a cage which we have trapped ourselves in – rather than a valuable shelter which we can retreat into and come out stronger. I wonder if sometimes we cling to too tight an idea of home, rather than recognising that we can find moments of home-ness with other people, and out in the world, as well as within a specific four walls. Angela certainly recognises the danger of increasingly segregated, atomised forms of home where people hide in gated, guarded, locked-in worlds (p.64).

Conclusions

In Rewriting the Rules I encourage people to communicate with each other about all aspects of relationships: what they are looking for from a partner, how they like to manage conflict, what they want to commit and have committed to them, where they stand on privacy, how much they want to share, and how they feel about family, holidays, sleeping arrangements, illness, and a range of other aspects of life. Perhaps a vital element to add to this list is home. What does it mean to us, and what does it mean to the people we are considering living with? We will probably never agree on everything, but if we can understand what it means to us, and to other people, we are better prepared for the business of building and sharing a home.

You can also find out more about these themes in my book The Secrets of Enduring Love.

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The study itself linked living alone to poor housing in women and low social support in men (something that has long been found to be a risk factor for single men). However they are understood, the findings clearly point to the vital social role in depression: a condition which is commonly understood to be both internally caused, and in need of only internal treatments (such as drugs and therapies). We need to move to more biopsychosocial (or even sociopsychobio) understandings of this experience.

The bounded self

Social psychologist Kenneth Gergen points towards one idea which may help to make sense of findings like these. In his book, Relational Being, he argues that in the past few centuries we have come, in the west, to see ourselves as ‘bounded beings’: as singular and separate from others. This is a culturally peculiar belief, according to Clifford Geertz, but one which we generally take for granted as a ‘fact of life’.

Gergen argues that if I accept this view of myself:

‘I must always be on guard, lest others see the faults in my thinking, the cesspools of my emotions, and the embarrassing motives behind my actions … I must worry about how I compare to others, and whether I will be judged inferior.’ (xiii-xiv)

He argues that this view underlies our education and organisational systems which evaluate us individually and encourage constant competition from the start.

Importantly, for our explorations here, Gergen suggests that depression can be located in this way of viewing ourselves The inner critics and overwhelming fears of failure which are so familiar to us are part and parcel of this view of the human being. As well as the relentless self-evaluation, toxic comparison and defensive withdrawal of depression, the familiar sense of meaninglessness and pointlessness can also be linked to disconnection from others since meaning, for most people, is associated with their relations with others.

Speaking specifically about living alone, Gergen proposes that this is something which only really makes sense under this view of ourselves as fundamentally isolated. Alongside statistics on the numbers of people choosing to live by themselves, he cites evidence for decreases in close friendships and increases in loneliness in recent years.

Gergen proposes that an alternative way of seeing things is to regard ourselves as fundamentally relational rather than bounded. This is a view which is common to Buddhist and existential philosophies (which question the separation between self and others and stress interconnection), and constructionist and constructivist approaches (which point out that we become different ‘selves’ in our relationships with different people, and that our self is something that we construct in interaction).

Bounded selves and living alone/together

Returning to the issue of living alone, we could see this as a situation in which the sense of ourselves as bounded and separated is exacerbated, especially in situations where we are also out of work or retired and have very little human contact day-to-day. It is possible to become very inward focused: listening to the loops of self-judgement and critical commentaries that go on within our heads. A vicious cycle is easily set in motion where our negative view of ourselves makes contact with others a frightening prospect, due to fear that they will confirm our self-perceptions, and we withdraw further into ourselves.

Such challenges are not absent for those of us who live with others. The bounded self view is pervasive and we also relate to other people accordingly: looking to our partners, children or parents to affirm and validate a positive view of ourselves, and fearing that they will do the opposite: seeing us negatively in a way that confirms what we dread is the real truth of who we are. This is what Sartre was talking about when he said that ‘hell is other people‘.

However, given the findings on living alone, it seems that – for many of us – contact with others goes some way towards loosening the tight grip on the self. Perhaps when we live up alongside others we have times when the self-and-other distinctions are blurred: as we share a moment, or physical contact breaks down the barriers, or we recognise our own pain or joy in the eyes of another, for example. Maybe we realise how much our own projects in life are bound up with other people, and how much they need us for their own projects, and a kind of mutuality and reciprocation comes from that.

Also, as we relate to different people in our lives we may notice that they, and we, have different sides in different situations, and also that they, and we, change over time. The recognition of our plurality and fluidity both provide relief from the grip of the bounded self. It makes far less sense to judge and evaluate ourselves (or others) when we know that we are multifaceted, and less sense to compare ourselves against others who are constantly shifting just as we are. If we can find the courage together, intimacy with others may even enable of us to reveal our vulnerability and recognise it as something that connects us rather than being something we have to defend so desperately.

Implications

So what are the implications of such findings on living alone and depression, and this way of understanding them? Clearly they point to the importance of human contact – but importantly contact which encourages a softening of the bounded self rather than further judgement and competition. We should be cautious, as a society, of policies and practices which leave people even more isolated and withdrawn. Such research should feed into current discussions, for example, of benefit systems and of how we treat older people.

Also it would be good to provide more real alternatives to living alone. At the moment, for many people, the decision is between living as a couple/nuclear family and living by yourself (if you are single or separated from such a unit). We need to expand the options and make it both socially and economically viable to live in other arrangements.

It is not that being alone inevitably reinforces the sense of the self as bounded. We can all probably point to moments of solitude in which we felt connected to others and the wider world, and this is something that can be cultivated in meditation and other solitary practices. It is quite possible to respond to the pain of the bounded self by surrounding ourselves with busyness, people and distraction in ways that become equally problematic. It is useful to consider the ways that we all relate to solitude, to being with others, and to wider community. At all levels we can operate as bounded, separate, units, or shift into a more relational, interconnected, mode.

Find out more:

For another perspective on living alone, based on a qualitative research project on those who live by themselves, see I want to be alone: The rise and rise of solo living (The Guardian, March 30th 2012)

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According to the BBC, the letter states the following:

“There are many reasons why people get married. For most couples, there is an instinctive understanding that the stability of a marriage provides the best context for the flourishing of their relationship and for bringing up their children.”

“Society recognises marriage as an important institution for these same reasons: to enhance stability in society and to respect and support parents in the crucial task of having children and bringing them up as well as possible.”

This law would “gradually and inevitably transform society’s understanding of the purpose of marriage.”

“There would be no recognition of the complementarity of male and female or that marriage is intended for the procreation and education of children.”

Catholics have a “duty to do all we can to ensure that the true meaning of marriage is not lost for future generations”.

The government response to this letter was: “The government has made clear its commitment to equality. We believe people should have the option of civil marriage, irrespective of sexual orientation.”

Responding directly to the Archbishops’ letter risks giving it more credibility than it deserves. Often simply presenting a counter-argument suggests that there is some merit to the original argument, which clearly – in this case – there isn’t. Hopefully by now people are familiar with the wealth of research finding that ‘same-sex’ couples are just as good parents as ‘opposite-sex’ ones, and that there is no evidence that their relationships are any less ‘stable’. If not then the reviews of the research produced by the American Psychological Association on same-sex parenting and same-sex marriage should prove helpful. Hopefully also the principle of equal rights to people of all sexual identities is embraced by the vast majority of people, as reflected in the government statement.

Here, then, I want to move the discussion in a slightly different direction. First I’ll present a brief argument that flexibility in the laws and rules around relationships might be something to embrace, rather than resist, and secondly I’ll suggest some further questions around the kinds of relationships which might be included in such a flexible approach.

Embracing the transformation of ‘society’s understanding of the purpose of marriage’

In these discussions reference is often made to tradition. Archbishop Peter Smith, one of the authors of the letter, frequently justifies his position with the argument that the current form of marriage has been present since ‘time immemorial’.

However, looking to history we can see that marriage has changed markedly both in terms of who has access to it, and what it is for. The current form of ‘opposite-sex’ marriage can be regarded as a relatively recent invention, as argued by historian Stephanie Coontz in her history of marriage. Marital laws’ assumptions about the age, kinship relationship, and race of partners; the number of partners a person can marry; and the rights of partners to own property and to bring legal actions against one another have all changed over time, and there is no reason to regard the gender of those involved as any more intrinsic than those aspects. The historical Christian ceremony uniting people of the ‘same-sex’ is also interesting to reflect upon in this context.

Many scholars have argued that the nature of intimate relationships and the family have changed radically, again, in the past fifty years or so. It seems telling that the Catholic Church have chosen to focus on ‘same-sex’ relationships rather than other shifts such as: rates of separation and divorce, cohabiting before – or instead of – marriage, the increase in numbers of people living alone, shifts in gender roles in relationships, or rates of infidelity and increases in forms of open non-monogamy. Perhaps these should all be reasons to regard such relationships as in a constant state of process, rather than as something static, and to embrace regular reflections on whether the policy and practices surrounding them needs to shift accordingly.

Further potential transformations

Of course there is a wider debate to be had over whether the state should have a role in intimate relationships at all. However, if we proceed on the basis that it currently does have a role, for example in determining who is supported in adopting, or bringing up, children, and who is recognised as a legitimate partner in the case of medical emergencies or in relation to shared money and property ownership, then such rights and responsibilities clearly need to be extended beyond the married ‘opposite-sex’ couple, and any two-tier system (such as marriage and civil partnerships) is problematic since it still gives the message that some relationships are more legitimate than others. This is clearly linked to heterosexism and prejudice towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer people.

Whilst religious organisations remain free to celebrate specific events in a person’s life in the ways that they wish to (which differs from group to group), any civil recognition needs to be available to all. One example of the ridiculousness of the current situation is in the case of married couples who have to go through annulment and civil partnership if one person changes gender such that they become a ‘same-sex’ couple.

Another important point, regarding equality, is made by The Bisexual Index. Talk of ‘gay marriage’ in many media reports of these debates is problematic because, of course, many of those in ‘same-sex’ relationships are bisexual rather than gay. Furthermore, at the same time as extending marriage to ‘same-sex’ relationships, it is important to extend civil partnerships to ‘opposite-sex’ relationships such that all people would have access to either of these (there being political reasons, relating to the gendered baggage of marriage for example, why some would prefer a different form of relationship recognition). The Bisexual Index concludes that “the way the law is currently written does not mention sexuality, but instead the genders of the people. Why can’t the people campaigning for equality understand that the way to amend the law isn’t to talk about ‘gay vs. straight’ but instead to address the genders – remove the genders from the law and it’s not just gay and straight men and women who’ll have equal love, but all of us.” Making the gender of those involved irrelevant to the right to marriage/civil partnership would also end the need for the unwieldy ‘same-sex’, ‘opposite-sex’ terminology which doesn’t represent all experiences of gender either.

Moving on from this we might want to explore, more broadly, the kinds of relationships which should be possible to recognise in these ways. For example, in order to be co-parents, or committed co-habitees, people do not necessarily need to be in a sexual, or a romantic, relationship. Close friendships and asexual and aromantic relationships challenge these assumptions. Similarly, it is possible for more than two people to co-parent, to co-habit in a committed way and/or to be romantically and/or sexually involved so we should certainly consider extending relationship recognition beyond the ‘couple’.

Given that intimate relationships, and the social norms surrounding them, are in process rather than static, it is important, and necessary, that policy and practice relating to them is also flexible and fluid, rather than rigid and restrictive.

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Monday 16^th January 2012 saw the launch of a new Open University research project called Enduring Love? Here I will introduce the project and also summarise the talks at the launch about current thinking on relationships, and the pressures they are under.

There has been plenty of research on break-up, divorce and separation. The team behind this project decided that it was time that we knew more about what makes people stay together as well as what makes them split up.

The plan is to get as many people as possible to fill out the online questionnaire so that the researchers can get a good idea of the diversity of ways in which people are experiencing long-term relationships, as well as anything that people who stay together have in common. At the same time, there will be much more in-depth research on sixty couples who will keep a diary of their relationship, take part in interviews together and separately, and explore the way they live and how they feel in their relationship. The detailed research will consider various aspects of the couple relationship such as emotions, sex, commitment, and the way that their partnership fits with other important relationships in their lives. You can already get an idea of the kinds of things people are saying about their relationships from the video clips and podcasts that the team has put together.

The project is called Enduring Love? with a question mark to give the title a double meaning. The researchers are keen to explore what makes relationships work for those who stay together long term and who find that a fulfilling way to live. At the same time it is clear that some couples feel pressured to stay together even when they are very unhappy. It is useful to know what makes an enduring love, as well as what the experience is like when love itself becomes something to be endured. Of course many relationships include elements of both these things: when times are hard the relationship feels like something to be endured, and when things are going well the ‘enduring’ nature of the relationship is something that may be celebrated. Enduring hard times can build intimacy as well as sometimes breaking it.

At the launch event we heard from a representative from the Department of Education who spoke about ways in which the research could feed into government strategies around relationships. For example, it could help to illuminate the diversity of relationship styles that people are currently engaged in, feeding into relationship education in school PSHE, developing relationship therapy training, and informing programmes which help couples to transition to different forms of relationships (for example, those who continue to co-parent or live together when they are no longer a couple).

After the talk from the DoE, author and journalist, Kate Figes, spoke about her book Couples: The Truth which was based on interviews with a range of couples. She found that people don’t tend to reflect on their relationships whilst things are going well – only when things go badly wrong. People also felt that their relationship had to be private and that it was disloyal to talk about what went on in their relationship to anybody outside of it. Finally, people were very concerned about whether their relationship was ‘normal’.

Of course when nobody speaks openly about the reality of relationships, it is easy for us all to assume that everybody else’s relationship is much better than our own (because that is what they look like from the outside), and to worry that something is wrong with us. One reason that I love the book Mistakes were made (but not by me) is that it argues that intimate relationships are actually one of the most challenging things we can possibly do, because letting someone in so close that they get to see all sides of you is exposing, and often confronts us with difficult truths.

Kate’s ideas resonated with my own thoughts on this topic as she highlighted key pressures that relationships are currently under, many of which I also explore in my book Rewriting the Rules, which is out later this year. She said that there is romantic pressure to find a soulmate who will provide us with our happily-ever-after; there is sexual pressure to have perfect exciting sex throughout a relationship; and there is pressure to be monogamous, with any kind of infidelity regarded as unacceptable. However, the first two pressures make it more, rather than less, likely that people will end up looking elsewhere because nobody can be everything to us, people change over time, and such insularity can leave us gasping for freedom.

Kate reckoned that important ways forward were for people to be more honest about the lows and highs of their relationships, to communicate better with each other, and to recognise the impact of our backgrounds, cultures, and family histories on how we understand relationships (which will inevitably be different to that of our partners). She also argued that the adversarial legal system is very bad for people who are trying to shift their relationship into a different form (co-parenting for example) and that mediation is a better alternative.

We also heard from academics Lynn Jamieson and Ann Phoenix who talked about their own research in this area and what their hopes were for the Enduring Love? project. Lynn spoke about the way our understandings of coupledom has changed over time. An older participant in her research spoke about the way marriage used to be just what people did at a certain age, whilst many now see love as a vital ingredient. Lynne, and others in the audience raised questions about who we count as a couple. For example, many couples now don’t live together some, or even all, of the time. There are also people who are in secret couples which others in their lives do not know about. And polyamorous people have relationships with more than one person so they may be in more than one couple, or in a triad/quad or family rather than a couple at all. In Rewriting the Rules I question the dividing rules that we have between romantic love and other kinds of relationship which are not always clearcut (what about a romantic relationship that has become more like a friendship over time, or a close friendship between people who live together and have intense rows and good times together?).

Lynn suggested that the Enduring Love? research could provide valuable insights into ‘practices of intimacy’: what are the building blocks of relationships that we may not be aware of but which we use everyday to connect with those we’re close to? What is the role of talking (and deciding not to talk about certain issues)? Other practices include practices of caring for each other, learning about each other, spending time together (physically present and digitally mediated), prioritising, and giving and receiving.

Lynn agreed with Kate about the ludicrous pressures of cultural ideas such as ‘The One’ and ‘Mr/Ms Right’, suggesting that we might move towards celebrating more pragmatic arrangements that people have in their relationships. Ann Phoenix went on to explore such ideas further in her talk which highlighted the roles of myths and stories that couples have about their relationships (which draw upon cultural myths as well as family backgrounds). Like Kate she highlighted the importance of recognising that all relationships have dissatisfactions and disharmonies as well as shared stories, even if these are more rarely spoken about with others.

Ann suggested that key areas to consider, when exploring relationships, include the diversity of experiences of those in transnational couples (who may be forced to live apart and/or have different backgrounds and privileges, for example), and same-sex couples. Like polyamorous people, such couples have the additional pressure of frequently having to explain their relationships to strangers, which is a very different experience to those whose relationship is take-for-granted and even celebrated by others and by wider culture.

Ann also discussed change, which is something that I focus on in Rewriting the Rules. She said that over time we are not the same people who we were back when we got together, never mind being the same couple. She also questioned the binary way in which we tend to see ‘enduring’ and ‘breaking up’. As I explore in my chapter on break-up, given the shifts that relationships go through over time we might begin to challenge what it means to ‘stay together’ and to ‘split up’ and what there might be between these two extremes. Perhaps ‘enduring love’ is a love that is flexible enough to shift and change over time as the situation demands it.

Hopefully the sociological approach taken by the Enduring Love? researchers will enable a continued exploration of the psychosocial nature of relationships. Our intimate relationships happen in a wider context of global, economic, political, and social change as well as within wider social networks which may support or constrain our relationships. We know, for example, that social policies influence whether people can live together or not, and economic situations and policies determine who can get married. Clearly cultural ideals about relationships impact our expectations and experiences. Relationships are not something we learn how to do once and for all, rather they are a work in progress operating within a world which is also changing all the time.

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Following the success of the series, Thinking Allowed are following it up with a special episode over the festive period which focuses on shared houses. This form of living arrangement differs from the extended families considered in the earlier episodes, in that the majority of people are not related to one another. Rather they are groups of people who have chosen to live together in shared accommodation.

There are many ways in which such shared living arrangements can manifest. At one end of a spectrum would be a large house where individuals or families independently rent out rooms and have little contact with one another. At the other end would be groups of people who already have close links who decide to live together. Somewhere in between would be intentional communities or communal living situations where a space is set up along certain principles and people who share those values are encouraged to join.

Of course the recent economic situation provides one important reason why there may be an increase in people looking to live in such ways. An alternative to adult children remaining at home, or retired parents moving in with adult children, is a situation where non-related adults share accommodation.

However, people may also deliberately choose such alternative forms of living for other reasons (instead of, or in addition to, this). For example, they may do so due to shared spiritual, political or ecological commitments. It is particularly common, for example, for quakers and Buddhists to set up communities, for those with commitment to eco-politics to explore sustainable ways of living where people share space, and for those committed to anarchism to live communally in order to develop their experiments in non dominant and non-hierarchical forms of relating. Another group who may or may not overlap with such groups are those who form love relationships with more than one person at a time. Some polyamorous people live together in triads, quads, or families. All of the above may, or may not, include children, and of course some people who are not romantically or sexually involved may choose to live together in order to provide mutual childcare (for example, ex-spouses or partners; or lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans [LGBT] people who keep a donor or surrogate as part of their family).

These kinds of arrangements begin to expand out what we mean by family. Writing about LGBT communities has frequently used the concept of ‘families of choice‘ to refer to people who become close due to shared emotional and community (rather than biological) bonds. I personally prefer the term used by Armistead Maupin‘s wonderful character, Anna Madrigal. She referred to the group who rented rooms at her house in San Francisco as her ‘logical family’. As Jacqui Gabb‘s own research has suggested, we may also need to expand out ‘family’ to encompass our relationships with companion animals and the objects with which we share our lives.

Shared living situations also complicate what is meant by home. As people move from place to place to find the people who share their values, or with whom they can live most easily, home may be more about the people (animals and objects) they are with, than about the particular four walls they are located within. Unfortunately in recent years policy and practice around renting and mortgages has often made it more, rather than less, difficult for groups of unrelated adults to share. Also stigma remains around all of the groups mentioned, particularly when unrelated adults are involved in childcare. This is despite evidence of the benefits for children of having multiple role-models, incomes and people to turn to for support, as Elizabeth Sheff has found in her research.

Finally, as anyone who has done it knows, living together is not easy, and additional challenges often emerge with larger groups of people. Perhaps we could look to these forms of shared living to inform our thinking about relationship skills, conflict resolution, and community building, rather than regarding them with suspicion.

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