When a soldier kills an enemy soldier in combat, it is not considered murder.
If a kid tells their parent to stop misbehaving, it would be weird to say they “gave them a scolding”.
If a police officer asked you to borrow your underwear, it would be a very different situation compared to a homeless person asking for it. Even though in theory, both are just strangers on the street.
This is because when we interact with people, we don’t just interact with another human, we simultaneously react to the role they occupy in our world.
This may seem like a small thing—an almost too obvious thing (“Of course I have to treat my boss like my boss when I’m at work”)—but how it functions is not as obvious:
Roles exist as abstract categories in our mind (“lover”, “authority figure”, “pet”).
We have different expectations and relationships to each role, which won’t change just because another person occupies that role.
If we have a certain relationship to the police, that will show up in one way another in our relating to every police officer, no matter who the person underneath is.
If they have a certain relationship to whatever our role is to them, it will show up too.
Everyone who occupies a consistent place in your world occupies one or more roles.
Maybe you have a friend that’s your go-to-dude for emotional stuff.
Someone else who somehow always ends up being designated driver because they don’t drink.
That person you never see but do text at 4am saying “you up?” and if they weren’t, neither of you ever talks about it.
These are all “roles” too. They come with expectations and a way of relating.
If you were at a party and a stranger would ask you “hey bro, you know where I could score some weed?” I imagine you’d shrug it off and go on with your day. But if that same person asked you while they were your cashier at the supermarket, that would feel rather strange. Still the same person, but in that moment, you’re relating to the role, not the person inside it. Cashiers don’t ask for weed. People at parties do.
There are many more situations in which we relatie to the role so much that we barely see the person.
If we have issues with authority, our relationship to that role can be so salient hat we are unable to see the humanity of any person occupying a prominent leadership position in our world.
Now let’s look at something way more common, and not often considered:
Often, when people in romantic relationships experience conflict, the conflict isn’t actually with the person they love, it’s with the role.
Sometimes this will even be verbalized:
“I do not want my wife to act this way” , for example, is not about not wanting that specific person to act that way. It’s about the speaker’s relationship to the role of “wife”.
Roles are a territory rife with projections precisely because every person who takes on a role in our life inherits our previous relationship with it.
Our partners have to deal with whatever stuff happened in our previous relationships, to some degree.
The new king has to deal with the mistrust of the people after the old king screwed things up. Royally.
An exploriment you can try when debugging conflict with someone who holds a certain role in your life (partner, co-worker, parent):
1) Absolve each other of the role completely, just for a moment.
2) Relate to the person as if they didn’t hold a role for you. Take whatever time you need to see them as just a person.
3) Reveal your relationship to the role and how it impacts your relationship to them.
4) Ask what it’s like for them.
The goal here isn’t to start “ignoring all the roles and seeing all people as the real humans underneath”.
I operated like that for most of my life (I still often do), and trust me, it has some benefits, but it’s not the way.
The CEO saying “we’re all equals in this company, everyone’s family and everyone’s a leader” can not make that idea come true, no matter how hard they try, because through their role they hold power over the livelihood of the others, who don’t hold that power over each other.
This is a problem.
The dark side of underestimating your own power (or that of your role) is that you may be impacting others in ways you don’t see. For better or worse. Unclaimed power can’t be directed consciously. The CEO has to claim their power, or that environment will grow a nasty underbelly at some point.
And yet…that part of me who doesn’t see roles, status or hierarchy is right about something:
Roles are not real in any verifiable sense. You can’t point at them. They are imaginary. But their impact is real.
Isn’t it crazy how you can just give someone a lanyard and a walkie and suddenly their whole swagger changes?
That’s the thing about roles. Roles are magic spells we cast on a person that bestows them with qualities they normaly wouldn’t have. And the more people cast the same spell (or the more powerful the person who cast it), the stronger it becomes.
A shy person can become an absolute diva in the rockstar role. A kind person can become cruel if they are given a role that seems to require it.
(This should give us a clue about how personalities really function, but that’s for another day.)
It’s generally not that easy (or desired) to de-role ourselves or others. Roles can be re-negotiated with conscious effort. But the people around us (even the ones we don’t know) do cast us in roles whether we want it or not, and do have expectations of that role. Even if the role is as distant as “fellow citizen”.
(Side note: The carnival is a tradition that helps people temporarily break free from their roles.)
But one thing you can do that can greatly improve your relationships is pay attention to when you are relating to the person vs. when you are relating to the role. Learn to separate the two. See them happening simultaneously.
With practice, you can allow the roles to interact hierarchically (or whatever their dynamic is), while the humans hold each other in equal regard, and shift focus to whichever layer serves the situation (and the people in it) best.