Every Relationship Needs a Group Project

We’re in this random thing together, and so we’re in it together.

I’ve come to decide that every satisfactory relationship needs a group project.

That thing you each put your mind and heart and body against, beyond each other. It could be your obsession with weightlifting, or being amateur critics for your local music scene, or crossword puzzles… It doesn’t matter what, but I’m starting to believe that if one wants to feel close to one’s partner, a shared preoccupation is a prerequisite.

The relationship itself is, of course, a group project. The ultimate project, if you will. And for that highest pursuit to be satisfactory at worst and stimulating at best, an external activity — for which you both share interest, and have the potential for passion and excitement — is necessary. Because in those superfluous, not explicitly relationship-coded, pastimes is when two people connect. We’re in this random thing together, and so we’re in it together.

It’s not exclusive to romance, of course. It’s why half my friends I’ve met in writing groups. It’s why corporations that only care about profit, and want their employees to make them as much money as possible, still spend money on random bonding activities because they know they’ll be more committed to their colleagues if they take a pottery class with them.

Like this couple in the 1950s paint advertisement above, I find home decorating arousing. And love Kelly green.

It’s why in films, to visually demonstrate two characters quickly developing a closeness, they cycle through home-building vignettes. The couple is painting, then assembling bookshelves, laughing as one drops the tiny Ikea wrench down their shirt. These external projects implicate the internal project. Two grow closer.

Even sharing a meal together is a group activity. The etymology of ‘companionship’ supports this – to break bread together is to be together.

And when there is no shared bread or passion projects, and all a couple has is the relationship itself, that relationship has fewer legs to stand on. The phrase “growing apart” even implies a lack of shared activity.

I don’t share this perspective to set a new benchmark for you to measure yourself against. I don’t want anyone to feel something lacking in their life that makes them believe they need to buy or look beyond themselves for answers to their problems. Because that itself is the root of many problems. The trick is that only you can judge whether you’re satisfied, decide what brings you passion and excitement, and discover what that may be with your partner.

“Canoedling in the evening” — L. R. Conwell (1909)

It can be activism, gardening, spectating art, or creating art. It could be watching sunsets, swimming, or recipe testing, even if only one partner is the chef and the other is the appreciator. It could be camping, pub trivia, puzzles, or collecting antique vases. For some, the house-building persists beyond those early years into a perpetual nesting, renovation, and decorating as a prolonged bonding ritual.

For my husband Joe and me, well, we love being together, so we have an unreasonable amount of projects: our unending ideas debates, backgammon, curating and dancing to late 70’s disco mixes, repairing clothing, our sex life (which I wouldn’t have normally classified as a project except for the depth with which we treat it as a hobby (the videos, the scenes, the outfits, the audits)), and this publication — we have a creative fixation with entreprenuerial endeavors, so we discuss his and mine, and theoretical ones that we may or may never make, and we share support. (I might’ve added our children, but I don’t believe that considering any relationship to be a superfluous project is a positive thing. People aren’t means to ends, after all.)

And without those things, I wouldn’t know him. Not really. Because when we debated, in our early courtship months, whether social media’s democratization of attention has been a net positive for the arts, I learned how his mind works. And when I got angry with him about his perspective, I learned how he resolved differences. And when we discuss the ventures he and I are dabbling in, I see how he responds to opportunities and inevitable problems. And I can help him. And over the years, through our individual and collective changes, our closeness has deepened from these group projects. Even the banal ones, like finding the perfect potatoes and helping my spine feel more nimble.

It’s through the group projects that we affirm the point of it all. Our team-man-ship. That we’re not doing this whole living thing alone. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We are just group project people.

How about you??

When this song hits, I’m initiating a mid-afternoon dance.