Sovereign Relating

Balancing empathy and authenticity

Mirroring another while holding form. Photo by the author, September 20, 2025

In recent months I have found myself exploring systems designed to facilitate human connection across boundaries of conflict, difference, isolation, old wounds. Nonviolent Communication. Authentic Relating. Conscious Intimacy Games.

I am, in many ways, resistant to all systems and institutions, all good ideas that have evolved into organizations with jargon and established practices and levels of certification. And yet, I am also curious to learn more, to discern where these practices are in resonance with my own deeper knowing and where they feel a bit dissonant or incomplete.

One year ago, I published Common Ground, an impassioned plea to see our shared humanity, our shared experience of embodied aliveness, across our societal and self-imposed divides.

All it takes to create separation, discrimination, even ultimately genocide is fear and a story. Fear of disease, or death, or economic ruin, or change, and a story about how those people are dangerous, how our lives and communities and countries will be safer if they are controlled, excluded, deported, defeated, exterminated.

If this is true, then the converse is also true: All it takes to dissolve separation, to heal divides is love and a willingness to step out of a story. To see the whole being rather than simply judging their choices, actions, beliefs.

This is, in many ways, a counterpoint to Common Ground. The yes, and.

In this divided world, most of us, most of the time would benefit from taking the lessons of Nonviolent Communication and Authentic Relating to heart, embodying openness and curiosity and a willingness to see the emotions and unmet needs that lie beneath our prickly personas and polarized perspectives. This is undoubtedly the case because - well - blame and prejudice and projecting our shadows and wishing people dead and actually firing bullets into other humans’ living bodies are somehow still part of our collective experience. It is also the case because far too many families and intentional communities and workplaces and groups of all types descend into cycles of escalating blame and conflict and misunderstanding until they dissolve or explode.

It is equally true, however, that some of us, some of the time would benefit from putting some emotional and physical distance between ourselves and those closest to us, and that the toolkits and embodied expressions of compassionate communication can get in the way, trap us in cycles of conflict and repair in which our ability to feel others’ pain, our desire to bear witness and offer comfort, restores a sense of closeness without assessing and addressing underlying differences.

A dear friend once told me that we can make relationship work with anyone, if we commit to open communication. And perhaps that is true. But just because we can doesn’t necessarily mean we should.

I think most of us can agree that the goal of living is not immortality or surviving as long as possible, but rather being present and fully alive in all of our moments.

Similarly, I would say that the goal of relationship, of human connection is not permanence, but rather sovereign, harmonious co-creation. Supporting and encouraging each other in our journeys of evolving and discovering who we truly are, at our deepest levels.

The framework of Authentic Relating includes three levels of conversation, three levels of working through conflict, moving from shallower to deeper:

1. Observational. This is what happened. This is what I perceived.

2. Personal. This is how I feel about it. This is the deeper need behind my feelings.

3. Relational. This is what I am noticing in what you are saying. This is what I am noticing in myself, as I am listening. This is what I am asking of you, to feel heard/seen/respected/acknowledged/etc.

What is simultaneously the gift and the trap of this framework is that, for most of us, as we shift into the relational level, our needs change. As we open ourselves to being in presence with this fellow being beside us, to feeling and understanding what they are feeling, our empathy is activated and we feel a need within ourselves to offer comfort, to offer compromise, to repair whatever rift has been created. And - often enough - this need becomes stronger than whatever original need created the conflict, and so we move into resolution.

The question then becomes: does the conflict come back?

Was it just a misunderstanding or a mistake or a reaction, or did we make a compromise at the relational level, the empathetic and compassionate level, that was internally out of alignment?

I’d like to propose one more level of conversation, if our relating is to be truly authentic - in service of our deepest selves - rather than simply attuned.

4. Sovereign. This is who I am, we can both agree. This is who you are, we can both agree. And this is what that means for our relationship, moving forward.

I will be the first one to say that sovereign relating is really, really hard to do well. Most of us, most of the time, choose between empathy and inner resonance in conflict conversations. In order to feel and express our own inner truth, we turn off our empathy. Or in service of empathy and desire for connection, we lose track of our inner truth.

Sovereign relating requires both parties to be able to hold both their innermost truth and their empathy for the other at the same time. It requires a relationship rooted in love and devotion - a true desire for the other to have what is best for them - rather than in fear and attachment.

In service of empathy and desire for connection, we lose track of our inner truth.

This is the trap of Authentic Relating, of Nonviolent Communication, that leads to repeating cycles of conflict and repair.

If we find ourselves in such a cycle, it’s worth asking:

Are our conflicts becoming more or less frequent over time?

Is anything really changing in our relationship, when we move through repair?

And if we find that conflicts are becoming more frequent, that the same or similar conflicts are repeating, then let us ask ourselves three more questions, in service of discerning whether this particular interpersonal interweaving is in resonance with our deeper self:

1. Is the other person asking me to change who I am in order to feel met, heard, seen, acknowledged? Am I asking the other person to change who they are? If, for example, I need my partner to share my fear when I am afraid, and feeling fear is not a part of their experience, then I am asking them to pretend or to shift at the core of their being. Or - vice versa - if I need my partner to trust in something greater, to buoy my own trust when it is flagging, and they naturally feel fear and doubt instead, then I am asking them to change who they are. There are many possible incompatibilities at this level, and we all evolve over time so that we naturally grow into and out of compatibility.

2. Are our threads in the pattern weaving in tandem, or are they diverging? Does staying in closeness, in relationship, require an inner compromise in terms of where we are each going? If we are business partners, do we have aligned goals and visions? If we have intertwined our lives, do our next steps align? Or do we find ourselves each drawn to different parts of the world, different ideas of what makes a home, a family, a community?

3. Do we feel mutual resonance? When we are not actively in conflict or in the process of empathetic resolution, do we relax into each other’s presence? Or is there a tension there, a sense that something is missing? Even if we were in resonance before, are we in resonance now, as the people we are each becoming, in this place and moment?

We owe it to each other to practice compassionate communication, to see our shared humanity and needs and emotions through our differences. But we also are not obligated to remain in relationships, in families, in partnerships that no longer support our own evolution, our own sovereign path. Yes, and.

If the answers to these questions tell us that change is due, that what is really needed is not to resolve conflict but to shift the structure of our relationship, then it is time for sovereign relating. Although we can also practice relating on this level when we are in harmony. We can practice holding both our own inner truth and our love for each other, our desire for connection, and build comfort in that when it is not difficult, when there are no endings in store, no big decisions to be made. We can ask each other, more often, not just how are you but who are you? What is in the center of your being, in this moment? What is your innermost becoming?

In order to feel and express our own inner truth, we turn off our empathy. Or in service of empathy and desire for connection, we lose track of our inner truth.

This is the dichotomy, the duality, that we can move beyond at the level of sovereign relating.

In order to feel and express our own inner truth, we turn off our empathy.

And this is the path that most of us choose, most of the time, when our need to align with our inner truth surpasses our need to remain in connection. We hurt those who we most love, so that they will let us go, so that we can let go of them. This is in some ways the path that I chose, nearly two years ago, when I ended my partnership of fourteen years.

Relating at any of the four levels takes two. We cannot relate on a sovereign level with someone who is unwilling or unable to meet us there, and sometimes distance must be created without consent, without understanding. Sometimes, perhaps, pain is unavoidable. But we can still do our best to hold our inner truth and our love for another at the same time. We can, if we are strong enough in ourselves, choose to create distance when we need it, without asking others to create that distance for us, through hurtful words or actions.

If I ever find myself teaching workshops on human relating, I think I will explore this level. To hold both self and other, authenticity and empathy, in balance. To acknowledge that while it is imperative to see each other as human, to hold curiosity and compassion for other’s inner lives, it is also not imperative to find resonance in every connection. To practice stepping apart, holding boundaries, acknowledging real differences while still holding each other in love.

I still have much to learn.

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Wishing everyone a blessed Lughnasadh, which occurs at 7:43 am tomorrow, Eastern time. Perhaps the least celebrated of the eight turnings of the year, this is the time when days begin to grow noticeably shorter, when - despite lingering heat - it becomes clear that the peak of summer has passed. It is the time when nights are filled with a chorus of katydids and crickets, when morning dew sparkles on a thousand spiderwebs, when birds largely grow silent, release their territories, and prepare to leave for warmer climes.

This is the season of ripening - tomatoes, peppers, fruits, seeds. It is the time of the Perseid meteors - next week - and the time when the bright stars of the Summer Triangle - Vega, Deneb, and Altair - shine high overhead after dusk, above Capricorn and Aquarius to the south. It is the time when the first leaves begin to drop, just a few. When, some cool morning, we first catch a new scent on the breeze and say that it smells like fall.