Relationship Anarchy: Becoming more at ease with my undeniable (& glaringly obvious) hunger for connection

Recently I encountered 'The short instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy' by Andie Nordgren and, oh my goodness, how I needed to read this!

This short text, published in Swedish as “Relationsanarki i 8 punkter” by Interacting Arts in 2006, can be read in its translated/adapted form in English online at The Anarchist Library. If you're interested in 'doing' relationships on your terms— the terms that work for you and the people you love— then this could be a deeply validating piece of writing that might help you 'do' relationships with more creative confidence.

Nordgren articulates something akin to some of the realisations I've spent the last year absorbing:

You have capacity to love more than one person, and one relationship and the love felt for that person does not diminish love felt for another. Don’t rank and compare people and relationships — cherish the individual and your connection to them.

Until around a year ago, I thought about relationships of all kinds as if they were equations to balance. I am talking more than them, so I need to talk less. I initiate conversation more than them, so they like me less than I like them. I was thinking about relationships as if their emotional weights could be quantified like ingredients in a recipe.

It's not so much that I've spent my adult life comparing one friendship to another friendship. It's more that I have engaged far too much in comparing myself to friends, family members, colleagues and so on.

In doing this particularly painful self vs other comparison game, I have nearly always ranked as the 'more expressive one' and the 'chattier' one. In pretty much all of my close relationships, I'm almost always the person who initiates first, asks people to meet up, sends longer, more detailed messages, replies faster and asks more questions.

Whilst I'm aware that I have no way to prove whether how I feel is accurate, I almost always hungrier for connection than the other person. I've spent my entire adult (and adolescent) life feeling exposed, like an open mouth that imploring: 'feed me'. Feed me connection. I've spent an inordinate amount of time thinking that there is something insatiably greedy about me, something demanding, something wounded that just won't scab over.

However, since I made a conscious effort to let go of the 'language of more or less' within relationships, I've been feeling more at ease with my unwieldy appetite to know and be known.

What I mean by letting go of the 'language of more or less' is relinquishing reductive relationship comparisons. My thought process used to be something like: they initiate conversation less than me, I share more about my life than they share with me, so they don't like me as much as I like them. Naturally, this made me feel like there was something wrong with me for my excitability, curiosity about others and desire for closeness.

Becoming more at ease with the idea that relationships are not equations to balance has helped me accept my undeniable, and glaringly obvious, hunger for connection. The shame that has shrouded my longing— a longing I've had for as long as I can remember, perhaps forever— has started to wither.

It's okay to want connection, I've been able to tell myself in lieu of embarrassed self-criticism. I'm beginning to allow my desire for connection and closeness, and not let that longing merge with feelings of wrongness or disgust.

Moreover, I've been brave enough to let others see my appetite without trying to hide it as I used to. I know the choice is theirs as to how they respond.

One of the reasons why I've been able to make progress like this is acknowledging a fundamental truth about my life: The way I am, and the way I choose to act, within my relationships is rooted in my lived experience of serious mental health problems.

I am who I am because of what I have lived through, what I have survival. I transmute the pain that I have felt, and continue to feel at times.

• I want to care for others because there have been times in my life when being cared about, and cared for, saved my life.

• I try to make space for people to talk if they want to because for me this is one of my most valued ways of being cared for. I say things like 'if you would like to talk about it, I am here'.

• I don't want people to feel they have to hide parts of themselves in front of me because my experience of doing that has been, and continues to be, painful for me.

• I ask lots of questions because I aim to live with as few assumptions as possible about others' internal experiences. I've had mine misread more times than I care to count, so I want to do everything I can to prevent myself doing this to others.

• I double text. I ask again. I am aware that some people disappear into silence when life feels hard, so I want to give that opportunity to show the door is open and they can come back in without reproach whenever they choose. I am too aware that sometimes distress is in the silence, not the scream.

• I try my best, wherever I can, to acknowledge the hard, painful things for people. I know that a lot of people skim over these parts of life. I know this from personal experience.

• I text things like 'thinking of you' to show people they are on my mind. As a person who struggles with object permanence, I feel alone more often than I would like. I don't like to think of others feeling alone. So, I send messages, post letters, make birthday cards...small actions of connection and appreciation.

• I know the small things can be the big things.

Perhaps the biggest shift has been changing my focus from what the other person is thinking about me to how I feel when I do [insert thing]. For example, I like to show care for people, such as making them birthday cards.

Sometimes (often) this activates embarrassment and shame in me when I think about how the other person might potentially perceive me. What if they find me cringey, over the top, excessive, too much? What if my emotions make them uncomfortable? What if they laugh at me?

I've found it useful to bring my focus back to myself. Rather than thinking about how I might be perceived, I try to think about the value I was expressing in my action. Making a card is a way of showing I care and of being creative, and care and creativity are two of my core values.

Firstly, I have given myself an opportunity to live out my values and secondly, the presence of this person in my life has given me this opportunity. And that is a success and that is enough, no matter how I am perceived.

Accepting this means I've been deriving more enjoyment from finding opportunities to live out my values. The risk is no longer so much about rejection, but about missing an opportunity to do something as an expression of my values.

In the last couple of years, especially the last one, I've also honed my values. I know that I value honesty and trust particularly highly. I want to spend my time with people who make me feel safe to bring all of myself, especially the parts of myself that I've historically felt unsafe to share. I don't want to go back to a time when I felt a half acceptance because I only showed half a self.

Nordgren asks readers the important question: 'What kind of people would you like to spend your life with, and how would you like your relationships to work? Find your core set of values and use it for all relationships.'

I made a decision in the last year not to hold back showing curiosity, interest, care or affection to someone just because it might make me look desperate or excessive. I'm at the point in life where I'd rather be judged, mocked or lose someone I thought was a friend, than not live in alignment with my values.

It's hard sometimes. It feels exposing. But better to feel exposed and alive, than like I'm living a partial life or a life that's not mine.

Towards the end of the manifesto, Nordgren writes '[C]hoosing to assume that your partner does not wish you harm leads you down a much more positive path than a distrustful approach .' (I think that in this sentence Nordgren is probably using the word 'partner' in a broad sense here).

This concept of trusting by default is deeply valuable, but one that I am still working on. Nordgren's sentence could have been written by my husband, who has been reminding me (kindly) for years to have what he calls 'a good faith' reading of people. As someone who was ghosted by my closest friend with whom I shared every piece of my life, this is challenging.

Effective, open communication is how trust grows. 'Radical relationships must have conversation and communication at the heart', writes Nordgren. '[...]We are so used to people never really saying what they think and feel — that we have to read between the lines and extrapolate to find what they really mean'. The less I have to read between the lines with people, the stronger my relationships.

I find that I'm usually the first one to speak my mind about how I feel and what I need. At times, it makes me feel unconventional because I don't think this kind of open communication is generally a part of my culture. In the past, I could have called myself names for this (too forward, too chatty, overly excessive, awkward), but today I notice that doing this has led to closer relationships with people who are open to it.

Many of the principles that Nordgren sets out in her manifesto mirror the realisations (or the deepening of previously held realisations) that I have been discussing in my therapy over the last year.

The richness of my life originates largely from the richness of my relationships. These are rich because of the energy that I put into them. As Nordgren writes 'love is abundant', and I couldn't agree more.

I would also add though that sometimes acting on our values in relationships requires boldness. I don't want to 'do' any of my relationships with one foot on the ground and, sometimes, that requires a leap of faith. I want to love, as Audre Lorde says, as a verb not a noun, as an action not a thing. I only know how to do that when it's set in motion by my core values of showing care, creativity, gratitude and curiosity.

Rosie x

If you're wanting to think about how Nordgren's manifesto on relationship anarchy could help you build relationships based on your needs and preferences, rather than what society tells you that you need and desire, then here are some reflective questions:

• Who, or what kinds of communication, makes you feel safe and why might that be?

• Who, or what kinds of communication, makes you feel energised and why might that be?

• Who, or what kinds of communication, makes you feel loved and why might that be?

• What does love (of all kinds) look like to you, if you could forget about what society has told you it 'should' look like?

• What have you learnt about so-called 'wrong' or 'right' ways to love someone, and might there be new ways of looking at these?

• What are your core values and what small actions could you take to live out these values today, tomorrow and next week?