Relationships as Spaces

My spatial perspective on what relationships are

When I think of relations between bodies [relationships], I conceptualise Relational Spaces.

The Relational Space is a geographical landscape with topography and features that evolve and transform over time. Like a valley or a mountain range, the morphology of the Space is constituted by materials that have been present in some form since the universe was created [eternity], as well as powerful and transient relational forces that play with each other within a specific time-bounded period [history].

Bodies interact, and the Space is sculpted. As the earth’s climatological systems erode and deposit; raise and flatten valleys and mountains — the relational forces generated by Interaction shape the Relational Space. The Space is both the product of interactions between bodies and the stage upon which the performance of interactions takes place. The structure of the Relational Space informs the interactions possible and the interactions that occur form the structure of the Relational Space. The inner world therefore reflects the outer [material] world, where there is a reflexive relationship between geography [place] and its inhabitants.

The Relational Space is capable of quite drastic change on relatively short timescales. It can shift suddenly and significantly in response to the tremendous forces generated by relational interaction. Mountains can sprout from the ground in a matter of moments, delimited as they are from the laws of physics. The most powerful affective states have the capacity to rapidly terraform a Relational Space.

Love, hate, lust, desire, fear, anger, resentment, guilt, shame, disgust. POWERFUL FORCES. Tsunami, earthquake, volcano, mudslide, glacial surge, flash-flood. POWERFUL FORCES.

The Relational Space is co-created by those bodies that interact to form the relationship in question. However, the Relational Space cannot be the same for each body. Bodies occupy different vantage points with different aspect and orientation — and each has a different sensory and affective experience of the Space informed by its own embodied memory. How does it feel to be in the Relational Space? This is a question that can only be answered according to each object’s subjective experience of being present In It. It is a question of subjective phenomenology.

Furthermore, Relational Spaces are not discrete, distinct units. Each of us contains a diverse interconnected and intersecting ecology of Relational Spaces that coincide, overlap and share features; forming a complex system of relations that exert influence on and offer resistance and acceptance to each other. The affective weather systems of one Relational Space cannot be contained completely; there are no walls, nor hard borders, and feelings meander like the breeze.

These Spaces are unified by and exist within the Relational Field. The Relational Field extends throughout the entire universe; a grand all-encompassing oneness. It connects our soft bodies with the supermassive blackhole and the subatomic particle. I lift my skinny fists like antennas to heaven, and the Relational Field shifts something imperceptibly in the aeroplane over the sea. Gravimetric fields are one measurable expression of the Relational Field; we can observe that “the interactions of biological organisms with the weak cyclical forces of gravimetric tides constitute a key and determining driver of biological oscillators.” Less observably, the relations that we form with other objects and bodies in space must be connected in some metaphysical way. This is just a hunch, a feeling, an unproven hypothesis; but it is a hunch that many have shared.

Many Relational Spaces are quite empty, plain, and absent of powerful forces. These are transactional or momentary interactions that take place as two pedestrians glance at each other for a moment as they pass, as a customer pays a shopkeeper for their groceries, as a walker brushes their hands past the leaves of an oak by the footpath, or as the city fox crosses the path of a domestic cat in a London alley. These momentary interactions may contain erotic charge; but the charge fizzles out, leaving a plain and featureless Space in its wake.

As interactions between specific bodies repeat, the charge reignites, and the relationship take on a more elongated temporal form, the complexity of the Relational Space increases. It is populated by more features, contours and shapes, and the weather becomes more complex - climates form, and interact with the geology. Cycles and systems develop. Feedback loops begin to spiral.

Intimacy smooths the exploration; as we grow closer and learn our Space, we begin to notice each other better. Intimacy, which comes in many forms, grows from moments of proximity; temporal and spatial. Again, this is a felt experience. I feel intimacy as a sense of ease and reciprocal knowing — perhaps even understanding. We recognise together that we are in the Field, and that we are cocreating a Space; and that there is safety and comfort possible for us both as ourselves, with each other. This Space might be a home — or at least, a shelter.

Some Relational Spaces come with features ready populated. The fieldmouse and the hawk, never having crossed paths, already understand how they might relate to each other. So too the cheetah and gazelle on the plain, or the algae and fungi that come together to create lichen. Theirs is a relational Space that both know well, as if guided by divinity. What erotic charge must they feel, when they observe ‘we are becoming lichen together’?

This occurs between humans too. We make assumptions about others based on various observable [material world] characteristics — their role (and how it relates to our role); their appearance, their behaviour, their position within hierarchies — and we pre-populate the Relational Space that we will go on to share with them.

However, we Humans also have the gift of choice. We have some divinity contained within us. We can choose to reshape and reform the morphologies that come to us secondhand and passed down. We can feel when a Space is eustasian, ecstatic, eery, or dangerous. We have the capacity to terraform collaboratively; to cocreate the Relational Spaces that we inhabit with intent.

My intent is to contribute to Relational Spaces that welcome and support. They may contain craggy mountain tops and gaping ravines — awe! ecstasy! and some trepidation! — but the Spaces that I desire to cocreate are nurturing to those who set foot there; responsive to and aware of needs and desires. Soft meadows with trickling streams and dappled woods, exuding comfort and safety; a stage upon which to play at creation.

I see all around me and in my own reflection evidence that humans possess a perpetual desire to transform the external world. It’s always worth reminding myself that we also have the capacity to collaboratively trans-shape the internal worlds — the Relational Spaces — that we create between us too.

From the inner-world emerges the outer-world.

//

How do you conceptualise relationships? I have a particularly spatial internal world, so I imagine it would be quite different for people who have eg very visual or aural internal experiences. Leave a comment or reply to the email - I’d love to know.

//

With love and solidarity