Personal Narrative

How Melanie got to where she is with the whole relating thing

Melanie Smith, being well versed in chaotic and disastrous relating, and the veteran of more than one failed relationship, was mystified and unsettled by these highly unsatisfactory outcomes. She determined that she would, someday, figure out how to be happy and content inside a relationship. This became her personal Holy Grail, to solve the mystery of human relating. 
So, she conjured a plan to do so. She surmised that if she went to school long enough (197 years), studied with enough gurus and experts (37), traveled to enough mystical places (64), absorbed enough esoteric and conventional modes of thinking (19), and worked professionally with enough relationships (19,251), that she could finally solve The Mystery. Plan in hand, she embarked on her journey to discover the fundamental core—the atomic structure, if you will—of relating. 
She truly (for a while) believed that with sufficient diligence, the mysteries of relationships would eventually all reveal themselves in an elegant, cosmic solution, something along the lines of, Always be kind; or, Yes, dear; or, maybe, 42.
Alas, after all of her heartfelt and strenuous effort, over many hundreds of years, Melanie finally, and reluctantly, had to admit that relating is a puzzle that cannot be fully solved (a fact her mother had plainly told her when she was 14). She had to discover for herself the need to surrender to the reality that an ultimate and elegant solution to relating Does Not Exist (in any way she could find). 
She further had to concede that relating is always messy and complicated, and that’s that. No manual, no formula, no equation, no spreadsheet, and no pithy saying can solve relationships. Not even a mantra to chant, saint to revere, or god to worship can make sense of it all. Turns out, every relationship is as unique and beautiful and mysterious and messy as the individuals in it. Times 98. 
She saw that relating is about the union, and collision, of infinitely complex people, in an insanely entangled society, on a profoundly interconnected planet, floating through an inconceivably miraculous universe. With all that in the mix, it’s simply not solvable.
But! On her journey (still in progress) Melanie did figure out a worthwhile thing or two about relating, and recognized that while there is no perfect relating, there are indeed skillful and unskillful ways to relate. You could say, expert and inexpert. As you can surely guess, skillful is better. So she decided to start her company, Expert Relationship, to support people, including herself, in the way they relate with each other. Because the more skillfully partners relate, the more satisfying and sustainable all of our relating becomes. And that’s worth something.

So rather than finding the Holy Grail answer for relating, Melanie settled for a whole lot of interconnected, fascinating, down-to-earth, and useful tools, skills, and awarenesses.

(And she, herself, is in a satisfying, healthy, kind of cosmic but definitely not perfect, relationship.)