It's Okay to Be Human in Relationships

I’ve been noticing something lately in the way people talk about relationships.

There’s a tension in it. A kind of tightness.

We talk a lot now about values, needs, and boundaries — and those things absolutely matter. Values shape how we live. Needs create vulnerability. Boundaries create safety and clarity around participation. They are real parts of how relationships function. There’s also been a shift underneath that language that feels increasingly common.

It’s like relationships are supposed to operate perfectly now.

Our values should align. Our needs should be expressed clearly and met consistently. Our boundaries should be respected all the time, and if those things aren’t happening, something must be wrong.

I keep finding myself wondering where the room is for being human with another human.

Because to be human is to be limited.

We are not going to operate perfectly one hundred percent of the time. No one is. Even people who are deeply self-aware, even people doing years of therapy, and even people who care deeply about each other. There will be misunderstandings. Missed signals. Reactions that aren’t ideal. Moments when someone doesn’t show up the way we hoped. Increasingly, it feels like there’s less tolerance for that reality.

There’s a subtle pressure to bring a polished version of ourselves into relationship. To regulate first. Process first. Understand first. Then come into contact.

On the surface, that sounds responsible, but something can get lost in it.

When we are constantly managing ourselves before we show up, relationships can start to feel distant. Controlled. A little sterile. We’re interacting with each other’s most organized selves rather than with the fullness of being human.

Connection doesn’t actually grow out of perfection. It grows out of contact.

One place I see this tension most often is in long-standing relationships where there has been hurt or misunderstanding over time — especially parent–adult child relationships. These relationships carry history, expectation, longing, and often unresolved pain. Many people want those relationships to feel different, but they also don’t want to lose them entirely.

There’s an assumption that if a relationship isn’t meeting our needs or respecting our boundaries consistently, the only healthy option is distance or estrangement.

Sometimes that is true. In situations involving abuse or ongoing harm, distance may be necessary. However, many relationships fall into a more complicated space. Not abusive. Not deeply attuned. Limited. Imperfect. Sometimes frustrating. Sometimes meaningful.

In those relationships, something important shifts when a person becomes more grounded in their own sense of worth.

When our sense of goodness or lovability is still tied to how another person treats us, relationships become attempts to repair that internal wound. We go toward the other person hoping they will finally confirm that we matter, that we are enough, that we are wanted. When that doesn’t happen, the hurt deepens.

When someone begins to access a sense of inherent wholeness — even intermittently — the relationship changes. The question becomes less about whether the other person is meeting our needs perfectly and more about what we want to do with the relationship, given who they actually are.

That’s where values enter in a different way.

I once worked with someone who had a long history of disappointment with her mother. Attempts at repair had gone nowhere. Conversations stayed surface-level. Her mother remained emotionally limited in ways that were unlikely to change, but this person didn’t want to cut off the relationship.

When we explored why, the answer wasn’t obligation or guilt. It was values. She valued family. She valued staying connected, even when relationships weren’t perfect. Taking her mother to dinner on her birthday wasn’t about earning approval or fixing anything. It simply aligned with who she was.

That distinction is important.

Self-respect isn’t only about refusing contact when someone disappoints us. Sometimes self-respect is honoring what feels true to us, even when the relationship itself is imperfect.

When our internal ground is more stable, another person’s limitations don’t land the same way. They can still be disappointing. Still annoying. Still painful at times, but they don’t define us.

We can decide how close is close enough, and not every relationship needs to be the deepest relationship in our lives.

Some relationships are contextual. Historical. Value-based. Surface-level with moments of warmth. Family relationships often live here. That doesn’t make them meaningless. It makes them human.

There’s another place I’ve been seeing strain too — when values differ. There’s a growing sense that if someone’s worldview or priorities don’t align with ours, connection isn’t possible.

Sameness and connection are not the same thing. Agreement is not the same thing as closeness.

If we are grounded enough in ourselves, there can be room for difference. Room to stay in contact without needing the other person to mirror us.

Sometimes the need for sameness is actually a need for attunement — a desire to feel safe and understood. Those are different things. When we confuse them, relationships can fracture unnecessarily.

We end up in smaller and smaller relational circles, surrounded only by people who think and feel the way we do, which can look like safety but often feels like isolation over time.

Relationships have always required tolerance for imperfection.

Repair when possible. Flexibility when necessary. Discernment about closeness. Trust in our own capacity to recover when something stings.

The idea that every relationship should meet every emotional need perfectly isn’t just unrealistic — it’s unsustainable. It puts pressure on both people that no one can consistently carry.

I’ve had to learn this personally too. I carried a lot of perfectionism into relationships. I wanted to show up correctly. I wanted to be easy to love. I wanted to avoid being seen as too much or inconvenient. And I expected a similar precision from others, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.

It didn’t work.

Relationships became easier when there was more room to be human. More room for mistakes. More room for repair. More room for limitation on both sides.

Being human together is actually the point, not performing well together.

If you find yourself holding relationships to impossible standards — or holding yourself to them — it might be worth pausing and asking what part of you is trying to create safety through perfection.

And whether there’s space to let both people be human instead.