Labels

I am quite a well organised person, both in my private life and in my professional life too.  I'm usually the first to develop systems and procedures for storing information and routine tasks - which is actually ironic to me considering Systems Analysis and Design was my weakest subject in college, years later at University I even failed an exam in the same subject, although I was given a compensated pass as I got 100% in the coursework, the only person out of 215 students who did, something sank in at least.  That trend of being able to do things in practice quite well despite being arguably inept at the theoretical study thereof is a recurring theme for me in many areas.

This love of order and organisation has its limits however, what I refer to as constructive chaos is often embraced when I am confronted with situations I know I can not organise in any way - whether that be because I do not have the power or influence to do so, or because there just is no coherent structure that would fit.  Going further than these limits, the desire to organise everything into perfect order can also cause a lot of problems when it comes to social aspects of our lives.  Friendships and dating perhaps are the two easiest examples, ask yourself what is a friend?  You might impulsively believe you have an answer to that question but I would ask you to probe that line of thought further still and determine whether your definition actually fits with everyone you would generally refer to as a friend.  It is an inevitability that your friendships will fall into varying degrees of closeness, or to the obverse, degrees of distance.  The more aware of that differentiation the more you become aware of the inefficiency of referring to everyone you interact with socially as a friend.

Relationships are no easier, they too fall into many degrees and definitions, although here at least most people can agree on some loosely defined labels that they would attribute to these different types of relationship.  From complete commitment, to the complete absence thereof, a plethora of terms exist for referring to these people; girlfriend, boyfriend, friends with benefits, fuck buddy, etc all imply varying degrees of intimacy and crucially the expectations of sexual interaction.  The trouble is, just as with friendships in general, these definitions don't cover everything, nor do the myriad of other terms that I have not included.  You eventually come to a point where you have to ask yourself if friendships and relationships can even be labelled at all.  The answer to that question is irrelevant before you spend any great deal of time pondering it, simply because what you use to refer to these connections isn't the issue, the real issue is the desire to label them in the first place.

You could easily argue that any desire to label anything is somewhat anal, and that is a valid point, however, its validity depends on the extent to which you act upon the label, for most people who use them whilst they do give guidance to expectations, very few would adhere to them religiously.  That old moniker of being confined to the "friend zone" meaning there's zero possibility for anything more is not something that actually holds up in practice.  If there is an intimate connection, then whatever label was applied won't prevent either of you from crossing that imaginary line it imposes.  Really the desire to label these connections isn't about expectations but rather about communication.  You can't communicate a concept without being able to refer to that concept, likewise these connections form parts of our lives that if we want to talk about them with other people or we wish to try and process them within our own minds, we need to be able to refer to them and relate those concepts.

There is perhaps a conclusion that can be drawn here, and that is to say that labels exist as an extension of language and it should be quite clear that language exists for the purpose of communication.  If you have a problem with labels or how they are used, then perhaps you should step back and ask yourself what those labels are communicating and whether or not there is a more effective means of communicating the same information without using them, or if you want that information to be communicated at all.  As a gay man one of the areas of my life and that of my community that this concept is most prevalent is the labelling of sexuality; taking the same conclusion drawn above and applying it here, the obvious reason these labels exist is for others to know who you have, or want to have, sex with.  The question of whether you want to convey this information is ultimately a personal choice, some people do, some people don't.  Likewise the question of whether there is a more effective means of communicating the same information is again a personal choice, the use of labels in this instance avoids having a probing conversation about your sex life, but if you would rather the latter, that is a choice.  Likewise as I stated above whilst these labels give guidance for expectations, there are many who will ignore them entirely - that can be problematic, especially when some people don't take 'no' for an answer, although again the label in and of itself isn't the issue there, but rather the person who ignores what you try to communicate.

As I have grown older, friendships and relationships have become two things that I am increasingly comfortable with being in the realm of constructive chaos.  The desire to apply labels was something I had when I was younger but as with every system, the more it is used, and the more exceptions that are created, and the more scenarios that are encountered that it was not designed to encompass, the more that system begins to break down.  When you get to that point there are really only two reactions, the first is to create a new system, or the second is to accept this isn't something you can organise coherently, and for me it was the latter that ultimately prevailed in my personal attitude.  When I ask people to label things now it is more out of my own desire to gain insight into what they expect rather than determining how I think or feel about them.