Wrapped Up In Archetypical Roles

At a company social, I met one of our interns. He was several years my younger, a little naive, a little quiet, but not boring. When asked, there were distinct activities he loved doing and ideas close to his core.

I later met him for a brief lunch with one of my other coworkers, during which I teased out more to the surface such as his love for rollerblading and being in nature.

I have a talent for finding humor in everyday conversation and use it to overcome the initial awkwardness in a one-on-one introduction. In this case, the intern seemed to genuinely laugh at my jokes and I inferred that he appreciated my authenticity / directness in interaction; however, after he left, a conversation with my friend who stayed behind revealed that this interaction felt very familiar.

When I meet someone new, I tend to compare how I relate to them with how I've related to people in the past. One role I commonly gravitate towards is The Mentor, especially when the other person is younger, naive, unsure, or quiet. After I confirm that they find my advice valuable and appreciate my humor, I generally lock in this role for the foreseeable future of the relationship.

Playing The Mentor is an easy way to receive external validation. Good Feels, as it were. But it is a poor role for personal growth because the other person will view me as an authority on many subjects and and won't challenge my ideas.

Which roles do you naturally slide into with other people or groups?:

• The Mentor: knows best, unexciting and unchallengeable.
• The Fool: makes everybody laugh, never taken seriously
• The Prude / Parent / Drama Queen: safe, can't relax and let people have their fun
• The Child: naive, lighthearted, overly optimistic, not taken seriously, condescended to
• The Enthusiast: always obsessed with something, not taken seriously

Roles aren't inherently bad. In the beginning, they serve as a shortcut for how to play out a relationship and make it easier to get acquainted. However, roles constrain the breadth of the relationship in the long run and make it harder to fully understand each other when someone acts “out of character”. People are more nuanced than archetypes.

So what can we do? One option is to acknowledge to the other person or people that there are roles present. Depending on the maturity, introspective skills, and depth of the relationship, there is great risk. Experiences are not commutative; it matters when something is said, or if something is said at all. This could wreck the relationship for one or all parties.

Consider what's at stake. What does this relationship mean? How likely is this to bring improvement vs spoil? How much unlocked potential is there in this relationship?

Another option is to try to force the change ourselves. If we are The Mentor, perhaps we could ask the other person (people) to teach us something they know well. If we are The Fool, perhaps we can try becoming more vulnerable and telling the other(s) about a serious issue we've been grappling with. Be inventive.

In the relationship that inspired this post, I saw great potential for self-growth if I broke out of my role, so I told the other person directly. I will have to wait and see the effects.

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