It Takes A Village To Take Care Of You
You know how it takes a village to raise a child? The myth of 2 parents raising a happy and healthy child with little input from others has rarely or never come true.
Children thrive with extended family, a family of friends, and a whole community of people to look out for them and offer them different kinds of nurturing.
Even if your parents were stable and loving, you needed your Aunt Martha to celebrate your artistic side. You needed your second grade teacher to show you that being a quiet and quirky is OK.
The myth we deal with as adults is that ONE person can meet all of our needs. This is a historically recent idea. Now that many people move away from their families as adults, we’re more likely to deal with isolation.
We get messages that finding the right life partner equals long-term happiness.
That message, to the degree that we choose to believe it, actually puts too much pressure on romantic relationships. When you expect you and your partner to meet all of each other’s emotional, financial, spiritual and intellectual needs, you’re set up for dissapointment. No relationship can do all of that.
When you become an adult, your need for a village does not go away.
I love my partner. We’re lucky to have found each other, and we work hard at our relationship. I’m an introvert, but I have found that a key to being happy most of the time is maintaining my village. I’ve got my village scheduled right into my calendar, with standing dates with friends and family every single week. If I didn’t build it into my schedule, that contact wouldn’t happen often enough. I love my alone time, so I would easily default into having too little contact other than my partner. As I was writing this, I counted that 5 times each week I’ve got regularly scheduled contact with people I can trust and lean on. This wasn’t always true. It took work and prioritizing to get there.
Connection with others is a key to happiness and health for ALL of us. The masters of relationship research and happiness research all agree about this. People like Sue Johnson, Brene Brown, John Gottman and Gretchen Rubin all advocate building and maintaining a network of close connections.
But what if you don’t have those connections?
I’ve been there. Lots of us have been there. You’re not alone. It’s time to start building that village, one interaction at a time. This isn’t about attracting friends by being fascinating or impressive. It’s about being vulnerable and real with people, and opening up one small step at a time.
When you embrace the truth that one person can’t meet all of your needs, you can relax. It means that each person in your village, including your partner, can be flawed and NOT perfectly tuned in each time you connect. Whether you’re partnered or single, isn’t that a relief?
