Ultimate teammate theory (my sister is sick and tired of hearing about this) and why I want to get married

Emma Thomas (Producer) and Christopher Nolan (Director) — they're married — on the set of Dunkirk. 

One thing I know I'm good at is helping my partners furnish and expand their creative worlds.

I've seen a lot of creatively ambitious women do this for creatively ambitious men, but I don't see this going in the other direction as often, and I want to know why. I mean, I can think of counterexample couples where the man supports a woman who's ostensibly way more ambitious with her creativity, but that's not for me. What I want is to eventually marry someone who treats our relationship as an equitable and creative partnership, life as a superset of nested projects, and our village as our community of collaborators. I want them to want to become good at reaching as deeply into my world as I do into theirs — something I'll explore in greater depth at another time. 

Last week, I was at Molly's wedding — the same friend who texted me the following, the last time I crushed so hard on a creatively ambitious guy that I mentioned it to the groupchat:

She is a wise, wise woman. Reader, he was not :)

Anyway, I use the word marry when I talk about what I want because the romance in it has returned to me recently. We treat marriage like it's the most traditional, constraining, boring thing one can do with their adult life, but I see marriage as one of the highest stakes creative decisions a person can make. It's the assumption of tremendous risk. It's a legal agreement to face Whatever The Fuck Happens with the Collaborator of a Lifetime. It's a commitment to facing external problems in addition to problems we haven't identified in ourselves or in our partners. (I think of this one scene in HIMYM, when Marshall discovers Lily's credit card debt, and he says, "It's ok. When I married you, I married all your problems, too. Even the ones I didn't know about.")

You face off against gruesome beasts no matter what. But it seems to me that an ideal situation is one in which you brave these beasts on a small and humble team that’s in a perpetual state of building and reforming itself on love — and is fun to be part of. This is why I think it's just as important to frame marriage as an arrangement that derisks and softens the blows of life as it is a way of exposing yourself to potential hurt. Everyone knows marriage is fucking hard. But things usually get easier with two incomes, your bench deepens, and you don't have to die alone. In the best case, you’ve got reinforcements.¹ 

It's pretty incredible to see what it looks like when it works out way down the line. On Father's Day I called my dad, and he asked me how he could be praying for me (he always asks). When I asked him the same question, he told me he'd like wisdom on being the best possible support for my mom (she's fighting beasts). 

His request aligned with a big realization I'd just had about relationships — I told him I'd been using the phrase "ultimate teammate" to describe the person I want to marry. My sister hates this language. To her, it's clinical, it's cumbersome, and it's aromantic. I get that, and I also think it's descriptive of something the other pet terms don't scratch at. In recent weeks, when people have asked me what I want, ultimate teammate has been the first phrase to flash across the screen in my brain. The visual that comes to mind is of someone I can trust to be in the driver's seat while I'm holding the map in shotgun (and vice versa). 

I decided in April that one of my goals for the following year is to develop my resource-management life skills; I want to feel really confident about how I manage time, energy, attention, and money.² This is partly in service of my future self and partly because I think being skilled at managing these four resources is necessary to being a good teammate. Time and attention are important currencies in love — just as important as they are in someone you'd want on your team at work. 

I like the teammate framing for one more reason: My dad often says that the teamwork you end up doing with your spouse is asynchronous. You're blocking in tackling in two places at once, and you learn to switch off so one person can rest. It's the whole deep bench thing: What you want to find is someone who's playable on behalf of the team in almost any situation; what you want to be is the person your teammate feels confident putting into play on their behalf. It's the final stage of dependability. 

Some squirrelly part of my brain really wants to understand what dependability is made of. I still feel like the ingredients of good love and good partnership are meant to live far beyond my comprehension, and breaking it down into an itemized list of requirements is a patently stupid idea. But I think it does feel okay to sift out some simple heuristics like: “Can I trust that you’ll give me time?” 

They help my brain feel a little closer to knowing if someone is could be my ultimate teammate (or I could be that for them). Here are the questions (non-exhaustive) I find myself pondering when I consider someone — most of which boil down to, "Do we see what each other sees?" and "Do we trust and respect the way each other acts on what they see?"

A lot of these are framed in the first person for grammatical ease, but they should go both ways:

• (As per above) Are we equally curious about each other’s worlds? 
• Does it feel like they want to reach as deeply into my world as I do theirs? Do they want to be a part of it? Are they worried about not belonging there or are they secure in coming along with me as I grow, change, and explore? 
• How do they engage with my curiosity about the things that interest me? 
• Are they curious about my close and trusted friends, or do they judge them? Do they feel they must compete with them, or are they able to facilitate play among all of us? 
• Do we share a set of operating principles in life? 
• And are the rest of their operating principles at least compatible with (or, even better, complementary to) mine in any given situation (an intense moment or something as mundane as having people over for dinner or getting a bunch of chores done at home)?
• Do any of our operating principles conflict in ways that make it difficult to trust, respect, or predict how they'd conduct themselves if I weren't there, or vice versa? 
• What evidence do I have that we care about and actively prioritize the same things? 
• It might sound obvious to look for someone who shares the same values as you, but I often find the answers to this kind of question can only be revealed over time and through trial. I have to see someone in varying contexts with varying stakes before I feel like I really know what they're made of — they may say they value friendship and vulnerability, but then act in a way that preserves their self-image when push comes to shove. 
• One thing I look for when asking this question is how that other person lays aside their own convenience, comfort, and pride to serve others — within their means, and without giving up who they are. I don't want to be with someone who will whittle themselves away for the people they love, but I am looking for people who have a genuine desire to serve the people they love — friends or more — and who are creative in how they do that. 

• What evidence do I have to trust in and respect the way they dress down a problem, situation, or system³? 

• The question is whether I trust that this person and I see (notice, look for, identify) similar things in any given system. The less ridiculous way of putting this is probably, "How do they read the room?" Are they leading with compassionate curiosity? Or are they defensively wielding uncharitable judgment? I don't need them to see 100% of what I see or vice versa — in any good creative partnership, you're with someone who challenges and expands your perspective. But I have to be able to trust in and respect the way they break a situation down in their head, or the way they dress down a problem; it determines so much of how they'll approach it.
• Let's take a moment with high emotional stakes, like when a friend urgently needs support; or behind the scenes at a stressful event, when a friend is overwhelmed: What set of inferences do they make about what matters before acting on them? How do they break the system down into its component parts (people, variables in/beyond control, outcomes), then address the problems they think are workable? 
• Do we both want to anticipate/discern each other's needs and do what we can to meet them? How do we anticipate each other's needs? Can we do what it takes to learn how to meet them?
  
• One of my dad's consistent prayers is for the ability to discern and meet my mom's needs. Not only can he meet her needs, he wants to. 
• On our own or inspired by our connection/each other, do we get creative about ways to love, support, and care for each other?  Do I have to ask them to do these things? 
• Do we like each other enough to still do this when we're tired or hungry? 
• Are we making bad assumptions about the love the other person wants or needs in order to thrive? 
• Do we make other's worlds richer, brighter, bigger?
• Can we disagree in a way that makes us better creative partners? 
• I've only ever been in relationships where I didn't fight or even really argue with my boyfriends about anything real, but I did have a relationship in which I had a lot of proxy arguments about hypotheticals. I'm not sure why. Emma Chamberlain said recently that when couples don't ever argue, the two people really don't know each other, and to some extent I agree; I avoided arguments to avoid giving these guys reasons to reject me. In effect, I hid important parts of me and my perspective from them and from myself. 
• The important thing about disagreement for me is what the goal is. Are we trying to identify and reconcile and resolve where we actually see shared truth or see things differently? Or are we trying to wrestle each other into submission? Are we acting as a team or does only one person get to enjoy security by winning? 
• I'm only really guessing at what the answers to this question might be because I don't have a lot of experience in friendships or relationships where disagreement was a healthy exercise in strengthening a relationship, but I hope that with the ultimate teammate, I'll feel unafraid to disagree and argue about a shared decision or part of a shared life. If indeed the understanding is that we're gazing outward in the same direction, wanting to anticipate and meet each other's needs, and dressing down a problem in complementary ways, then I feel like the path forward is buildable. 
• How do we see each other?
• Who does he know me to be — and does this version of me make me feel known? Do I feel that I'm loved with my problems intact, or do I feel an instinct to hide parts of myself that I don't like? Does this version of me leave space and assume love for who I'm becoming? And then all of the same questions, but in the opposite direction. 
• Are we able to stay curious about each other the further along we get? Austin sent these questions in response to the ones Molly sent above:

He is also wise, and this is also a good gut check question

• Do we want to reach into and toward each other's creative worlds to the same extent? Are we curious about what makes each other curious? 
• These questions are motivated by my belief that creatively ambitious women should date men who will reach into our worlds as much as we reach into theirs. A more moderate statement is that I want to be with someone who's as interested in exploring, expanding, furnishing, and even producing my creative universe as I am his. I want to be excited by and trust each other's taste in problems, solutions, influences, and collaborators.
• I honestly think a whole family of questions concerns how we relate to each other's creative ambitions (the ones that exist outside the relationship as a creative partnership, like my work on weddings), but I'll figure out what those are over time.
• Are we gazing outward in the same direction? 
• The answer to this question is also a matter of taste in what we want out of life. With everyone I encounter, I wonder, "What do you want to do with your precious time and energy, your unique talent, your distinct voice?" 
• And if I'm interested in them, I wonder, "Might the universe of your creative ambition (in life and in work) sit next to mine, and do we like what we see if we imagine them intertwining?"
  

  

  An excerpt from this one book that I'm not even going to name because (a) I don't remember what it's called and (b) I looked it up once and thought it was pretty mid, but this part I think is honestly pretty close to what I believe 
  

• What (or who) do we both have faith in?
• Religion specifically 
• Until recently, I wanted to believe it didn't matter that partners hope and believe in the same things, but I'm coming around to believe it really does matter to share similar spiritual orientation. Like, I think it's really hard for Christians and Buddhists to raise kids together if one partner is constantly thinking about the negation of matter when the other is thinking about the meaning of everything in God's universe. 
• People's beliefs about the architecture of the universe shape their ambitions and their connections with others. For example, I believe in forgiving people, in the power of grace for everyone, in prayer being important (though I'm not sure I can prove what it does). It would be pretty hard to date someone who doesn't believe in second chances.
• Do you align on what you shouldn't believe? There's a lot I think contemporary Christians shouldn't give a shit about: abortion, IVF, gender stuff for adults. And as important as faith is, I hold a lot of skepticism about the church as the primary interface between God and man. I think everyone has to process their relationship with God critically and search for truth themselves. 
• Outside of religion
• What else do you believe or hope in? A life of deep interconnectedness with everyone around you? In the power of music. In a universal language... 
• It just seems like it's generally helpful to hope in the same ways, or for the same things. I think about the fact that both sets of grandparents believed enough in the promises of America that they immigrated with very, very little in the early '70s. A shared hope in a certain kind of future can keep you perseverant. 
• (NEW) Are we steadfast? Do we bring out solidity in each other?
• Molly and I have been talking about the importance of solidity and steadfastness. Two slightly different but related qualities. I don't know how to ask questions about this one — it's just something you know is there if it is.

There are definitely more questions like these, but my head hurts, and it feels empty now. Looking at this sprawling list, I feel it's crucial to mention that I don't have any illusions that we'd have to be able to do everything these questions are gesturing at with unfailing consistency until the end of time — life gets crazy, people have ups and downs, love grows cold and warm again in cycles. And there's far more to partnership than than I’ll ever understand. What I'm searching for in these questions is probably attainable in the deepest of friendships. But I've learned what happens when I jump into love without asking these questions, and so I figured I'd write them down.

Footnotes

1. I’ve heard the bleak statistics and have internalized the risks of marriage. I'm talking about what I want here, in ideal terms. I know relationship teamwork doesn't look like two people playing doubles tennis all the time; my dad says most teamwork looks like one person at the grocery store while the other picks the kids up from school — you spend a lot of time taking care of shit separately. Similarly, my work mom says that the effort split on most responsibilities is 80/20, and both spouses have to agree to what goes in whose domain. I take their point, but a girl can dream!
2. A dear friend raised the point that this reads a little like, "Once I do this, I can be ready and deserve a really good relationship!" and wanted to make sure I didn't feel like I couldn't pursue a relationship unless I reach a set of abstract Sisyphean goals related to time, money, energy, and attention. I totally see how it might sound like that, but these skills are really just on the list of ways I know I can grow and competencies and confidences I would be especially happy about bringing to a partnership. If mastery over my attention is a necessary skill to bring to work, why wouldn’t I want to bring it to the most consequential roles of all: someone's shotgun rider, the co-manager of a vibrant community, the co-owner of a functional and vibrant home, a mom, etc.?
3. What do I mean by system? "In physics, a system is a specific portion of the universe that is isolated for study. It's a collection of objects or components that are considered together, with everything else outside the system being referred to as the environment. The system's behavior is the focus of analysis, and the environment is considered only in terms of its interactions with the system." (Google) I also define a system as a portion of the world isolated for study, with a few key differences. It's a collection of objects, people, their energy, what they choose to say and do, what they choose not to say or do, and anything else that sets the vibe. The historical, cultural, and emotional things that make the system play out the exact way it does can are the context — and unlike in physics, it's rare that you can actually isolate a system from its environment.