“We just got too used to each
other.” That was the reason a former co-worker of mine gave me for breaking up
with his girlfriend. It’s not an uncommon refrain, and it’s a sentiment that is
easy to empathize with. Familiarity does breed contempt, after all. To a point.
I tend to get tired of things I
am familiar with too – TV, car, computer. For other people it’s clothes or even
jobs. We tire of things we expect to entertain, amuse, or excite us because
such feelings require newness, something unexpected. Once we get familiar with
items of entertainment we begin to look elsewhere, to comparison shop. We want
to upgrade or to change things up. Doing
this regularly with material goods is a bad habit. Doing it with relationships
is devastating for all involved.
Healthy relationships are built
on trust. Chevrolet advertises their trucks based on this – “the longest
lasting, most dependable truck on the road.” You can trust them; you don’t need
to upgrade. You can get used to them, in a good way. People build relationships
with pets this way too. We train them and care for them and get familiar with
them, get to know them, until the
thought of swapping it out for a new model is unthinkable. And all of these
examples are subservient to the beauty of a healthy relationship, platonic or
romantic. In such a relationship familiarity and knowledge of the other person
is the foundation, the core. This sort of familiarity and getting used to
someone builds closeness, not contempt.
What is the difference between
the couple who got so “used to” each other that they broke up and the couple
who revels in the comfortable familiarity which allows them to order for each
other at a restaurant or finish each other’s jokes? The difference is that the
first young man and his girlfriend saw each other as entertainment, a source of
amusement and excitement. Entertainment always loses its novelty. The second
couple sees each other as partners, mutually beneficial relational beings. The
value for them is in knowing the
other; being “used to” each other is a good thing. And this is true for any
good friendship whether it’s with your wife, roommate, or German Shepherd.
When we treat our relationships
like our toys we are in for long road of short friendships with ugly ends. It’s
easy to scrap a laptop and get a new one. Not so much a good friend. While there is plenty of wrong motivation and selfishness in relationships, there's no such thing as "too much" familiarity.
