In debate, we talk a decent amount about the distinction between positive and negative rights. Most of you will be familiar, but the basic idea is the split between something that the state actively provides and something the state prevents you from losing or being infringed. For example, you have a positive right to vote. You have a negative right to not be killed.
Increasingly, I’ve found applications for this concept in things that have nothing to do with the rights that the state theoretically distributes to people. The active/passive or positive/negative distinction seems to play an even greater role in personal relationships than it might in political ones. Most everyone seems to bring preconceptions into living, relationships, and daily activities that prioritize the provision of positive privileges or negative ones. And this divide may be one of the most important and profound in impacting how the course of a relationship, friendship, or society evolves.
In the context of a relationship, some folks are Gesture People. They expect little flourishes and actions that constantly remind them that the other person is thinking of them in ways that lead to something active. They want flowers, cards, surprises, sweeping moves. Sure, we all want this to a certain extent – no one is either entirely one side or the other. It’s a continuum. But increasingly it seems there are people for whom this type of manifestation of feeling is paramount – they don’t know how to feel loved without it.
Contrastingly, others are what I might call Hippocratic People. Not hypocritical – stay with me now. Those for whom the manifestation of love is the absence of harm. That no matter what’s done or said or happens over the course of the relationship, a baseline of understanding and empathy is never breached. There is a floor of feeling that evidences a level of care that one could only take and effectuate for someone they love. For these folks, any violation of the presumed floor is potentially cataclysmic evidence of the lack of love.
There are probably broader levels and layers to this whole thing that I’m not thinking of, and even if it’s binary, it’s a continuum and not a dichotomy. But spending some time thinking about where you fall on this line will probably improve whatever relationships you’re invested in, present or future. And it’s not to say that Gesture People can’t be quite happy with Hippocratic People. But it takes a lot of work – it takes an awareness of how different the other person’s presumptions about the evidence of feeling can be. If these things aren’t understood and communicated, you’ll have a situation where someone keeps making little gestures in the hopes of reciprocity while casually trampling through the floor of understanding, unable to comprehend why they are always treated with a certain care but almost never those same little gestures in kind.
Even identifying these differences isn’t enough by any means. In some cases, you can spend years trying to communicate across this seemingly minor divide and still not make it work. But it’s worth trying, worth thinking about for a little bit. No one is afforded a positive right to a relationship in our state, but we all would prefer to enjoy a negative right to prevent us from losing love.
