Introduction

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I thought I’d start by introducing myself, and this… thing. So hi! My name is Ben Cornell, and this is Relationship Engineering.

Professionally, I’m a clinical psychologist, providing psychotherapy for individuals and couples.  The focus of my practice is mostly what gets called “relationship issues,” which means I work with a lot of people confronting dating, family and work relationships, as well as the ever-relevant relationships we each have with ourselves. Between my training in clinical psychology and couples therapy, work with professional and academic mentors and colleagues, learning from my own clients and personal relationships, as well as my own interest in variously-related subjects, I’ve been personally amazed by the awe-inspiring scientific complexity of human relationships when you really dig into them. I’ve also found that many of the ideas and ways of thinking that you only tend to run into in the deeper recesses of psychology and science are not only useful in the task of providing psychotherapy, but also profoundly applicable in our everyday navigation of relationships with other people.

My  intention for this project is not just to serve as relationship self-help (though the goal of improving relationships is ultimately top priority here) but more specifically to try to confront a significant gap I see in the  “mental-health conversation” these days.  What I mean is that we are increasingly focused on particular problems, particular tools to fix them, and particular labels for “kinds of people” or “kinds of behavior.” I don’t mean to imply there’s anything wrong with tools, advice, labels, or procedures… They can be incredibly useful in the right situation, at the right time, if you know how to use them, and can get yourself to use them.  The issue, though, is that when we’re given tools and procedures that promise to improve our relationship satisfaction, professional performance, or mental health, we’re cast as “technicians…” do it just like I tell you, and it’ll go fine—which assumes that your relationships work just like the relationships of whoever is giving you the tools and advice, that they know your relationships better than you do.

If you haven’t guessed from the title, I’m suggesting that when confronting your own unique relationships, it might make more sense to think of yourself as an engineer, rather than a technician—in the sense that an engineer relies more on their conceptual understanding of the systems they are working with, and only secondarily on their skill with a particular tool or technique.  Sure, they know how to use tools, but the bulk of the job is identifying the “leverage points” where those tools can actually make a difference. 

So what I’m offering here is a loose framework for understanding human relationships, based on the starting assumption that relationships are made out of behavior occurring in the minds and bodies of their participants, which is shaped and controlled by a range of forces that humanity has come to understand in all kinds of ways. When we talk about improving relationships, – what we’re all here for anyway, right? – I’m hoping that by understanding the “mechanics” of relational behavior, and the nature of “relationships” as conceptual systems, maybe we can better apply our beloved tools, limited energy, and finite willpower to actually make things better. 

I guess what I really mean is that this is me inviting you into the gallery of corkboard and red yarn housing a collection of cherished ideas I’ve been piecing together for the last… well… embarrassingly long time. (Just kidding, it’s all garbled digital notes on the cloud, but that’s so much less cinematic, isn’t it?) I’ll be exploring a range of interrelated answers to the question “how do relationships work?”  including that they work through a process of reciprocal learning, as a “dance” of mutual emotional influence called “attachment,” as the collective functioning of a coherent, greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts system, as a complex ecosystem in which behavioral “organisms” coevolve in relation to one another, as a “society of two” with its own implicit systems of government and economics, and as a discrete psychological entity with a “mind of its own…” alongside the more commonly-encountered answers from popular culture. That probably doesn’t sound all that coherent at this point, but explaining the apparent nonsense I just rattled off is kind of the whole point of this thing. 

Anyway, the “posts” here are vaguely sequential – I’m trying to start from the ground up, conceptually – but I try to make them somewhat self-contained in case you want to enjoy a la carte.  I also tend to take a two steps forward, one step back sort of approach, meaning I have a hard time not going back and fussing with past entries even after they’re posted. Relatedly, I think of the content I’m presenting here as… ugh… A “network of ideas,” such that it may take a few installments for the collective utility to emerge.  Not to assume you have time for that or anything, but just know you might find it picks up steam as we go.  

Thanks for reading, I hope it’s useful, or fun… or both, ideally.