When We Met

For thousands of years, human beings have spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to understand attraction, love, sex, relationships, and the desire to find someone with whom to share a life. Poets have written about it. Artists have painted and sculpted it. Religions have attempted to govern it. Philosophers have questioned it. Musicians sing about it. Nearly every great storytelling tradition has returned to it again and again.

After all this time, what have we actually learned?

The traditional story of the birds and the bees was largely an explanation of attraction, sex, and procreation. It was the conversation parents were supposed to have with their children when they reached an appropriate age. Today, the idea almost seems quaint. Children can encounter more information in an hour online, at school, or among friends than a parent could possibly introduce during a carefully planned conversation.

Perhaps that is not the greatest problem. The greater problem may be that the adults giving the talk never completely figured it out either.

We know how reproduction works. We know considerably more about human biology than previous generations did. We have contraception, fertility treatments, dating apps, marriage counselors, relationship experts, psychologists, self-help books, and an almost unlimited supply of advice. Yet people continue to fall desperately in love, choose incompatible partners, betray people they love, remain in relationships that make them miserable, leave relationships they once thought would last forever, experience jealousy, become obsessed, lose themselves in desire, and wonder years later, “What was I thinking?”

Maybe we have spent too much time explaining how the birds and bees work and not enough time explaining human nature.

Attraction is powerful. Passion is important. Sharing that passion with another person can be one of the great experiences of being alive. Recognizing that does not require us to pretend that passion is harmless or that desire always leads us somewhere we will ultimately want to be.

Temptation is an ancient human concern for a reason. The story of Adam and Eve is thousands of years old. Societies throughout history have created customs, expectations, clothing, marriage traditions, religious rules, and laws attempting to manage attraction and sexual behavior. Some of those practices became oppressive. Some reflected inequalities we should not romanticize. Yet beneath them was recognition of something we still contend with today: human desire is powerful enough to affect judgment, relationships, families, and sometimes entire lives.

Modern society has not eliminated that power. In many ways, we have amplified it. Physical attractiveness can be enhanced, displayed, measured, marketed, monetized, and delivered to us continuously. What previous societies sometimes attempted to conceal, modern industries frequently encourage us to display.

Neither approach changes the human being underneath.

We desire. We want to be desired. Interestingly, we do not necessarily want attention from everyone. Often, the attention that matters most comes from those whose attention we value. A thousand people might tell someone they are attractive while the reaction they really want is from one particular person.

That desire to be special to someone may explain part of the enduring appeal of romantic love. Among all the people in the world, there is something powerful about feeling that one person knows you, desires you, cherishes you, and considers you irreplaceable. We want to love, but we also want to experience the security of being loved.

That does not make lifelong commitment easy.

It is a lot to ask of ourselves to remain committed to one person for decades. People change. Bodies change. Circumstances change. Desire changes. Children arrive. Careers interfere. Illness occurs. People age. Temptation does not necessarily disappear simply because someone made a promise years earlier.

Yet difficulty does not make commitment meaningless. Perhaps it helps explain why commitment can mean so much. Being continually chosen by someone who remains free not to choose us provides a kind of security that temporary attraction cannot.

Still, attraction and compatibility are not the same thing.

I once knew someone whom women frequently claimed they disliked. Yet some of those same women would seek him out for a late-night encounter. He could attract them quite successfully. What he could not seem to do was maintain a long-term relationship.

There is no contradiction in that once we recognize that people can be valuable to us in very different ways. Someone can be exciting tonight and completely incompatible with the life we hope to live tomorrow.

Recently someone said to me, “I don't know what I was thinking when I got into a relationship with them.”

My response was simple: “Sometimes we only look at the short-term benefit without thinking about long-term fulfillment.”

That may apply to far more than romantic relationships.

We encounter people throughout our lives who provide companionship, attention, opportunity, validation, entertainment, affection, sex, status, comfort, knowledge, access, or simply relief from loneliness. There is nothing inherently wrong with receiving something valuable from another human being. Relationships naturally involve exchange.

The danger comes when the exchange becomes the relationship.

When another person's value is reduced to what they can provide us in the moment, we begin moving toward something transactional. The person becomes secondary to their usefulness. When the benefit disappears, so does our interest.

That is not merely a problem of romance. It is a problem of identity.

Every person we encounter possesses an identity independent of whatever function they happen to serve in our lives. The waitress is not merely the person bringing our food. The employee is not merely labor. The customer is not merely revenue. The attractive stranger is not merely an object of desire. The friend is not merely someone to call when we need something. Even someone we encounter briefly remains an entire human being whose life extends far beyond the small portion we happen to experience.

This does not mean every relationship needs to become profound. That would be impossible. Some people will remain acquaintances. Some friendships will be circumstantial. Some conversations will last ten minutes. Some relationships will last months. Others may last a lifetime.

Depth is not necessarily measured by duration.

Two strangers can sit beside each other on an airplane, have a meaningful conversation, wish each other well, and never meet again. Nothing was taken. Nothing more was required. Neither person needed to become important in the other's life for the encounter to contain genuine human recognition.

Perhaps that is something else the birds and bees forgot to tell us.

Across those thousands of years, we have written about finding the right person, attracting the right person, marrying the right person, keeping the right person, losing the right person, and occasionally getting the wrong person back.

Maybe the more fundamental lesson comes before all of that.

There is a question that may reveal more about the nature of a relationship than almost anything else we could ask:

“Who are you to me when I don't need anything from you?”

When I do not need your attention, affection, sex, money, status, knowledge, access, validation, companionship, or approval, does your existence still matter to me? Do I still care about your well-being? Do I still recognize the person standing in front of me, independent of whatever value you provide?

Perhaps that is the difference between having a relationship with someone and merely having a use for them.

Not every connection needs to last forever. Not every attraction needs to become a relationship. Not every relationship needs to become intimate. Not every intimate relationship will provide long-term fulfillment. And not everyone who provides something we want belongs permanently in our lives.

But however long someone is there, they remain someone.

Before asking what another person can provide us, perhaps we should first remember who is standing in front of us.

Another human being.

The birds and bees taught us about attraction, how we find one another, and what happens when we do.

Perhaps they forgot to tell us the rest of the story: what we owe one another once we do.