“Please Be Patient With Me…” - On Patience and Relationships

We commonly are confronted with moments where we need to be patient. We exercise our patience as we stand in line at the DMV. We have our patience tested by the child with an iPad loudly watching YouTube videos on the bus. We patiently wait for reviewers to send their feedback on a paper. We patiently tolerate the AI voice on the other side of the line who is thanking us for our patience.

In many of these cases we are choosing to be patient of our own accord in response to some event that is not within our direct control. But there are also times where we receive a request from others to be patient. In particular, there are cases where someone asks us: “please be patient with me.” What, precisely, is one asking for in this request? To make the question more concrete, consider two cases.

LEENA

Leena comes out to her father as trans. She has a good relationship with her father. He loves her, and even shares the same social and political beliefs as her. This will inevitably change how they relate to one another. Nonetheless, he asks for her to be patient with him as he updates his conception of their relationship in light of this fact. He needs time to mourn the loss of his son while also loving his daughter. Leena is furious with her father’s response, but nonetheless agrees to try and be patient with him as they navigate their relationship from this point forward.

MAC

Mac is a recovering addict. His past addiction had a significant impact on his relationship with his best friend, Maria, undermining her capacity to care for him, his capacity to care for himself, and her trust and confidence in their relationship. Now in the process of recovery, Mac comes to grips with just how much his past affected their friendship. It is important to him that he can build a new foundation upon which to continue to be best friends with Maria. Yet he acknowledges that the process of recovery is fraught and that he remains vulnerable and fallible as he reroutes his life. He asks Maria to be patient with him as he navigates recovery and their friendship. Maria, in turn, asks Mac to be patient with her. Given their complicated past, she is apprehensive, yet willing to try and trust Mac and become best friends again.

These cases are obviously messy, involving complex topics like personal identity, familial expectations, cycles of hurt, and grief. However, it is precisely because they are messy that I am curious about them and similar cases. The central question I am interested in is the following: What constitutes Mac’s, Maria’s and Leena’s father’s request for patience? I do not think Leena’s father was simply asking for Leena to excuse his expressions of grief. I do not think Mac was asking that Maria simply stick around and not engage with him until he has “figured his stuff out.” I do not think Maria is asking for Mac to accept her deeply rooted distrust towards him as inevitable. Nor do I think any of them are asking the others to simply withhold from expressing their frustration.

I can’t help but wonder what Leena’s father was really asking of Leena or what Maria and Mac were asking of each other. What would it mean for Maria and Leena to be patient in the way they are asked to be? What would Mac, Maria, and Leena’s father do if granted this patience? What are the features at play that make this patience potentially different from other requests for patience? I want to propose there is a kind of moral request being made, one that invites the adoption of a certain moral standing and recognition of the other.

To begin, let’s outline some shared features of the cases. First, the requests for patience are made in response to some form of change, transition, or transformation of the one (or both) of the parties and thus in turn the relationship itself. Second, both requests appear to have a central aim: the maintaining or strengthening of an interpersonal relationship in light of these circumstances. For instance, let’s say that Maria agrees to be patient with Mac. In freely granting her patience, Maria commits herself to the end of rebuilding her relationship with Mac. If Leena agrees to grant patience to her father, she expresses her desire or intention to do so with the relationship in mind. In both cases, patience, whether requested or granted, is integral to seeking the continuation and flourishing of a relationship. As such, all parties are committed to this end, even if they may not succeed. How may this end be properly pursued and fulfilled? Let’s work through the different dimensions of the cases.

Returning to the case of Leena, we can understand her to be making a kind of implicit demand on her father, namely, that he respects her will and identity, and treats her as his daughter. It seems true that Leena stands in a position to rightfully make such a demand and her father understands this fact. But it seems that he is asking her (in part) to waive her right, to make such demands. Maria, too, seems to be requesting this of Mac. Mac cannot outright demand of Maria “Look! Can’t you put all my relapses behind us! I am on the right path now, let’s just return to how things were!” Rather, Maria’s request for patience is that Mac also waive his right to make such a demand.

What is being asked of Maria as the one granting patience to Mac? In recognition of how his past deeply affected his relationship with Maria and her trust in him, perhaps Mac is requesting that Maria grant some freedom and trust in his agency moving forward. It seems that Mac is asking that Maria refrain from taking what P.F. Strawson calls the “objective stance” wherein she would regard him as “an object of social policy; as a subject for…treatment; as something certainly to be taken account, perhaps precautionary account, of; to be managed or handled or cured or trained; perhaps simply to be avoided” (Strawson, 1963, 139). I also think we find echoes of this request in those made by Maria and Leena: they too want to be able to freely exercise their agency around a relationship that is actively being redefined and shaped.

A shared feature for both the request and granting of patience is that they appear to involve a kind of demand-making. Presumably, we can make demands on others to express their will in many ways that are different from a request for patience. Perhaps it is partially characteristic of the kind of patience being asked for in these cases that can be sketched as having the following structure: the patience-granter has a standing to direct the patience-receiver to do something, and the receiver, consenting to do that thing, ask the granter to refrain from demanding that the receiver does it immediately, but rather recognize that the end is a kind of work in progress that required continuous engagement. That’s a mouthful! Let’s turn our attention to this last point: the end as a work in progress.

If the end for the sake of which patience is granted or received is “a work in progress,” then it seems two things must be true. First, the granting of patience binds the patience receivers to pursuing the tasks that patience concerns in good faith. If Maria and Leena agree to grant patience, then it seems that Mac and Leena’s father, as the receivers, are bound to take up whatever project the patience is being granted for. Mac must genuinely try to remain sober and gain Maria’s trust back; Leena’s father must genuinely try to engage with Leena not as a new person who has replaced a different version, but rather as the person she has always been. This is not to say that any mistake is unforgivable or sufficient for patience to be withdrawn. Rather, it is to say that the gift of patience is one that ought not be taken for granted, especially when it aims at repairing, transforming, and/or strengthening a relationship.

Second, as a work in progress, the end or steps at which patience aims may not be completely and precisely identified, described, or known. In fact, I want to suggest that it is an essential component of this particular kind of patience that there is vagueness regarding the end point or required steps to reach the target state of the relationship. This does not mean that there cannot be any well-defined steps that are made possible by patience granting or receiving. Instead, it is to say that this patience is unlike the patience granted for some end and its required steps that are explicitly defined, like Maria being patient by withholding judgement until Mac completes seven months of rehab meetings.

Because patience is given and received in the face of vagueness or uncertainty, patience demands that both parties mutually embrace vulnerability. While the patience-receivers are left vulnerable to whether the others will continue to grant their patience, the patience-granters are simultaneously vulnerable to whether the others will take their patience for granted. Thus, the granters and the receivers must place their trust in each other despite the uncertainty about how the relationship will change from this vulnerable point onward.

If these circumstances of patience are contoured by their uncertainty, is there a demand that the parties refrain from expressing or holding certain hopes or expectations for how things will turn out? What about for how they get there and how the patience-receivers or granters exercise their agency and choices? These are complicated questions. Certainly, patience granters and receivers can have hopes that things will pan out a certain way. After all, it is only natural to hope for what we would like for ourselves or for others when we are invested in a shared relationship. However, the granting or receiving of patience in these circumstances puts restrictions on the kind of hope that is consistent with the respect for each person's agency and the relationship.

Whatever hopes one forms, they must be cautious that such expectations do not evolve into operating as, what Rima Basu calls, “internal fixations” (Basu, 2023, 164). Basu argues that expectations and hopes can operate as helpful guides for agents to flourish, however they can quickly become aimed at the correction of an agent rather than a guiding scaffold for one’s personal identity and relationships. Expectations for others are vulnerable to evolving into internal fixations that impose “a structure on the agency of another, a structure that simply does not fit unless you break things first” (Ibid). In light of this, I propose that if one is to have hopes attached to this exercise of patience, they must be aim at granting freedom and respect for each person’s agency, despite the anxiety of uncertainty for how things will proceed.

Returning to where we started, I want to emphasize that the requesting for and granting of patience is done for the sake of a relationship. As such, the patience-granter cannot be patient just for themselves. For instance, they cannot be patient only because there is some good to gain for themselves; you cannot be patient with your spouse and their drinking problem only because you will be less stressed if they quit. Neither can the patience-receiver request it as a means for the continuation of some behavior. Instead, both parties must grant and receive patience out of a valuing of the other and the shared relationship in and of itself. Thus, this patience is about an “us”: it is reciprocal and aimed at a unity in and grounding of a relationship.

It could help, at this juncture, to contrast the kind of request for patience discusses thus far with a disingenuous but superficially similar gesture. Consider another case:

AUNT GINA

At a family thanksgiving, Aunt Gina tells a story about her nephew, Camilo, who is also at the table. After hearing about how successful his first job is going she says: “You know, he has always been like that! Smart and ambitious! He has a bright future!” Camilo tells Aunt Gina that they use they/them pronouns. Gina hears this, recognizes the message, and asks for Camilo to be patient with her as she re-learns how to properly address them as such. As the years go on, Aunt Gina continues to use he/him pronouns to refer to Camilo and seems a bit annoyed when they correct her. She apologizes each time for how “confusing and hard” it is to re-learn these pronouns for the nephew she has known for so long under different pronouns.

In the case of Aunt Gina, her request for patience from Camilo seems to aim at Camilo granting her pre-emptive and permanent forgiveness or excuses for her actions, regardless of her effort to eventually use his correct pronouns. Even if she is not using he/him pronouns to be malicious, we can’t fully say that her actions are aimed at maintaining and pursuing a respectful relationship with Camilo nor respecting Camilo in and of themselves. Her request for patience is in many ways disingenuous precisely because she fails to put a good faith effort into performing the very adjustment that she asked Camilo to be patient with her over.

Further, I want to suggest that it would be unfitting for Camilo to continue to extend his patience to Aunt Gina. The moral work of patience in these cases may not always have a clear end in sight, but it is not therefore infinite: there exist circumstances that justify the revoking of patience or illegitimize continual requests for patience. However, determining exactly when and why patience may be revoked will, likely, be determined by the distinct features of the relationship and the surrounding circumstances.

Before concluding my discussion, I want to quickly highlight some interesting features of the patience that are outside of the scope of this current discussion but warrant further attention. One interesting aspect of this patience is that it shares features with promises, apology, and forgiveness. Like promising, patience is mutually binding in moral action. Like apology and promise, patience can aim at relationship repair and the surrendering of a right to complain. However, it remains unclear whether this patience truly involves a normative power as strong as waiving rights and creating duties.

Perhaps it has other normative functions. Maybe patience can function as a prophylactic against further relationship damage which would eventually call for repair. If you think that apologies repair relationships, then perhaps requesting patience is akin to asking the person in the relationship to give you space and charity that avoids the circumstances that would call for an apology. It may not remove the possibility of mistake-making, but it may give some cushion for when it happens along the way.

Additionally, we may have reason to think that patience is a distinct phenomenon with an independent moral function. If this is true, can we intelligibly or justifiably demand patience from others, and could others in turn have obligations to respond by granting their patience? Is refusing to do so ever blameworthy? Finally, there may be reason to consider whether there exist different expressions or kinds of patience. I focus on an interpersonal relationship-based view of patience, but perhaps there are other forms of patience such as a political-patience.

In conclusion, although I draw from a few cases alone, I hope my discussion paves the way for further inquiry into the nature and function of patience in our lives. We may not all face cases like Leena’s or Mac’s, but I think we receive and make similar requests more frequently than we realize in our interpersonal relationships. Perhaps we ought to recognize these cases not merely as emotional regulation, but as engaging in an important kind of moral work.