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We often think of a relationship as something we have, like a possession. But what if that’s a limited way to look at it?
The relational paradigm flips this perspective: a relationship isn’t just something you own; it is a living system that also “has” you.
Picture the classic “2 Faces, 1 Vase” illustration. Look at it one way, and you see two faces; look another, and you see a vase. Both views are valid, but you can only focus on one at a time. Relationships are like this: individuals give shape to their relationship, and in turn, the relationship shapes the individuals. At MetaRelating, we call the vase the relational entity, or sometimes the “we creature.”
The relational paradigm emphasizes five key facets, each one reinforcing the other four.
1. Every relationship has a distinct personality.
Think about a group of friends with their own inside jokes, or a team at work that has its own rhythm and culture. That vibe doesn’t belong to any one person—it emerges from the group. Even a relationship between two people has its own “culture,” which cannot be dictated by either one of them. You can “tune in” to this personality by asking yourself: What is it like to be in this relationship? At the level of a team or organization, you can focus on the group culture by asking: What is it like to be on this team? In this organization? MetaRelating can help you develop this capacity for “relational mindfulness”.
2. Each person experiences the relationship from a unique perspective.
You’ll never see the whole picture of a relationship on your own. You can only see it from your own point of view. That’s why communication matters so much. When you share your experience and listen to how others are experiencing the same relationship, your understanding grows to include more information. MetaRelating puts this into practice with two paired processes: Sharing Your Experience and Getting Their Experience. These conversations help create the shared understanding, or shared reality, that makes requests, expectations, and conflict resolution possible.
3. Relationships grow and change.
Like all living systems, your relationships develop and evolve. The way things “just worked” yesterday might not work for today’s circumstances. You may find that what once felt effortless now feels strained, or that new possibilities are coming to mind. At work, this is true for your one-on-one relationships and for your team as a whole. The ways each of you changes and grows calls on your relationships to adapt. With MetaRelating, you can learn to sense these shifts and figure things out together, to release old patterns that no longer serve and experiment with new ones.
4. Every relationship has creative potential.
Relationships don’t just serve our needs—they create. Couples create households, teams build products, organizations provide services. To unlock that potential, it helps to ask: What difference could our relationship make in the world? Or, ask more plainly, Why do we even bother? At MetaRelating, we think of the answer in terms of a three-part inclusive purpose: what’s in it for you, for the other person, and for your relationship itself. When you orient this way, challenges feel worth working through because they serve something bigger than any one person.
5. Each person plays roles in a relationship.
Relationships function using roles, much like positions on a sports team, or the characters in a play. These roles aren’t fixed identities but functional contributions. Sometimes they come in pairs, like lead and follow in a couple’s dance, or a quarterback and receiver in a football game. Your team will not complete its work successfully unless someone does each action required. Talking about roles this way makes relationships easier to navigate. It helps keep things practical and depersonalized, especially when there’s tension.
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The relational paradigm is more than a new way to talk about relationships; it’s a new way to participate in them. When things get tense, it can feel natural to focus only on what would help you, or maybe what would help the other person. The relational paradigm adds a third question: What would help our relationship right now? That shift often changes everything.
Looking through this lens makes it clearer which issues are most important, how to talk them through, and how to set agreements and expectations that are workable for both of you. MetaRelating capacities and communication protocols become more effective and gain meaning when you use them to benefit not just yourself or the other, but the relationship itself.
Our relationships impact the world around us—sometimes in ways we intend, and other times in ways we don’t. When we see them as living entities, we can take more responsibility for nurturing them, honoring their uniqueness, and tapping their creative potential.
MetaRelating is about learning to communicate not only to each other, but also for the relationship itself. In practice, that might mean helping a team stuck in conflict shift from finger-pointing to asking, What does our relationship need to move forward? With structure and support, that simple reframe opens the door to clarity, trust, and new possibilities. The relational paradigm asks us to look beyond any individual and into the shared space where something larger is always being created.
Roots in a Broader Tradition
The idea of a relationship as its own entity isn’t new. The Center for Right Relationship built this into their Five Principles of Relational Systems Intelligence, which echo the five facets described here.
Family therapy pioneers like Murray Bowen and Virginia Satir, drawing on systems thinkers such as Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, showed how families function as systems with feedback loops and reciprocal influence. MetaRelating builds on that tradition, translating these ideas into concrete practices that help modern teams and organizations work—and relate—more effectively.
The Third Body that poet Robert Bly wrote about is the same relational entity at the heart of MetaRelating, an unseen presence that shapes our experience and grows stronger when we choose to nurture it.
