Holding onto possibility while learning to live with reality.
One of the more difficult lessons I’ve been learning lately is that seeing potential in a relationship does not create a relationship.
Participation does.
I didn’t arrive at that insight because someone taught it to me. I arrived at it because I found myself caring about people whose presence in my life mattered, imagining the richness that could develop between us, and then having to wrestle with a difficult question:
What do I do when I can see the potential more clearly than the participation?
As both a therapist and a person, I have spent much of my life being curious about people. I am interested in how they think, what shapes them, what they value, what hurts them, what inspires them, and who they become when they feel safe enough to be fully themselves.
Because of that, I naturally find myself imagining possibilities.
Not fantasies.
Possibilities.
I notice how one person’s humour balances another person’s seriousness. How one person’s courage complements another person’s caution. How one person’s creativity enriches another person’s practical wisdom.
Sometimes I can see how a friendship could become something deeply meaningful long before it ever gets there.
And perhaps that is both a gift and a challenge.
Because seeing potential does not mean two people are building the same future.
The Kind of Friendship I Value
I’ve always been drawn to Aristotle’s idea of virtuous friendship.
Not friendships based solely on convenience.
Not friendships based solely on enjoyment.
But friendships where both people contribute to one another’s growth, understanding, and flourishing.
The kind of connection where both people become better because the other exists.
When I encounter certain people, I can occasionally glimpse the possibility of that kind of friendship.
I can imagine the conversations.
The laughter.
The support.
The challenge.
The mutual growth.
I can see how our strengths might complement one another and how our differences might create something neither of us could create alone.
The difficult part is that vision belongs to me.
The other person may see something entirely different.
Over the years, I’ve had to learn that my ability to see potential does not mean another person sees it too.
And even if they do, potential only becomes meaningful when it is matched with participation.
Potential is something we can see alone.
Participation is something we create together.
The Grief of What Never Happened
What I’ve found most difficult is not grieving relationships that clearly ended.
As painful as endings can be, there is clarity in them.
There is something to respond to.
Something to understand.
Something to mourn.
What I’ve found more complicated is grieving possibilities.
The friendship that might have deepened.
The conversations that never happened.
The understanding that never fully emerged.
The version of the relationship that appeared possible but never became shared reality.
I’ve realised that some of my deepest disappointments weren’t about losing what existed.
They were about letting go of what I believed could exist.
And those are not the same thing.
One is grief for the person.
The other is grief for the potential.
When Participation Begins to Tell a Different Story
One of the challenges with potential is that it can sometimes make reality harder to see.
Not because we are foolish.
Because we are hopeful.
Sometimes people tell us they care.
Sometimes they tell us they value the relationship.
Sometimes they tell us they want to stay connected.
And perhaps they mean it.
Yet participation is telling a different story.
The messages become fewer.
The invitations disappear.
The effort becomes increasingly one-sided.
The relationship slowly changes shape without either person fully acknowledging it.
I’ve found myself sitting with a difficult question in those moments:
Am I relating to this person as they are participating today, or am I relating to the future I can still imagine?
That question doesn’t always have an easy answer.
But it is often an honest one.
Waiting to Be Asked
One of the most humbling lessons I’ve learned over the last few years is that seeing something clearly does not make it mine to change.
I used to think that if I noticed a pattern, I should point it out.
If I could see a possibility, I should help bring it to life.
If I understood something, I should share it.
Increasingly, I’ve found myself moving toward a different approach.
Waiting to be asked.
That doesn’t mean pretending not to see.
It doesn’t mean becoming indifferent.
It means respecting that insight offered without invitation rarely creates understanding.
As a therapist, people invite me into those conversations.
Friendships are different.
Relationships are different.
People have a right to their own timing, their own discoveries, and their own path toward understanding.
I’ve learned that part of loving people is respecting that journey, even when I can see possibilities they cannot yet see for themselves.
Caring Without Carrying
Perhaps the question I’ve spent the most time reflecting on this month is this:
How do I care deeply about someone while accepting that I cannot create connection alone?
When someone matters to me, I want to understand them.
I want to know their world.
I want to create something meaningful together.
And if I’m honest, there have been times when I’ve struggled to reconcile caring deeply with accepting limited participation.
Not because I wanted them to become different.
I didn’t.
Not because I wanted them to become who I thought they should be.
I didn’t.
The challenge was accepting that the relationship they were participating in was different from the one I imagined we might create together.
That is a much subtler form of grief.
Because nobody has done anything wrong.
Two people simply aren’t building the same thing.
The Space Between Us™
The longer I do this work, the more I appreciate that caring and connecting are not the same thing.
Caring can exist within one person.
Connection requires two.
I’ve also come to appreciate that some people will matter long after they stop actively participating in our lives. Some friendships will continue to influence us, teach us, and shape us, even if they never become what we imagined.
The challenge isn’t learning how to stop caring.
The challenge is learning how to care without abandoning reality.
To honour the potential we saw without asking it to become more than it is.
To appreciate what mattered without carrying both sides of the relationship by ourselves.
To leave space for possibility while allowing participation to tell us where the relationship currently lives.
Because the potential was real.
The care was real.
The possibility was real.
But relationships are not built from potential alone.
They are built when two people see a future and choose, again and again, to participate in creating it together.
And perhaps that is what acceptance really is.
Not giving up on someone.
Not deciding they never mattered.
Not closing our hearts.
But making peace with the reality that connection has always been something built together, in the space between us.
Acknowledgement
As I reflected on this article, I found myself feeling grateful for my husband. Many of my thoughts about potential and participation have come from witnessing what happens when we both continued choosing the relationship through life’s transitions. Potential may spark a vision, but reality is built through participation.
Massive thank you, my love, for helping transform the potential I saw in us into something real.
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