Rational romance
What systematic relationship is, why you might want it, and how to get it
This post explains what it means approach romantic relationships systematically, rationally.
It points out the benefits of doing so, and acknowledges the costs and limits. It makes suggestions for how to find or create systematic relationship if you want that.
A systematic relationship provides autonomy with closeness. It’s an opportunity to see another, and be seen yourself, for who you each actually are.
It offers smooth operation: order, predictability, understanding. It’s free from the emotional drama, acting-out, and interpersonal crises of a pre-systematic relationship. A systematic relationship delivers. Both partners can get what they need without screaming arguments at three in the morning.
Initially, systematicity might sound like no fun. You might consider rationality the opposite of romance! It might seem to exclude spontaneity, magic, playfulness—romantic essentials. It doesn’t have to! This is a potential pitfall, however. Fully overcoming it does point beyond systematicity: into meta-systematic romance.
I wrote this to provide background understanding for “Liota,” the second in a series of true stories about personal transformation through romantic relationship. The first was “Elena,” about my failings in a pre-systematic romance. “Liota” is about my transition from pre-systematicity to systematicity in another romantic relationship. I’ll post it soon!
“Liota” will make better sense if you read this post first. However, if you find this dry, you may want to start with the story. Then you could return here to read the background, and you will better understand what happened in our romance. Starting with that concrete example may also motivate this post and make it easier to understand.
Reasonableness, rationality, and relationship
The framework here is adult developmental stage theory. That explains how you can approach any domain of meaning pre-systematically, systematically, or meta-systematically. These are termed “stage 3,” “stage 4,” and “stage 5.”
If stage theory is new to you, it would be helpful to read first my overview of the theory; or at least its brief systematic mode section.
Stage theory originated in cognitive psychology; only later did psychologists extend it to emotions, relationships, and self-understanding. Cognitively, stages 3 and 4 correspond to two different modes of reasoning, reasonableness and rationality. (Here I’m using these words in somewhat technical senses, although they pretty much line up with the ordinary meanings.)
This page features a chart contrasting reasonableness and rationality. It would be helpful to look at that now, because the same contrasts apply directly to stage 3 vs. 4 relationships. The differences might be summarized as informal, ad hoc, and tacit reasoning, versus formal, general, and explicit reasoning.
If you look through the table, you’ll see that I was relating reasonably with Elena. That did not work.
Robert Kegan’s book The Evolving Self first extended cognitive stage theory to relationships. He summarized stage 4, the systematic stage, as involving a relationship to the relationship. And as an explicit theory of relationships, or at least of the specific relationship. And he describes stage 4 selves, and stage 4 relationships, as institutions. And as deploying an ideology of self and relationship. These are each formal, general, and explicit: rational.
Nothing can ever be fully formal, because everything is somewhat nebulous. People and relationships are particularly nebulous. However, understanding them semi-formally can be tremendously helpful. It can also be misleading, and even semi-formality can lead to unhelpful rigidity. (Meta-systematicity is the antidote to this.)
To say that a rational romance is semi-formal does not mean you wear a tuxedo or evening gown in bed. (Although that might be hot.) It means that it has some specific form: a structure. And this form is an artificially constructed object of knowledge, not a natural, unthought pattern of interaction.
Systematic selves in romantic relationship
Systematic relating requires systematic selves.
To be systematic is to principled, explicit, consistent, and stable. Systematicity prioritizes principles over feelings, commitments over convenience, and coherence over chaotic impulses.
In stage 4, you identify your self with a structure of enduring principles, projects, and policies. You are “self-authored”: you choose your own principles, projects, and policies.
You organize your self as a rational bureaucracy of defined, effective procedures. It is “rational” in that you can usually justify what you feel and think and say and do through logical reasoning.
You have sharp personal boundaries: you are very clear on what is you, and what is someone else.
Your stuff is your stuff; my stuff is my stuff.
“Stuff” here means: experiences, emotions, preferences, opinions, and so forth. We recognize whose stuff is whose, unambiguously. We reject impulses to accept and incorporate the other’s stuff as though it were our own. We also have no need to reject or argue about the other’s stuff.
You are not your stuff; I am not my stuff.
We each have such stuff; and we are not defined by it. We are bigger than any of that. We are comfortable with having different feelings and opinions, because those are incidental: not core to our personhood.
A software engineering analogy may be helpful for some readers. A well-engineered program is “modular”: composed of mostly-independent pieces. A module has particular purposes, things it does individually, and information and objects within it that are its sole property. Modules communicate and relate to each other in limited, well-specified ways. Most modules depend on others for particular sorts of assistance. Critically, modules can’t mess around with other modules’ internal affairs.
Programs that do not respect this principle generally become tangled, chaotic, and dysfunctional. They can be nearly impossible to understand, fix, or improve.
A stage 3 romantic relationship is analogous. Mental contents are shared, activities are shared, and the partners are constantly interfering in each other’s personal business. A chaotic dysfunctional emotional tangle may result. Reasonableness is usually inadequate to understand, fix, or improve the situation. Often the partners resign themselves to tolerating an unsatisfactory, unfixable mess. (As I did, for too long, with Elena.)
A stage 4 romance provides the experience of seeing and being seen as a mostly-independent, unique, whole, distinct individual, rather than as an unreliable supplier of generic good feelings. It’s a mutual appreciation of who we each actually are: in an enduring, fundamental way, rather than the superfice of what we are feeling and doing in the instant.
When you are in love with someone you recognize as intrinsically different, you frequently discover delightful (or at least unexpectedly interesting) new aspects of their personality; of how the other makes sense of life.
Systematic people prioritize each other’s principles, projects, and policies over fleeting feelings. A stage 4 romantic relationship not only tolerates the partners’ differing values, but respects and actively supports them. That is what it means to be in relationship with another, distinct person. This contrasts with a stage 3 relationship that merges two selves in a sea of shared feelings, losing track of your individual priorities. “Elena” demonstrates how that can go terribly wrong.
“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.” —Rilke
A systematic romance supports your whole stage 4 way of being. It’s difficult to maintain full systematicity in other domains if you are at stage 3 in your relationship. That’s especially in the domains of emotions and self-understanding: because intimate interactions are entwined with strong emotions, and because it’s difficult or impossible to fully separate your own self-understanding from your partner’s understanding of you. And, indeed, ecstatic feelings, and learning about your self through your partner’s mirroring, are among the most rewarding aspects of a romantic relationship if it works well.
Refraining from reactivity
At stage 4, you no longer are in relationships that are larger than you and define you. You have relationships, which you contain. You manage and limit them according to your rational theory of relationship. You no longer are a stream of transient emotional experiences, as in stage 3; you have emotions, which you can usually keep under control. You no longer react compulsively to what your partner just did. You speak and act in accordance with interactional norms that are derived from, or at least consistent with, general principles.
We are not subject to our stuff. We choose how to act, and interact, on the basis of principles, policies, and enduring commitments. We are not jerked around by arising experiences. We organize our emotional reactions, rather than being organized by them. We don’t impulsively “express our feelings,” or opinions, when that would be disruptive or hurtful.
We feel no inherent compulsion to act on our knowledge of the other’s stuff. We treat the other’s stuff as potentially important, as worth taking into consideration, but not necessarily as implying anything about either of us, nor about our relationship. We can relate lovingly and congruently while taking disagreements into account.
We recognize that most feelings are transient. Even transient feelings may be important, and we may choose to act accordingly. However, mere intensity of emotion does not compel drastic action, nor long-term policy changes. We prioritize the enduring structure of the relationship over incidents in the here-and-now.
We recognize that we each have unresolved internal conflicts, flotsam and jetsam from personal history. We welcome relevant insights and support, but take sole responsibility for dealing with our issues. We don’t inflict them on each other. As much as possible, we avoid confusing our current partner with figures from our past. We do not try to use a lover as a psychotherapist or substitute parent. We inhibit impulses to act out dysfunctional patterns we learned in old relationships.
Rational communication
We communicate our stuff to inform, not to manipulate or coerce.
We do not “process the relationship,” as stage 3 has it. That often means uncontained emotional venting. It tends to run less to understanding than to complaining, blaming, and demanding. Instead, we stick to a rational communication protocol, rather than blurting out whatever we are feeling in the moment.
We apologize when we have erred. We sympathize when the other feels bad because of something we do or say; but we do not apologize if it was not a mistake. We are each responsible for taking care of our own feelings.
We are honest, because we know each other well enough to trust them with the truth.
We make explicit requests. We do not drop hints, hope the other will recognize them as implicit demands, and expect they will feel compelled to act on them. We refuse unwanted requests clearly, rather than equivocating to avoid conflict. We generally keep our promises, and inform the other as soon as possible when we decide not to.
A systematic relationship is “win-win or no deal.” In a conflict, we stand our ground without attacking. We negotiate straightforwardly, explicitly, avoiding covert emotional manipulation. We settle disputes on the basis of principles, not just who expresses stronger feelings (although that is one factor to take into account).
This explicitness is relative to stage 3. No system of any sort can ever be fully explicit. It is not necessary to be explicit about everything, and often not wise. (What is better said, and what better left tacit, is a meta-rational judgement.) At stage 4, we communicate much more explicitly than at stage 3. We hold still more as explicit private knowledge of personal stuff, which at stage 3 we might have only have felt as nebulous emotion.
Liota and I were explicit about far more in our relationship than most stage 4 couples—for particular rational reasons I’ll relate in that post.
Co-authoring principles
By definition, a stage 4 relationship has some rational structure; but particular stage 4 relationships may have wildly different ones.
Stage 4 is often described as “self-authorship.” A stage 4 relationship is co-authored. It is deliberately co-constructed by the partners.
This contrasts with stage 3 relationships, which we often “find” or even “fall into.” Then we merely experience the relationship as it lurches along of its own accord, perhaps from crisis to crisis, without design or understanding.
Participants in stage 4 relationships have formal roles: that is, artificial ones adopted to make the system work, not ones that are biologically inherent. You negotiate agreement about the principles you will jointly adopt, and your shared standards of interaction, and the responsibilities you will individually undertake. You organize your own emotions individually, and also construct the relationship so it can organize the emotions that arise in interaction between the two of you.
A systematic relational structure requires maintenance. You can, and must, renegotiate and revise its form, as you and your circumstances change.
Although the exact set of principles, roles, and responsibilities that define a relationship may be unique to a couple, it’s infeasible to invent these from scratch. In practice, everyone draws pieces from one or more prevailing cultural forms. That is: from ideology. You might, for example, agree to relate on Biblical principles.
More commonly, couples adopt bits and pieces of several competing relationship ideologies—often without fully understanding the sources. A unique assemblage may work better for the partners than any standard-issue form. However, dissonances between source ideologies may cause dissonances in the relationship. I’ll come back to that in “Liota,” and throughout the series.
Objections, costs, limits, and what comes after
“Your idea of a ‘systematic relationship’ sounds like hard work, and no fun at all!”
It does require cognitive effort and emotional energy. For many people, the benefits seem worth it! Systematic relating is fun. It adds the feeling of a creative, challenging, rewarding, collaborative project to the fun you can have in a stage 3 relationship.
Because it requires effort, it’s common to regress when mentally tired or emotionally stressed. Then one may backslide into a stage 3 mode of relating. That may be for a moment, an evening, or even much longer. However, this is not permanent. You retain the skills of rational relationship, and return to it when the stressors abate.
“Ugh! Rationality is the opposite of romance. That’s the last thing I want! Emotions are good, and the whole point of an intimate relationship!”
It is not true that rationality and emotion are mutually exclusive opposites. This is a harmful philosophical falsehood. Both work better together.
Delicious swoony gooey feelings and a rational structure are compatible. Further, they can support each other. Combining them is more difficult than just letting go into whatever feelings arise. Feelings are transient, and when they conflict, a stage 3 relationship has no good way to resolve them. The result is often a chaotic rollercoaster ride of elation, disappointment, resentment, fury, and despair.
Stage 4 relating is partly a collection of learned skills, but it also requires a fundamental reconceptualization of what a romantic relationship is. It means using a rational structure as a container for feelings; one that organizes them so that the relationship will remain satisfying in the long term.
Rationality doesn’t mean suppressing your feelings, nor losing touch with them. It’s choosing how and when to express or act on feelings.
At stage 3, the only way you know what your feelings are may be by expressing or acting on them. You experience yourself yelling, and from that you know that you are angry. If so, a danger at stage 4 is that when you don’t express or act on feelings, you are ignorant of them. You can’t organize your feelings well if you don’t know what they are!
So doing stage 4 well actually requires greater sensitivity to your feelings—to their internal manifestation, not just their external acting-out. Your relationship with emotions can become richer, subtler, more complex and nuanced than the simplistic on/off emotional experience of stage 3.
Misunderstanding this may lead some people, on first discovering the value of rationality, to try to kill their emotions, or to act like a cartoon robot.
“This sounds like how my boss wants me to behave at work!”
That’s because work environments often are structured at stage 4. The specific roles and norms of behavior required at work are obviously quite different from those appropriate in a romance, but they are structurally similar.
For many people, learning how to relate professionally at stage 4 precedes learning how to relate intimately at stage 4. The work environment provides tacit (and sometimes explicit) training in how to do that. Conversely, some people learn systematicity in a romantic relationship first. Either way, one may be able to transfer an understanding of relational systematicity from one to the other.
From a stage 3 viewpoint, relational systematicity is artificial, inhuman, constricting, and unfair. It may seem emotionally unacceptable, or even morally wrong, to adopt this way of being. However, it’s what professional workplaces demand, because it’s effective in coordinating diverse types of work in a shared project. It’s a more sophisticated, powerful, and intellectually challenging way of being. It can also be extraordinarily satisfying when mastered: for instance when a team is “working like a well-oiled machine”—as the relevant cliché has it.1
A stage 4 intimate relationship, working smoothly as an exciting collaborative project, can also be extraordinarily satisfying.
“You want me to be in control at all times, but opportunities for losing control are what is best in an intimate relationship!”
Indeed: letting go into sexual ecstasy can be a peak religious experience. Less intensely, letting down one’s emotional guard, through trust and comfort with a partner, can be exceptionally gratifying and transformative.
Better than being in control at all times is the ability to choose when to let go, and when to contain your emotions. That is mostly possible at stage 4. Wise choice is a matter of meta-rational judgement, which you can develop further when moving on toward stage 5.
“I hate bureaucracy. Becoming one, or relating to someone who is pretending to be one, is the last thing I want to do!”
The benefit of bureaucracy, done well, is efficient, trouble-free maintenance of routine activity. The cost is rigidity and brittleness in the face of nebulosity: surprise or ambiguity.
Stage 4 does involve paying some of that cost. It can be inflexible. Relating to someone who is at stage 4 can feel like interacting with a machine, with nobody home inside.
In “Elena,” I wrote:
It is characteristic of stage 3 that you have no actual self, and you do not realize this. You think you do, but what you have is an incoherent patchwork of relationships in which you try to be whatever the other person wants.
It is also characteristic of stage 4 that you have no actual self. You think you do, but you have constructed an abstract machine in the place where a self would go. You have an incomplete, somewhat inaccurate representation of a hypothetical, impossible self.
Stage 5 relativizes the bureaucracy, intervening in its functioning on a meta-rational basis. Meta-rationality considers principles and policies with reference to the context and purposes. It takes nothing as absolute.
Smooth functioning of relational rationality should be interrupted, at times, in service of a broader vision. Then you relate instead as beneficent space. That is a creative, sometimes shocking intimacy, of which stage 4 is incapable.
How we get systematic in romantic relationship
Understanding the 3-to-4 stage transition process is valuable both if you are not yet at stage 4, or if you are but your partner is not.
If you are not yet at stage 4, you need first to recognize that it is something you want, and why. I hope this post (and “Elena,” by contrast) have provided that motivation.
Fortunately, there are copious resources for the 3-to-4 transition in general, and in the domain of relationships in particular. (In contrast with 4-to-5, for which there’s nearly nothing.)
Although the stage framework is not so commonly used explicitly, a goodly fraction of relationship advice is relevant. This includes both written advice, and personal advice in coaching, psychotherapy, and counselling. That said, more of the available advice is implicitly about how to do stage 3 well, or even about the 2-to-3 transition. With a basic understanding of the stage framework, you can recognize which resources are relevant to where you are currently at.
Systematic selfing typically comes before systematic relating, or at least gets started first. However, because self-understanding and intimate relationships are so closely entwined, the two may develop together gradually, over a period of several years.
Having developed a systematic self, or even systematicity in your professional work, you might deliberately change your way of relating to match it. This is “leveraging developmental lag.” I wrote “Transitioning soft domains to stage 4” about this.
It takes two to tango, so this is difficult to do by yourself. In any domain, a systematic “holding environment” facilitates a transition to stage 4. That means an interpersonal structure that encourages systematic functioning and discourages pre-systematic functioning.
If you enter an intimate relationship with someone who is at stage 4, who expects systematic relating from you, you may become systematic yourself—if you are willing. (Liota did this for me.) If you are not currently partnered, you could make systematicity a criterion for dating.
If you are already partnered, it may be more difficult:
It’s common for two people to form a romantic relationship (or marriage) at stage 3, and then to mature at different rates. A relationship between someone at stage 3 and someone at stage 4, or at two different points in the gradual transition between 3 and 4, can be difficult. Their fundamental understandings of what a person is, and what a relationship is, are so different that communication can become almost impossible.
If the partners are sufficiently committed to each other, and understand that this is happening, each can support the process, in different ways.
The lagging party can see this only implicitly and vaguely. Your partner is changing in some way you don’t understand, and mostly don’t like. They seem increasingly distant, unfeeling, rigid. (This is where Elena was at, as our relationship neared its end—“cold bastard” was her bitter description of me to her friends.)
If you are genuinely committed to the person, you let go of who they were, and do your best to support their change into something else, despite costs and misgivings. You look for positive aspects of the transformation. For example, you notice that they are less often angry about trivia—and you reward them for that. As they develop further, you see broader benefits for them. You begin to sense why and how they are changing. You appreciate some plusses for yourself in the changing relationship too, despite missing and mourning what you used to have together. Eventually, you may come to want what they have become—and you begin your own journey toward stage 4.
For the partner changing faster, the challenge is to not demand state 4 relating from your partner before they are ready for it. Your role is not as a teacher, therapist, or coach. That does not work within a romantic relationship! Rather, your task is to interact in the stage 4 way yourself, to the extent it is workable, even when that may be difficult for your partner to appreciate. You refuse your partner’s desire for emotional fusion—gently. You make it clear in words and deeds that you still love them and want to be close—but not in that way. You request that they assume responsibility for their own initiatives and preferences, rather than leaning on you. In these ways, you tacitly model what is possible, and how and why you have chosen this path.
Transitioning together, simultaneously or sequentially, may simply be impossible if your partner just doesn’t want to. Stage 4 is flatly unappealing for many people, and no demonstration of its benefits may change that. Many marriages or long-term relationships end once this becomes irresolvable.
Alternatively, if you are in this situation you may consider that continuing the relationship is more important than systematizing it. It can be an agonizing choice, and there is no right answer in general. Often, even in specific relationships, no good outcome may be possible. Divorce may be catastrophic (or not); continuing a frustratingly limited, chaotic, painful marriage may be worse for both partners (or not).
That said, marriages between a person in stage 3 and one in stage 4 can be stable and satisfying for both, so long as each recognizes and accepts their roles within it. Kegan explains this in The Evolving Self, over several pages starting at the bottom of p. 250.
Further reading
My posts
“Developing ethical, social, and cognitive competence” is my introductory overview of adult stage theory.
I have written many other posts on this topic. “Index to the most important knowledge in the world” links all of them. (The title is a joke. Probably.)
“Leveraging lag: engineers and salespeople” is the most specifically relevant; especially its section “Transitioning soft domains to stage 4.”
Books by other people
Philip M. Lewis’ The Discerning Heart is a short, clear, non-technical introduction to adult stage theory. Chapter 7, about stage 4, is the most relevant.
Robert Kegan was the first psychologist to extend cognitive developmental stage theory into the domains of self-understanding and relationships. His In Over Our Heads concentrates on the 3-to-4 transition. Chapter 4, “Partnering” is most obviously relevant. There’s also valuable discussion toward the end of Chapter 3, “Parenting,” explaining the difficulty and importance of continuing adult development while supporting the psychological development of your children.
The Evolving Self was Kegan’s first book on the theory. It’s a key text, but more difficult reading than In Over Our Heads. Chapter 3 is an overview of the different stages, and maybe the best place to start. (You could skip Chapters 1 and 2, about the history of the theory, on first reading.) Parts of Chapters 7 and 8 cover the 3-to-4 transition specifically.
This is from my “Transitioning soft domains to stage 4.”
Marvelous reading!
I’ve always found the descriptions of Stage transitions that you’re using a bit confusing. I think I understood why, now that I’m pretty much in Stage 4 mode in relationships.
I think in your descriptions you’re explaining Stage 4, but you’re also leaking a particular system of Stage 4 relating that is coming from your own personal experience, but may not be well formalized. It resonates with some parts of attachment theory.
I think it would be cool to create an article where a few different systems of Stage 4 relating are laid out and contrasted. It may be in relation to a particular situation or just in general. The challenge there is that you need to know how a system works in order to explain it in the article. Or you might ask people who are versed in a particular system to contribute the text for their system according to a specific frame.
> We make explicit requests. We do not drop hints, hope the other will recognize them as implicit demands, and expect they will feel compelled to act on them.
In this paragraph you make it sound as though Ask Culture is more of a stage 4 thing and Guess Culture more of a stage 3 thing. Do you agree with that assessment? Or am I misinterpreting you?