We become ourselves through others
Human life begins in relationship. From the moment we are born, we depend on others not only for care and protection, but also for the experiences through which we gradually begin to discover ourselves.
Long before a child can think about who it is, it experiences how it is received. In being held, looked at, comforted and responded to, something begins to develop that cannot yet be put into words: an experience of safety, welcome and belonging.
For me, this is one of the most fundamental aspects of being human. We do not first become ourselves and then enter into relationships. We discover something of who we are through our encounters with others.
Connection is therefore not simply something we add to life. It is part of the environment in which human life develops.
The need to belong
Throughout our lives, we continue to need other people. We want to feel that we matter, that there are people with whom we can be ourselves and that we belong somewhere without constantly having to prove that we deserve our place.
When sufficient security is present in our early relationships, something important can gradually develop: the experience that we are allowed to exist simply because we are here. I have come to call this basic security.
Basic security does not mean that life will always feel safe or that relationships will never hurt. It is a deeper foundation from which we can increasingly meet uncertainty without immediately losing ourselves. And perhaps paradoxically, this security does not make us more dependent. It can help us become more free.
Remaining yourself in connection
As we grow older, relationships ask something new of us. We no longer only need to experience connection; we also have to learn how to remain ourselves within it.
We may adapt in order to belong, make ourselves smaller to avoid conflict or become so focused on another person that we gradually lose contact with our own experience. The opposite can happen as well: we may protect ourselves by keeping others at a distance.
For me, mature connection has something to do with being able to move between closeness and distance: remaining aware of what happens within ourselves while also being genuinely available to another person. Not choosing between ourselves and the other, but learning to bring ourselves into the relationship.
We do not have to lose ourselves in order to belong.
The courage of intimacy
Intimacy asks for a willingness to let another person come near enough to encounter something real. That inevitably makes us vulnerable. When someone matters to us, their presence can bring joy, tenderness and belonging, but also fear, disappointment, anger or grief.
It is understandable that we sometimes protect ourselves. We may withdraw, adapt or show the version of ourselves we think another person will find easiest to accept. Such strategies may once have helped us preserve connection or protect ourselves from being hurt.
The difficulty begins when protection no longer leaves enough room for genuine contact.
Intimacy does not require us to reveal everything or abandon our boundaries. It asks for enough security to allow ourselves to be seen while remaining connected to who we are.
Touch, presence and being met
Human connection extends beyond words. A look, a gesture, a hand on a shoulder or the way someone sits beside us can sometimes communicate something that is difficult to express in language.
Touch has a special place in this. From the beginning of life, physical contact is intertwined with care, protection and connection. But its meaning does not lie in the physical gesture alone. The same touch can feel comforting, distant, intrusive or loving depending on the relationship and the quality of the encounter.
That is why presence matters. We can listen to someone while our thoughts are somewhere else, and we can hold someone without truly meeting them. Yet sometimes very little needs to happen for someone to feel deeply seen.
In a genuine encounter, something moves in both directions. While we meet the other person, we may also discover something of ourselves.
Relationships help us discover ourselves
Relationships have a remarkable ability to make visible what may remain unnoticed when we are alone. A disagreement can reveal how difficult we find it to set a boundary. Someone’s distance may awaken a fear of being abandoned. Closeness can bring comfort, but may also show us how difficult we find it to receive.
This does not mean that every difficulty in a relationship originates within us. Sometimes another person’s behavior really is hurtful, unsafe or incompatible with what we need.
But relationships can invite curiosity. What is happening between us? What is happening within me? What belongs to this moment, and what feels familiar from earlier experiences?
In this sense, relationships do not simply show us who the other person is. They can also help us become more familiar with ourselves.
Love, freedom and loss
Love and freedom are sometimes treated as opposites. We imagine that being connected means giving something up, while freedom means needing no one.
I have come to see them differently. The more secure we become within ourselves, the less connection has to be held onto out of fear. We can commit ourselves to another person not because we cannot live without them, but because we freely choose to share our lives with them.
That does not make love less vulnerable. To love someone is to allow that person to matter, and everything that matters can eventually be lost.
Grief is therefore not the opposite of love. Often it tells us something about the significance of what we have lost. We do not need to romanticize suffering to recognize that a life without the possibility of grief would also be a life in which we had never allowed ourselves to love deeply.
Relationship & Connection
A meaningful relationship does not require two people who always understand each other, never disagree or never cause each other pain. Relationships are living encounters between people who each bring their own history, sensitivities, needs and ways of protecting themselves.
What matters is not perfection, but the possibility of continuing to meet: to remain curious about ourselves and the other, to recognize when we have lost contact and, where possible, find our way back, and to allow closeness without giving up our individuality or freedom without losing our capacity for connection.
Perhaps that is one of the deepest movements in human life: we receive ourselves through others, gradually learn to stand on our own feet, and from that growing inner security become increasingly free to connect again.
We do not become ourselves alone.
We become ourselves in the encounter.