Do you know the meaning of the German word gestalt? If not, perhaps you’ve heard of the equivalent English expression a whole greater than the sum of its parts, or its more technical equivalent of emergence? It is this concept of emergence that I have always thought as being the aspiration for an ideal partner, rather than completion that is in practically all the narratives I have heard, with addition being the remaining minority, that is still far from emergence. Why start at 0.5 and find the other 0.5 to make 1.0, when you are 1.0 to start with, looking for another 1.0, to become something like pi that is more than the expected 2.0, if you want to put it mathematically? Expand that to something like 1.0 + 1.0 + 1.0 to equal something more than the expected 3.0, as an example, if you want to apply it to non-monogamy, or even friendships where every dogma encourages having multiple friends.

In most of the relationship narratives I hear, finding your life partner/s is about finding someone who completes you. It’s as if you are not whole on your own, and can’t be whole without that another. That has never felt right to me, nor has it ever made rational sense to me. “Thought” right to me? If we weren’t whole on our own, we would need to find someone else just to be able to function, and that’s clearly not true. If it was fulfillment the narratives were talking about, there are plenty of people who have found fulfillment on their own, without a life partner, including the holiest of us all like Jesus and the Buddha that lead the institutions promoting these narratives. And if it was for procreation, well, lots of people do that without completing themselves. Many, it could be argued, become worse for it, especially in scenarios where there are victims.

As for relationship narratives promoting addition or expansion of oneself with a life partner/s, that is better, but still short of emergence. Someone can introduce you to something you didn’t know about, or maybe something you were afraid of trying, or they might elevate you to a new level in something you’re already doing. However, that can be predicted, for the most part, unlike emergence, which is neither predictable, nor can be easily rationalized.

What I’m talking about in terms of emergence in relationships is something a bit less predictable. It could be something you create or become together, or the journey you took together that changed you fundamentally, that you didn’t see coming. It would be something you couldn’t have done on your own, though maybe you could have done it with someone else. I’m not going to pretend these emergent journeys and outcomes are so unique that nobody else could have created them with you, but it wouldn’t be the exact same outcome and journey with your significant other/s. For example, perhaps you read poetry and your partner/s listened to music, recreationally. Lots of people do both. But through the intimacy of interactions within your union, you all, perhaps, explore things farther, then maybe try your hand at it, encouraging each other on or committing to things together, or in parallel, and so on. Eventually, you become a band, or musical duo, where you write lyrics, say, and your partner/s write music, and you both perform parts to produce songs people could listen to, now that you had songs to perform and didn’t know anyone else who might perform them for you. If you put two or more people who read poetry and listened to music, you’re often not going to get a band, though you and your partner/s, specifically, aren’t going to be the only ones from which might arise a band. However, there won’t be any bands arising that will be exactly like the band you are, with the same origin story and development arc, either.

In some other cases, emergence might come from something that life throws something at you, whether pure opportunity, or opportunity you create from adversity, rather than just developing from something you had within you. Perhaps it’s a challenged child you have that lead you to revolutionize how such children, and ultimately people in adulthood, are treated. Along the way, you may find you had capacities you didn’t know you had, and/or staggering amounts of it beyond what you thought you had, and you add it together to become or create something more, like action to build something rather than just feelings of tolerance. Instead of loving your child more, you create a foundation, education, support, and such, to help and love far more humans than your own child, taking on tasks you’d never thought you’d do for pay, never mind free, like seeking funding.

The thing that’s going to be hardest about emergence, though, is that I won’t be able to predict them. If I could, it wouldn’t be emergence in the sense that one could foresee 1.0 + 1.0 = 2.0, rather than something more. All I can do is use my intuition to take a best guess that something might be emergent from a relationship, and that I will be the one mostly driving that development, unless someone pushes me for it, which I will always be willing to try for unless there are some red flags. They’ve got to at least be convincing to me to try, in other words, rather than me blindly accepting. I don’t know how I will intuit, but I suspect it won’t be the same in any two situations, aside from maybe a common factor of the feeling of synergy and harmony, where our energies match in some way/s. Whether that synergy leads us to become something emergent together, or emergent apart of each of us accomplishing something emergent more on our own than together, it won’t matter to me. So long as we become something more as a whole.

Despite the many forms that emergence could take from relationships, the relationships won’t all be about emergence. You’ll still have to put in the usual work to sustain the relationship so that emergence can spring from it. Mathematically, you’d still have to bring your full 1.0 that’s amorphous like a piece of clay, to match to another 1.0 so that the expected 2.0, or something close to it if not ideal, will be pleasing to you both. Expand the analogy to more people for friendships non-monogamous relationships. Math is also three-dimensional, don’t forget. You need that relatively “easy” 2.0-ish amount if you hope to find the excess to ultimately leave you with something greater than 2.0. That is, there’s no point going to look for the excess to take you beyond 2.0, if you’re just going to sabotage the whole by only bringing 1.0 of the potential 2.0 expected of your union for general satisfaction with it. Elementary math, right?

After about 40 years of having these thoughts occupying space in my mind without paying rent, I’m glad I have finally sat down to articulate it out clearly for myself so I can clearly set my goals with all my current and future relationships of real meaning to me. I will always have relationships that are casual and common like I have had all my life. However, I’m going to start identifying relationships towards which I will intentionally put more energy towards, and let their development, if it happens, crowd out existing relationships rather than arbitrarily diminish them with my new, more intentional, search for more meaningful relationships. That’s what has happened to me so often during my life. People get married, have kids, make new friends with more things in common and/or things in common with more intensity, and have emergent relationships that crowded out their relationships with me. I’m just taking the playbook I learned from those experiences to apply them here.

In my search for emergent relationships, they won’t be obvious immediately, and there will be failures because I may not be someone with whom certain people seek emergent relationships, if they even try to do that with anyone in their lives. And that will be all OK by me. I will move on and keep looking until I find the ones for whom I can fit their desire for emergent relationships, while they fit mine. Nobody said this was going to be easy! I will just trust my intuition, which has proven extremely good, more than I have in the past. And I will keep the possibility open that all relationships may have the potential to become emergent at any time, even if they might not have been in the past or present. Things and people change, and those who don’t adopt are the ones who suffer the consequences for it. The bar for meaningful relationships is static, not the situation, with the people always coming first.

So will this make me become a demanding friend or partner? In some ways, yes. Potential for emergence is a lot to ask out of any relationship. However, I am seeking emergence for both parties in my relationships, not just for me. The other person has just as much a stake in this as I do, if they choose to join me in the quest. Also, if I don’t share with someone what I am looking for in a relationship, then who will? How would they even know to join me in the journey if I don’t share it? If they don’t feel they are the type of person who shares my goal, then that’s fine. We can still be whatever we will end up being to each other. We just wouldn’t be the sort of friends or partners I keep closest to me. There are, literally, billions of other people out there. Those who share my aspirations might be few, but that only means I’ll to work harder to find them. No meaningful quest comes without a good challenge, right?