Relationships Are About Sharing Life

What is sharing life?

I believe that a committed long-term relationship (i.e. romantic partnership or close friendship) is about sharing life.

• The relationship “being about” sharing life means that the basis of the relationship is about sharing life, or going further, the point of the relationship is to share life.

Sharing life means sharing:

• Burdens (domestic and emotional)
• Joys
• Presence & Experience
• Intimacy (sense of closeness)

There are probably many other aspects to share that I have not identified and I am open to being wrong about these categorizations.

• I didn’t mention sharing interests because I don’t think that is integral to any relationship per se, rather it just allows you to have more to talk about or do together. At the very least you should be able to appreciate and talk about it with your partner if you think it would make them happy to share that with you sometimes it is just a personal thing.
• Conversation, words of affirmation, compliments, or similar are mechanisms for sharing life, not parts of life in this model.
  • For example, conversation is a way to share presence/experience or increase intimacy.

It is important to note that sharing life does not necessarily mean living together or doing everything together.

• Sharing life is a separate, but related concept to love, romance, and partnership.
  • Sharing is caring and love is care, but you can have love without a long-term relationship and a long-term relationship without love.
  • Furthermore, you can have a long-term relationship without it being a “partnership” in the traditional romantic sense, i.e. best friends.
  • I think that romance is a lot about what kinds of things you choose to share with certain people.

Breaking It Down

Life itself is an experience so you are just sharing parts of that with another person and these are various salient categories of life.

Sharing Joy

Joys are the opposites of burdens, they are the happy moments of life. They are the simple small joys as well as the grand moments.

• For some people, a life with joys unshared means they enjoy it less or are enjoying it less than could be as multiplied through sharing and talking about it
• It’s also nice to have double the amount of joys and sometimes it’s easier to be happy for someone else instead of yourself so it makes sense why someone would want to have another person whose joy they would be invested in
• I believe that some people feel less joy than others (in that the threshold to feel joy is higher or less things bring them joy) but being able to live vicariously through someone might help

Sharing Burdens

Burdens could include work problems, taxes, friendship issues, time-blindness, taking out the trash, etc. They can be as small or as large as possible.

• Many times people don’t need or want actual help with their problems, they just want to be heard and then they can solve it themselves.
• For some people, the burden of life is too hard or they have weaknesses that makes it in their best interest to partner with someone who can share that burden and/or complement their weaknesses.
  • Some people don’t like being seen as weak and/or a burden so don’t ever want to share burdens with others
  • Some people need to feel useful or needed so will seek out people who have lots of burdens that need to be shared

Sharing Presence & Experience

Sharing presence and experience is doing things together, but this also includes parallel play (doing something independently, together).

• Some people just can’t be alone or don’t like to so this can be a big driver for them to be in a relationship
• Shared nighttime routines like brushing teeth, talking about days, eating/making dinner together, etc.
• Having a show that you watch together and not with other people
• Certain presences can bring out certain parts of you or excite/relax you

Sharing Intimacy

Intimacy is a shared sense of closeness with another person.

• This can mean a lot of things to different people
• Sexual intimacy but also sensual intimacy (cuddling, massage, kissing)
• Intimacy of shared knowledge/understanding of the other person (being known)
  • Inside jokes
  • Knowing their favorite things
  • Doing things without the other person having to ask
• Some people just want to have their partner be their best friend which is probably a max out on this category
  • “partner in crime”
• Makes you feel seen and less alone

Sharing comes more easily to some than others

I think that some people are more inclined to share or better educated on how to share things with others that makes it easier for them to be in a relationship. Someone who has been implicitly taught to not share their struggles with others in other relationships will then struggle to be vulnerable in their future relationships, for example.

• Some people are just fine on their own or can choose to share things more selectively with certain people around them
• “This world that I have built for myself, I don’t want to share it with anyone”
  • “All aspects of personality for myself”
  • TikTok from @joycehasa
  • It can be a phase and the feeling of wanting to be independent vs sharing it with others can come and go.