Relationship Protocols & Transformational We Spaces
Using design-thinking to intentionally craft more transcendent romantic connection
In this post, I’m going to be outlining my current understanding of what an intentionally designed container for relationship exploration may look like; what I’m calling relationship protocols and we-space boundaries.
What follows are a few guidelines for how to build constructive we-spaces, areas of exploration, and the initial building blocks for the relationship protocols container. All based on my recent ongoing exploration of relationship practices with my girlfriend.
Relationship Protocols
Protocol: a detailed plan of a scientific experiment, treatment, or procedure — Merriam Webster
I use the word protocol in support of the structure-breeds-creativity ethos. The sense that intentional constraints afford the opportunity for playful emergence. The word protocol may sound a bit too scientific and constraining but its purpose is merely to serve as a tight container in which creative exploration is the primary attitude and one is allowed to try on different ways of relating and speaking about the self-other dynamic that they wouldn’t usually be afforded within the confines of the whole slew of implicit cultural codes that limit communication. (See Hanzi Shame-Regime and Slavenmoral). This is what John Vervake calls serious play and altering the agent-arena relationships of the interpersonal experience. 1
Here’s my current sense of what relationship protocols may look like.
Choosing the Relational Practice / Co-creative Puzzle Building
There are hundreds of different we-space practices out there. At this point, the couple gets together and decides which practices to start with daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, and annually. Knowing that this can always change and isn’t set in stone. There will be time for reflection later.
A few container examples may be:
Circling
Setting an intimate topic of discussion (ie: sex, touch, boundaries, emotional communication, jealousy, sensing the tension, etc.)
Authentic relating games
Relationship semiotics brainstorming2
Duration eye gazing
Couples meditation
Hand-on-heart feeling
Crying sessions
Space holding
Nonviolent communication
Radical honesty practices
Duration hugging / silent physical intimacy
Tantric sexual practices
Couples/group journaling & sharing
Breathwork/substance-supported sexual/relating practices
These are only the tip of the iceberg. The fun part comes in experimenting with which practices to stack3 on each other and how to make each of these practices more intense for the monthly, seasonal, and annual slots.
I’m just beginning to construct form and structure into the intuitive sense of the value of relationship protocols. My current sense is that experimentation and just doing shit are the only keys that I’m missing. All of the cognitive structure is there (at least in an intuitive sense.)
Setting the Time & Duration
Every Monday from 6pm to 7:30pm we do nothing else but hold a mutual container for the exploration of we-space practices.
Every Sunday from 10am-12/1pm we hold a longer container in which we practice a slightly more intense relational practice.
On the first Wednesday of every month we hold a half-day container in which we hold an even more intense container.
On the first day of every season we do psychedelic-assisted relational practices.
Once annually we do a weeklong relational intensive (ie: circling retreat)
The first step is to draw up a calendar with your partner and commit to at least a couple of weeks of experimenting with the few practices that stand out the most. I’m imagining that the first few months will be primarily focused on experimenting with the different practices and reflecting on which ones afforded the most connection and which ones feel like they have the most potential. Then also reflect on which one’s could be done daily and which ones are too intense to do daily and require to be spaced out more (and by what duration.)
Relational Interoception & Sensing Mechanisms
Next up is an exploration of What are the sensing mechanisms(group interoception capacities) that afford the highest degree of coherence, connection, ecstasis, catharsis, collective intelligence, group well-being, and longest-lasting transformation?
I believe that our capacity for connection is directly related to how refined our ability is to sense our own internal experience, the relational field, and how effective we are at speaking about our experience and into the experience of other.
This affords us the question: What subjective practices are most conducive to affording higher relational mastery? And what does the process look like of figuring out what those ecologies of practices are in each individual? (assuming that they will NOT be the same in everyone because everyone has their unique context-dependent requirements given their holistic blueprint as a human being.)
Prerequisites for Transformational Relating
A healthy relationship with trans-egoic mind
Orientation towards a higher consciousness
Cultivated discernment as a way of navigating liminality
Relating from Embodied Sovereignty
Takes responsibility for everything happening in one’s experience
Empathy — stepping outside your own worldview to view it from the outside and fully step into the worldview of another
“Empathy is trying to think about your framework through another person’s framework. if rationality comes after truth then it goes that empathy is so important to the expansion of truth.” - Pharaphrase of O.G Rose
Behaviors that Deteriorate We-Spaces
Giving unsolicited advice
Having an agenda about how the Circle should go, including trying to help them feel better
Asserting you are the authority about someone else’s experience; telling them rather than finding out
Not owning your own experience
Assuming shared reality without checking
Trying to get someone to cathart or have a “pop”
Allowing others to do these things in a Circle repeatedly without noticing it or guiding/re-directing them
We-Space Questions I’m Curious About
How may we begin to approach developing relationship protocols?
What is the value of we space?
What does it feel like to be in a we-space?
How does philosophy give us insight into the phenomenology of interpersonal beauty?
How might psychedelics as-a-tool offer us new territory to explore?
What might a new relationship semiotics look like? And what are the first steps required to begin developing these?
What might the process look like of relationship interoception? (link that we-space practice from the STOA)
What is the most effective way to build a daily, weekly and monthly we-space exploration protocol?
How might we train a We-space to develop collective intelligence and to maintain collective well-being in a self-organizing dynamical way? Such that it learns from its errors and improves its ability for coherence in every single moment and instance of reflection.
What are the we-space sensing mechanisms in the individual?
In what ways does identity morph in relationship with others? What are meaningful and positive identity transformations and what are toxic identity changes?
Okay, folks, that’s it for today. I’m super keen to hear how all of this landed for you! Do you want to dive deeper? Did it spark more questions than answers? Are you living up to the full potential of your relationships?
PS: This is just the start of my exploration of relationship protocols and you’ll likely see many more posts on We-space exploration with time.
Warmly,
Till Next Time
The term Semiotics here is inspired by Ken Wilber’s work on Integral Semiotics.
Jamie Wheal’s Hedonic Yoga of Becoming Study