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

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

• Warm data labs

• 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

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