A while ago I was introduced to a communications concept of “third”. A third is something two people are communicating about that is outside the relationship between each other. It may affect the relationship, but it is not the relationship. Take politics for example: say an uncle and I are talking politics. Politics are a third. I may feel frustrated and angry with my uncle because of what he’s saying, and those feelings, anger and frustrations are how I’m relating to him. I may also feel love and fear that our relationship is threatened. He will also have feelings toward me. The feelings we have toward each other are the relationship.
I used to think that when I’m tired it’s hard for me to connect with my spouse. I have found that what is true is that it is difficult to process or discuss things. Thirds. However, I have happily discovered that we can connect if we keep an eye out for thirds. We can sit and be with each other and the feelings that arise even if I am tired. We can find connection and security between us. And the thirds try to get in, somewhat like the monkey mind trying to claim our attention from what feeds us as a couple.
So, thirds, what are they? An abstraction, model, you usually can’t touch them. You can certainly both touch a couch but may have a different idea of where it should be placed in the living room. Now I suspect that if we are discussing its placement, simultaneously we are emotionally relating to one another. That relating is expressed in tone of voice, body language, and rarely becomes explicit.
This reminds me of my time in improv theater. Keith Johnstone has an entire chapter dedicated to “status” in his masterful little book Impro. In it he muses that status is something always going on in relationships, and yet we are almost completely unaware of it. Reading about status displays, and hierarchy in primates, he rightly thought humans do the same thing, only it seems we have a willful ignorance of it (at least in “civil” circumstances).
Like status, relational communication seems to have a great deal of socialized pressure against it. We talk about things, through which we relate.
I am tempted to ask the question why? Why are we like this?
While I have some ideas, it doesn’t change where we are. I have some suspicions about my early childhood, but knowing one way or another doesn’t really change how I approach developing healthier interpersonal dynamics. My half of the dynamics is what I’m given to work with, how I got them, especially if they are pre-verbal, I don’t wish to dwell to long over.