Everything is a balancing act.  The natural counterbalance to our lives of adventure is found in the maintenance of the familiar.  A familiar partner, workplace, exercise routine, a familiar set of values and passions – these are the building blocks of many a productive life.  Of course, too much familiarity can begin to feel constricting instead of comforting. Conversely, when nothing is familiar the pendulum swings past the fun marker and we can lose our balance and feel disoriented.  The trick, then, as with all things, is to find that proper equilibrium between these two opposing forces, adventure and familiarity – the known and the unknown.

In Spanish, “familiar” is a noun meaning “relative” or “family member,” and correspondingly “familiares” are “multiple family members.”  I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how much my life of adventure has opened up and become enriched by mis familiares.  The familiar, though, is what we are at war with in many of our best and closest relationships.  I’ve observed in my own marriage and in other people’s relationships that many fights are really the result of too much familiarity with your partner.  Too much time together, too many chores together, too many shared headaches, too much familiarity.

The familiarity factor is at play in many aspects of our lives, and has definitely affected my perception of some of my favorite things through the years. When I arrived in L.A., I didn’t have a car and didn’t even really understand that I might need one.  In those first several months I was a local Santa Monica yokel and hit up the Baja Fresh on Lincoln and Wilshire more than I should have.  It was relatively “Fresh” if a bit short on the “Baja”, and it was the right price and it was right there and I ate it five times a week.  And now, I can not ever again eat Baja Fresh, nor have I since.  It still is relatively fresh and good I’m sure, and through the years its sometimes again been convenient, but I just….can’t…do it.  Too much familiarity too quick, such that it singed me and I can’t go back.

I’ve also noticed this phenomena with roommates.  I’ve had the good fortune to live with some great friends over the years.  But even with the best of friends, put them in a roommate situation for a year or two, and the luster that had been a part of that special friendship will almost assuredly have come off.  The central interests, values, perspectives and principles that made them such good friends may not have changed much, but the all too familiar items like toothpaste on the sink and dishes put in wrong and hair in various drains – every day for years – will have taken its toll.

It seems that in marriages, once the sheen has come off our partners after years of intense familiarity, people often end up thinking that the love is gone or somehow changed fundamentally.  To be sure, the ticks in our partners, exacerbated by intense familiarity, can piss us off and we have every right to be annoyed by them, but to put them in too great a focus is to miss the forest for the trees.  Because many of these annoyances are of the type that have pissed us off with every familiar situation we have found ourselves in over the years, just intensified further by the particular bond of marriage.

Soooo, what the hell is my point?  I think its that fighting the familiar is part of what the so-called “work” is when it comes to relationships. Awesomely, part of that work can be done by just going out and exploring the world together. If your partner is more important to you than Baja Fresh was to me, then too much familiarity can’t be the reason to give up on your partnership.  The cool thing is that this work can be fun, especially when you use shared adventures to stave off the familiar. Vacations, jaunts, excursions – anything that takes you out of your typical routine and environment – help keep the demons of familiarity at bay while reveling in the intense relationships that make us whole.

Ahh, the duality of life.  At once foreign and innately familiar, as duality should be.