some thoughts
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John's Tumblr: Because the Status is Not Quo Today’s election day, and I’m happy to see everyone talking about voting, paying attention to what’s happening, encouraging people to get out to vote. And especially heartened when I see tweets & instagrams from all the first time voters.
But I’m worried, worried, worried, about the state of…
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Multi-mode relationship
Was thinking about which of my relationships are the strongest, most meaningful relationships. There’s clearly many ways to look at this - family, long term friendships, been thru the wars together…
I had an interesting conversation the other day which forced me to verbalize one way of thinking about relationships (thank you Julia!). I find my relationships that are multi-mode are the strongest, most meaningful relationships.
To me that means relationships that are not based solely on one mode - colleague at work, watching our kids play sports together, active and interested in a non-profit, love of food/cooking. It’s pretty obvious at one level but as I’ve been thinking about how and why certain relationships have really been crucial to who I am and what I’ve done in my life, this tends to be the driver. Sure I’m close with good friends from college - really good friends with a few - but the people I’m most influenced by, trust the most have been involved in my life more than socially. They’ve either helped me think about a challenge in my work life, shared frustrations/joys about married life and children, or any myriad of other experiences.
A few other questions emerged for me. Is there a minimum number of modes before someone is truly trusted? Why do multi-mode relationships correlate so strongly to my most trusted relationships? Is multi-mode the cause or the effect?
For me, there tends to be a few simple answers. If i have more than 4 or 5 modes of a relationship with someone, it tends to be really strong and I don’t tend to have so many modes of relationships with casual relationships. I think they correlate because of the trust I build in someone I’ve interacted with and seen in several different situations - it tends to reveal the underlying person to me. I can be fooled in single mode relationships - not multi-mode.
I have NO clue about the cause. I believe the multi-mode relationship is not causal but an amazingly good indicator and pretty actionable. I tend to break modes of a relationship if I am not building trust. I also think I can strengthen relationships not just by frequent contact but by adding modalities to that relationship.
Still thinking…
