Seeing Our Reflection: The Future Of Relationships. Part II
If you’ve ever heard me talk about relationships—why we form them, why we stay—you’ve probably heard the same three words: safer, easier, better.
That formula isn’t mine. It belongs to nature.
Every living thing—whether it slithers, swims, walks, or flies—forms alliances for one reason: to survive. A connection only makes sense if it helps us stay alive, use less energy, or access something we couldn’t get by ourselves. If it doesn’t do that, we let it go—or choose to go it alone.
And whether we realize it or not, our brains still run the same calculation:
Will this make life safer? Easier? Better?
For a long time, I thought the order was obvious—safety came first. Protect the organism. Defend the species. That’s how life survives, right?
But I was wrong.
Before anything else, life asks: How much energy will this take?
Across all living systems, the first priority isn’t protection. It’s efficiency. Conserve energy, and you survive longer. Safety matters. But ease comes first.
And once you see that, everything starts to look different.
It’s why people stay in jobs that exhaust them, in friendships that drain them, in relationships that slowly erase them—not because they feel secure, but because change feels harder. Because starting over takes energy they don’t think they have.
What finally convinced me wasn’t an experiment or a theory.
It was Facebook.
Here is a company that has done more to divide and distract us than maybe any platform in modern history. And yet, billions still use it. Every day. Even when they say they don’t want to. Even when they know better.
Why?
Because it makes life easy.
It’s easier to share photos with family. To humblebrag about our achievements. To reconnect with high school friends without the effort of real conversation. It’s easier to skim birthdays, click a heart, make a comment, and feel like you’ve participated in someone’s life. Easier to be visible without being vulnerable. Easier to be remembered without being known.
Even when we know it’s harming our attention, our politics, our relationships, our sense of truth, our self-worth, we stay.
Because ease wins.
And the people building our technology don't just know that. They count on it.
So what does any of this have to do with the future of relationships?
Potentially, everything.
Because technology isn’t just changing how we work or shop or search for answers—it’s changing how we relate to one another. And the pattern is becoming clear: the more we value ease, the more we’ll accept the simplification of things that were never meant to be simple.
Some of that is already happening.
Dating apps let us evaluate potential partners based on a photo and a sentence. No context. No nuance. Just a binary decision made in two seconds.
Zoom meetings replace the walk to lunch, the side conversation, the subtle things we used to learn by being in a room together.
We send heart emojis instead of calling. We skim instead of reading. We forward without thinking.
We start to treat people the same way we treat platforms: optimized for convenience, edited for clarity, disposable if they require too much.
This matters—because relationships are next.
What we call connection is already changing. Not because we want less from each other—but because we want less effort. And the tools we’re building are offering us exactly that: relationships without resistance, affection without investment, intimacy without sacrifice.
But a real relationship shouldn’t be frictionless.
It shouldn’t be simple.
It shouldn’t be a mirror.
A mirror can reflect you. It can flatter you. But it can’t change you. It can’t steady you when you fall or forgive you when you fail.
The people who shape us—who help us grow—don’t reflect us.
They interrupt us.
And if we start choosing connection based on what demands the least, we won’t just lose depth. We’ll lose the very thing relationships were meant to give us.
Because the gatekeepers of this technology don’t care about real connection. They don’t care about love, or friendship, or what helps us grow. They care about what keeps us engaged. What keeps us logged in. What keeps us coming back.
And they will keep simplifying what should remain complex.
And we’ll keep falling for it.
Because if it’s easy.