So I am a new student at Grand Valley State University and I couldn't be more excited. One of the things that is pretty new to me is the large quantity of what I would call co-mate relationships.
Perhaps the people we most associate with in our lives are the people of the Co-Mate group. "Who are these co-mates?" you may ask. These are the people you would describe with the prefix Co- or the suffix -Mate. Coworkers, cohabitants, coconspirators, committee, community, classmates, playmates, officemates, tablemates, flatmates, roommates, crewmates.
I've talked about Family, the people that you don't get to choose who are going to be with forever, whether you like it or not. These people are the ones who teach you about all other relationship groups.
I've also talked about Friends, the people that you choose who you spend time with. Your friends are the group of people who you choose and who choose you, they require sacrifice from you first and they may also not be permanent.
What makes your co-mate relationships so different from these two groups is this. You do not get to pick your co-mates, and they are not around forever.
It is a combination that makes it really easy to spend time with them without ever investing in relationships with them. You may be the kind of person who tries to rationalize that it is pointless to get to know them because of that shallow, impermanent relationship.
But here is what I want to do today. I want to help you become more intentional with your co-mates. This does not mean that you are going to start baking them muffins every day or begin doing incredibly sincere things that you only do for people that you are really interested in like your spouse.
No, these are actually going to be a couple of things you are going to do to increase the quality of your co-mate relationships.
The three steps to more intentional co-mate relationships.
Recognize the Potential Friendship Sprouts
Make your Intentionality Proportional to your Relationships
Journeying Towards a Goal
These co-mate relationships are a lot like friendship sprouts. Your co-mates are definitely people that you do not get to pick, but like I was talking about in Intentionality with Your Friends, sometimes you do work with your friends because they once were just your co-mates.
When I was in the second grade we did this project. We had bean sprouts and we put a couple in a plastic bag with a wet paper towel. We just let it sit in the sun.
Every day we would look at them and make notes about what was happening. To be an intentional co-mate means that you go back and look over the relationship to see if there are things that are changing.
It is really easy to think that nothing has changed in a co-mate relationship. They typically are all pretty much just the same except for when they are not. That is what is important to understand and see. If I never say that the bean sprout had sprouted then I would never know to plant it out in the garden.
When you are looking over your co-mate relationships in this way you are taking stock in where you and the other person are. Not while having these intentional conversations about how to further your relationship but just while being mindful of where your relationship is and where it is going.
Our intentionality, our response to these relationships, should be proportional to the size of the relationship. It would be crazy for me to water a tiny bean sprout with the same amount of water that I would use to water a garden. The are just not the same size. Overdoing it in that way is actually going to harm that relationship.
When you are being intentional and you have made your mental notes about where things are in the relationships then you are able to act accordingly in response to the relationship. Proportional to the relationship.
This proportionality is key. It is like building a fire. If you start by throwing giant logs on then the fire is never going to start. But if you begin with small kindling; twigs, light grass, and slowly work your way up to sticks and then larger sticks. Well, then you are going to have that kind of blazing relationship that you are looking for.
When you do things disproportionately you are going to choke out the relationship.
It is a Journey
You and the other person or people are working towards a goal, whether you see it or not at this moment.
When it is co-workers you have goals. You have things that somebody has told you that you need to achieve. When yo are a cohabitant your goal is to live together in peace in harmony. That's a pretty great goal.
When you are walking alongside somebody and you are both trying to achieve your goals, that is when you get to start asking more of the person. You get to start asking questions about their story. Who they are and how they got where they are.
You also get to find out what their passions are, and if you are being intentional, you encourage that person in there passion.
C0-mate relationships are difficult because many of them do not amount to anything. You also have to see this, that some of the greatest relationships that you will ever have start from co-mate relationships.
These co-mate relationships can be the friendship sprouts of your garden. When you take care of them and you watch over them, when you track their development and are mindful of where they are in development, well that is when you begin determining whether you are even going to include these sprouts in your garden of friendships.
We respond proportionally to the relationship with our intentionality. We make decisions as intentional people about how much intentionality we are going to put into our relationship based on how big of a relationship it is in our life.
For strangers it isn't much intentionality at all. For our largest relationships we put in a lot. These co-mate relationships have to have a proportional amount of intentionality.
We also use the journey that we are on together to fuel our intentionality. We ask questions of our co-mates. We ask for them to tell us their stories and what drives them, why they are your co-mate. We then use that to fuel and encourage them.
The people we most associate with in our lives are the people of the Co-Mate group.
Recognize the Potential Friendship Sprouts
Make your Intentionality Proportional to your Relationships
Journeying Towards a Goal
To be an intentional co-mate means that you go back and look over the relationship to see if there are things that are changing. You are taking stock in where you and the other person are.
Our intentionality, our response to these relationships, should be proportional to the size of the relationship. Proportionality is key.
You and the other person or people are working towards a goal. Ask questions of your co-mates. Ask for them to tell you their stories and what drives them, why they are your co-mate. We then use that to fuel and encourage them.
What are some ways you can begin to track these relational sprouts?
What deeper relationships in your life started from co-mate relationships?
How can you begin to journey with others in your co-mate relationships?
