182 ■ FLOWvisit, parties to go to and talk about afterward, and so on.
With time one gets to know the other person well, and the obvious
challenges have been exhausted. All the usual gambits have been tried;
the other person’s reactions have become predictable. Sexual play has
lost its first excitement. At this point, the relationship is in danger of
becoming a boring routine that might be kept alive by mutual conve
nience, but is unlikely to provide further enjoyment, or spark a new
growth in complexity. The only way to restore flow to the relationship
is by finding new challenges in it.
These might involve steps as simple as varying the routines of
eating, sleeping, or shopping. They might involve making an effort to
talk together about new topics of conversation, visiting new places,
making new friends. More than anything else they involve paying atten
tion to the partner’s own complexity, getting to know her at deeper
levels than were necessary in the earlier days of the relationship, sup
porting him with sympathy and compassion during the inevitable
changes that the years bring. A complex relationship sooner or later
faces the big question: whether the two partners are ready to make a
lifelong commitment. At that point, a whole new set of challenges
presents itself: raising a family together, getting involved in broader
community affairs when the children have grown up, working alongside
one another. Of course, these things cannot happen without extensive
inputs of energy and time; but the payoff in terms of the quality of
experience is usually more than worth it.
The same need to constantly increase challenges and skills applies
to one’s relationship with children. During the course of infancy and
early childhood most parents spontaneously enjoy the unfolding of their
babies’ growth: the first smile, the first word, the first few steps, the first
scribbles. Each of these quantum jumps in the child’s skills becomes a
new joyful challenge, to which parents respond by enriching the child’s
opportunities to act. From the cradle to the playpen to the playground
to kindergarten, the parents keep adjusting the balance of challenges
and skills between the child and her environment. But by early adoles
cence, many teenagers get to be too much to handle. What most parents
do at that point is to politely ignore their children’s lives, pretending
that everything is all right, hoping against hope that it will be.
Teenagers are physiologically mature beings, ripe for sexual repro
duction; in most societies (and in ours too, a century or so ago) they are
considered ready for adult responsibilities and appropriate recognition.
Because our present social arrangements, however, do not provide ade
quate challenges for the skills teenagers have, they must discover oppor