familiarity, contempt, and understanding

They say familiarity breeds contempt, the theory being that the more you know someone the more of their flaws you're exposed to and the more points of incompatibility you become aware of. I think this is true on some level, but the idea overlooks some very important relationship dynamics.

It's quite clear that the opposite is generally the case, that familiarity breeds an understanding and liking for someone/something you'd never consider otherwise. This is why exposure to different ideas/people/cultures/backgrounds is worthy and admirable. Mere familiarity turns people from anonymous enemies to face-to-face human beings. On another level, I remember realizing in high school that getting girls to like me was as simple as spending more time with them (this exposed them to more of my stunning charm and good looks) - this actually amazed me because at a time when you're just figuring out yourself and who you're romantically interested in the only thing that was needed to tip the balance was exposure and familiarity.

That being said, there is in fact something to be said for prolonged exposure to someone you like that leads to a very real kind of contempt. This is an easy one because most people can relate to having a roommate. What you come to understand is that anyone you're not going to live with forever you're probably not going to like living with at all.

In fact there's no probably about it. If you think about relationships all having of some level of closeness/sharing of yourselves, you get to levels that require that "we're married/going to be married" kind of understanding, whether that's the plan or not.

The interesting thing to me is that we all selected how close we are with people. Sometimes we're more conscious of it than others but it definitely happens. What you find out is that the more aware of it you are, the more you can be fine with people regardless of their flaws and incompatibilities - we've all got them. You can select how far along that familiarity to understanding to contempt roller-coaster of a curve you go with people you know.

Of course, relationships are complicated, if I'm to beleive the available Facebook relationship choices. So there are a lot of other interesting dynamics that I haven't even come near. How do you see familiarity working in your relationships?

(also: one thing I think is hilarious is that no matter how bad you roommate story is, there's someone within 50 meters who's story is overwhelmingly worse ha. Do you have a good one?)

understanding, relating, and planning

Not too long ago, I started thinking about how often we say, "I don't understand when/why people do _____." I got to thinking that it's something of a disservice to the term "understand," in the sense that the understanding is the easy part. Example: I may say "I don't understand why people hang toilet paper underhanded," but the truth of it is that there's usually only a small set of reasons why toilet paper ends up in such a way, all easily understandable.

What I decided is that by "understand" we more accurately mean "relate." As in, "I don't relate to the resolution crowds who pack into $40+/month gyms each day from 7-8pm Jan-Feb." I can certainly understand why it happens, it's just not my cup of tea. So I've been using "relate" a lot more frequently.

So I had this inspiring conversation today with Nguyen Duong from Needs vs Wants. He told me he had been doing some thinking on relate/understand, and had brought the idea to the planner level. We got to talking about how important it is for planners to not just understand audiences, but truly and deeply relate to them. To live and breathe their lives, even if only for a day. Especially when it means experiencing something entirely new that you haven't "understood" before.

It's such an important part of being a planner, and we had a lot of other great thoughts around it that I'll be sharing with you tomorrow.