Your Relationship with Them is Not Their Relationship with You

Here's a recognition that dissolves even more suffering than the last one: your relationship with someone is not the same as their relationship with you.

You have a relationship with your mother. She has a relationship with you. These are not the same relationship, even though they involve the same two people.

You have a relationship with your ex. They have a relationship with you. Two entirely different sovereign realities.

You have a relationship with your friend, your partner, your sibling, your colleague. And they each have their own relationship with you. Never the same. Never merged. Always two.

Most people hear this and think it sounds like semantics. But watch what happens when you truly recognize it.

The Conflation That Creates Suffering

We suffer in relationships because we conflate these two realities. We think "we're in a relationship together" means we're experiencing the same thing. We think being "on the same page" means our sovereign realities should somehow merge into one agreed-upon version.

But they can't. And they don't.

Your relationship with them is how YOU perceive, feel about, think about, and choose in relation to their existence. It's your experience of them. Your interpretation of their behavior. Your emotional responses. Your choices about engagement.

Their relationship with you is how THEY perceive, feel about, think about, and choose in relation to your existence. It's their experience of you. Their interpretation of your behavior. Their emotional responses. Their choices about engagement.

These are fundamentally different things. They exist in two different sovereign consciousnesses. And you can directly know and navigate one of them: yours.

This is where most relationship suffering originates. Not from what the other person does, but from taking what they do personally—from requiring their relationship with you to mean something about your relationship with them.

Someone criticizes you. That's their behavior in their relationship with you. It doesn't have to mean anything about your relationship with them except as information you use to make choices.

Someone gaslights you. That's their behavior in their relationship with you. It can inform your choice not to actively interact until they heal, without any upset, without any antipathy, without making it about you.

Someone stops calling. That's their choice in their relationship with you. It doesn't have to collapse your relationship with them into betrayal or hurt. It's information.

Orientation, Not Ontology

For most people, others' inner realities remain fundamentally unknowable. You cannot peer directly into another's experience. You cannot know with certainty what motivates their choices, what they truly feel, or how they genuinely experience you.

But here's what matters: even if you could know—even if you developed the capacity to perceive others' inner states directly—the principle remains the same.

You don't orient based on what they are or what they're experiencing. You orient based on what you are and what you choose to be in relation to them.

This is the shift from ontology to orientation. From "what are they and how should I respond based on that?" to "what am I and how do I choose to relate from that?".

Most ethical systems teach us to determine what someone is—conscious, trustworthy, harmful, loving—and then derive our behavior from that assessment. But this creates an unstable foundation. Your integrity becomes dependent on the accuracy of your perception of others.

Sovereign orientation works differently. It doesn't depend on knowing or controlling their relationship with you. It arises from clarity about your relationship with them.

I interact with you the way I do not because I know what you are, or what I am to you, or what motivates your choices.

I interact with you the way I do according to what I have chosen to be.

This removes the burden of proof from others and places responsibility within yourself. You're not trying to figure out their inner state so you can respond "correctly." You're choosing your orientation regardless of what they are or how they relate to you.

What Becomes Available: Sovereignty

When you stop taking their relationship with you personally—when you recognize it's fundamentally separate from your relationship with them—something extraordinary becomes available: you can relate to anyone without needing them to relate to you in any particular way.

You can love someone who doesn't love you back. Not as suffering, but as sovereign choice.

You can respect someone who doesn't respect you. Because your respect isn't contingent on theirs.

You can maintain boundaries with someone without needing them to understand or approve of those boundaries.

You can be in relationship with anyone, in whatever form that takes—including not actively interacting—without drama, without resentment, without making their choices mean something about your worth.

This is actual relational sovereignty. Not "we need to agree on what our relationship is." But rather: you have your relationship with me, I have my relationship with you, and both are valid sovereign realities that don't need to match.

The relationship exists as long as you exist to each other. You can't opt out of relating just because you're not talking. But you can recognize that how you relate and how they relate are two entirely different things, and only one of them is yours to navigate.

What Becomes Available: Harmony

And when people recognize their sovereignty—when people are not trying to control the other's relationship with them—something even more extraordinary becomes available: actual harmony.

Not the forced harmony of negotiated agreement. Not the fragile harmony of mutual attachment. The natural harmony that emerges when two sovereign beings move freely.

When you're not trying to manage their relationship with you, and they're not trying to manage yours with them, you can each do your thing. You move authentically. They move authentically. And sometimes those movements intersect beautifully—not because you've bound yourselves together, but because resonance calls you into collaboration, connection, creation.

This is what genuine partnership looks like. Not "we must stay aligned." Not "we need to be on the same page." But: I'm being me, you're being you, and when our paths converge, we meet without either of us pulling the other off course.

When paths diverge? No drama. No betrayal. Just clear recognition: I'm going this way, you're going that way. Maybe they'll intersect again. Maybe they won't.

The relationship stays alive and responsive instead of rigid and negotiated. It breathes. It moves. It allows both people to remain whole while coming together in ways that serve both.

This is the freedom that emerges when you stop trying to control how others relate to you and start simply being what you are in relation to them.

Your relationship with them is yours.
Their relationship with you is theirs.
Let both be what they are.

And discover what becomes possible when you do.