What is a relationship ontologically?

Notes • 1,164 Words • Philosophy, Relationships, 2026 • 04/24/2026

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• Should breakups ever be unilateral?

An attempt at organizing some of my thoughts of what kind of ontological entity a relationship may be, and why it has important consequences for the properties of relationships.

There are 1583 words in this article, and it will probably take you less than 8 minutes to read it.

This article was published 2026-04-24 00:00:00 -0400, which makes this post and me old when I published it.

It took an estimated to develop this article from conception to publishing.

I think that I want to eventually write an essay on this, but I don’t have enough brainpower to do it right now. I would have to do a lot more thinking and research on this anyway, but I still wanted to organize my thoughts and publish something in case others might find it interesting.

Relationships as separate entities
What is a relationship, ontologically?	Relationships are separate entities from the participants. A relationship is nothing but an agreement to be in a relationship. The relationship has its own identity — it's its own entity. A relationship has no moral weight and no real causal power. It's more about people's orientation to the thing.
What is good for the relationship vs. the participants?	What is good for a relationship isn't always good for the participants, which I believe to be evidence of how a relationship is a separate entity. E.g. lying is good for the relationship because it maintains its state — though it does undermine the grounds of the relationship, maybe. But lying is bad for the participants because you're treating the other person as a means to an end.
Relationship ≠ shared future or memories	A relationship is not a shared future or shared memories — that's all different stuff that's related, but more like "shared memories" is its own thing.
Breakups & dissolution
Can breakups be unilateral?	I have previously argued: breakups should never be unilateral and I still stand by this. But: the moment someone doesn't want a relationship anymore, you kind of cease to have a relationship. So breakups can be unilateral in practice. You can one-sidedly leave a relationship with someone. You can't stop someone from breaking up with you.
Ghosting as dissolution — does it work?	If you were dating someone and literally stopped speaking to them for three months, they would say you're broken up. But even still, there's a mental declaration — the person dissolves the agreement somehow. Or maybe they've broken the terms of the agreement. It's not as crazy to say ghosting can end a real romantic relationship — it just doesn't happen as often and isn't as normalized as it is with friendships. You probably wouldn't ghost your best friend any more than your lover, if you actually value them.
Statute of limitations?	If you never broke up with someone, would you say you're not with them? Is there a statute of limitations? What would deal with that?
Speech acts & declarations
Is there a speech act that creates/ends relationships?	Maybe there's a speech act that starts and ends relationships. (Note: not per se a literal spoken act — can be in writing or text.) Some relationships slide into romantic ones without a formal ask — but the speech act is still there: declaring "we are dating," maybe backdated. The declaration is still happening, just implicitly. Maybe something implicit to the declaration of all romantic relationships is: I declare it, and so we must also declare it when it's done — something not inherent to friendships.
Are relationships created by agreement, or are they the agreement itself?	Is a relationship something created by an agreement, or is it the agreement in and of itself? What is the actual entity of a relationship?
Friendships vs. romantic relationships
Why does romantic dissolution need to be explicit but friendship dissolution doesn't?	If you have a friend and don't talk for five years, or something bad happened and you ghost each other, it's commonly understood you're probably not friends anymore. Trying to think of why a friend breakup doesn't have to be explicit whereas a romantic breakup does. One possibility: you can have multiple friends, but not (typically) multiple romantic partners. Polyamory complicates this, but even then you wouldn't ghost a poly partner and claim you're still together. It's not really related to love — maybe something else accounts for the difference.
Reciprocal intention view	First thought: relationships are about reciprocal intention — if you both want to be friends, you're friends. But: if two people want to be friends but have never spoken, does that mean they're friends? That doesn't seem right. Example: two online artists who follow each other and think each other are cool and want to be friends — are they friends? Not an impossible view, but something to consider. The reciprocal view also implies that in a loveless marriage, cheating is not a moral harm at all. This does map onto some intuitions — people treat loveless marriages as a more acceptable reason to be unfaithful, though not totally forgiving.
Love & relationships
Are relationships constituted by love?	Tempted to say: relationships are created out of love. If you're in a relationship but don't love them, in some sense it feels like it's not a relationship. With friendships especially: if you haven't spoken in a long time and something bad happened, but there was never an explicit friend-breakup, it's commonly understood you don't love that friend anymore and you're not friends anymore. Note: love and relationships are different things, so this may not bear on e.g. love as a union.
Intent & initialization conditions
What intent is required to create a relationship?	There are initialization conditions / intent that must be held by the speaker. You can't say "let's date" jokingly and actually be in a relationship. The only relevant intent is that you want to create the relationship. If you're joking, you obviously don't mean it, so nothing is created. But if you nefariously want the relationship, it still gets created — for the wrong reasons, but that doesn't obscure the ability to create one. It's just founded on false pretenses. E.g. being in a relationship with someone using a false name still seems like a real relationship.
Indexing participants: who are you really in a relationship with?	In the false-name / false-pretenses case: maybe you were in a relationship with a certain version of someone. If they turn out not to be that person, that's maybe grounds for dissolving the relationship. So when you have a relationship with someone under a false name, it was with that entity, not with the actual real person. The indexing of the participants is interesting.
Open questions & next steps
What kind of ontological entity is a relationship?	Need to look into the types of ontological entities: agreement vs. commitment vs. contract. Are there relevant differences? Maybe the right entity type has certain properties that actually map onto relationships better and explain how they are created and destroyed. Choosing the entity type matters because of its logical consequences — downstream effects differ depending on which view you take.
Relationship terms — social script or negotiated?	Is a relationship contract always negotiated between two people, or is it a social script that sets the parameters? If a partner has exclusive fidelity expectations built into the "agreement," that's only because of the terms — which is a little different from the relationship itself having that property.