My friend Brendan (hi Brendan) once half joked that he’d like to have a couple kids, ”I think they’d make good side projects, you know?” (maybe he wasn’t joking at all, it’s hard to tell with that Aussie deadpan accent). I laughed out loud, and played along, “Oh yeah, totally, I can see that. But first you need to find a willing and able cofounder. ‘Cause it’d be pretty hard doing those side projects solo.”
Then we stared into space, each chasing our own thought. I’m not sure what Brendan was thinking, but perhaps he, like I, was thinking about the design specs, maybe imagining personas, scenarios, and storyboarding how the sign-up workflow would go.
(You think I’m joking.)
(Ok, maybe I’m joking. Sorta.)
But lately, this thought has been swirling in my head, what if we ran our relationships like a lean startup a la Eric Ries? After all, those of us in this tiny corner of the world who are obsessed with Good Things are perpetually seeking, and iterating, on ways to build a better company, a better product, a better user experience.
Why couldn’t we do that with finding a romantic partner, a co-founder, who’s essential to the product development process? I mean, you don’t even have to want to procreate. A great relationship could be the source of happiness, contentment, inspiration, crying shoulder, etc. It could be *the* Good Thing springpad from which you build other Good Things.
Also, and this is an important point (imho), startups fail, a lot, often. Same with relationships. Everywhere I look, it’s almost like people are getting fries with a side of divorce.
“The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build–the thing customers want and will pay for–as quickly as possible. In other words, the Lean Startup is a new way of looking at the development of innovative new products that emphasizes fast iteration and customer insight, a huge vision, and great ambition, all at the same time.”
In his book, Eric talks about the feedback loop process of driving a car, which happens so quickly that we don’t even register the fact that we’re constantly adjusting the steering wheel. He contrasted this with launching a rocket ship, which requires precise calibration from the get-go and leaves no room for error adjustment.
When I read about the steering wheel and the driver, I immediately thought about an exercise I did in my yoga training with Judith Hanson Lasater. You can do this too. Stand up, and close your eyes. You’ll notice that your body is constantly swaying, shifting back and forth and side to side. After having us observe and confirm this in our own bodies, Judith declared, “Standing is the constant adjustment of falling.”
“Instead of making complex plans that are based on a lot of assumptions, you can make constant adjustments with a steering wheel called the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop.”
Can BML be applied to relationships, or is my analogy totally perverse and asinine?
I think people DO try somewhat to run leanly. Often though they’re unable to be clear, to themselves or others what they are trying to build. I hear that modern psychologists think most of us are trying to build the family experience we had as children. We pick a partner who will enact the patterns of one of our parents.
I for one have thought about using business models for “running” a relationship before. Largely because the models seem successful right? The business stays in business. But the truth is that these businesses stay in business because there are others to pick up the slack when one leaves. As a partner maybe that’s what it takes also? That I or you or one of us picks up the slack when the other “checks out.”
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. My favorite definition and discussion on love comes from bell hooks. Here is the content of her book All About Love that I really really find compelling:
“Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition. The word “love” is most often defined as a noun, yet all the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb. I spent years searching for a meaningful definition of the word “love,” and was deeply relieved when I found one in psychiatrist M. Scott Peck’s classic self-help book The Road Less Traveled, first published in 1978. Echoing the work of Erich Fromm, he defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Explaining further, he continues, “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” Since the choice must be made to nurture growth, this definition counters the more widely accepted assumption that we love instinctually.
Everyone who has witnessed the growth process of a newborn child from the moment of birth on sees clearly that before language is known, before the identity of caretakers is recognized, babies respond to affectionate care. Usually they respond with sounds or looks of pleasure. As they grow older they respond to affectionate care by giving affection, cooing at the sight of a welcomed caretaker. Affection is only one ingredient of love. To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients-care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication. Learning faulty definitions of love when we are quite young makes it difficult to be loving as we grow older. We start out committed to the right path but go in the wrong direction. Most of us learn early on to think of love as a feeling. When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect with them, that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called “cathexis.” In his book Peck rightly emphasizes that most of us “confuse cathecting with loving.” We all know how often individuals feeling connected to someone through the process of cathecting insist that they love the other person even if they are hurting or neglecting them. Since their feeling is that of cathexis, they insist that what they feel is love. ”
Here’s the page I found with that text on it. It links to the book: http://readinggroupguides.com/guides_A/all_about_love3.asp
i’d love to know what you think.