The Triskelion as a symbol for Relationship Spaces

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Stefanie Schlosser, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

The Triskelion
The Triskelion is one of the oldest spiritual symbols and has been drawn by humans since over 5000 years. Translated from the Greek language, triskelion means “three legs” and can therefore be seen as a symbol for the ability to move forward. According to the Celtic Culture, everything that is of importance comes in three. The three spirals therefore can represent trinities like mental, physical and spiritual self or birth, death and rebirth. Another trinity represented by the Triskelion could be the physical realm, the spirit world and the celestial world.

Relationship spaces
Building upon both interpretations of the Triskelion representing trinity as well as forward movement, I have developed my own way of including this ancient symbol into my way of looking upon relationships. In general, this can be applied to intimate relationships, as well as friendships, family, work and other forms of interpersonal relationships.

Every relationship creates a shared space between the individuals, otherwise they wouldn’t be in relationship. This shared space, I choose to call The Us-Space. In some wedding traditions the wedded partners first had each their own candles in order to then light up a third candle together – representing the partnership, the Us-Space. Now, it’s of crucial importance to not blow out the individual candles! What I intend to show with the Triskelion as a symbol for the three relationship spaces is, that even though the partners entered the Us-Space, both the Me-Space and the You-Space are part of their movement forwards. These terms are obviously interchangeable, depending on out of whose perspective the relationship is looked upon. All three spaces are equally important and can be seen as the “three legs”, as triskelion translates from the Greek language.

Gaining a deeper understanding of those three relationship spaces, as I call them, can add immense value to any relationship and help overcome struggles based upon expectations and assumptions, like for example, that a couple would have to spend all their time in the Us-Space and that their individual spaces were basically inexistent, vanished like the fire from blown out candles.

Another misunderstanding can be, that the partners are too much focused on their individual spaces and in the midst of everyday tasks and projects forget about that an intimate relationship is like an entity itself, aside of the two individual spaces – the Me-Space and the You-Space. Being caught up in the individual space, one can see the relationship as something getting in the way of the personal goals by taking up too much time and requiring effort. Of course, this would always be an unconscious behavior, since it wouldn’t make sense to see an intimate relationship as something that should be working out beautifully without requiring any work, effort, dedication and commitment. As trivial as it sounds, as important it is to shine light upon those patterns which mostly linger around in the darkness of unawareness. It can become quite a vicious cycle or, more so, a downwards spiral when being stuck in the assumption that the relationship should work out by itself and noticing that putting some effort indeed takes time and therefore can seemingly stand in opposition to other personal goals and projects that one would like to put full focus on.

How to avoid this? How to navigate that relation-ship before it’s running against the shore or hitting an iceberg? Instead of focusing on the symptoms it’s always better to address the root cause of the dis-ease. I therefore won’t suggest a change of behavior but rather a transformation of the underlying mindset. If one can first of all see the relationship, the Us-Space, as a third party, equally valuable to the Me-Space and the You-Space, the entire baseline changes. Furthermore, both individuals can integrate the relationship as one of their projects – a shared project indeed. Simply acknowledging that the relationship can only thrive and develop further if it’s given attention, time and effort, will remove those unspoken expectations that everything should be working out perfectly just by itself. No other project works like that and a relationship doesn’t either.

Let’s raise the respect for our relationships, both intimate and friend relationships, by acknowledging that they in fact are like living beings with their own needs for attention and nourishment. Only then can they grow and thrive and uplevel our individual spaces more than we could imagine.

(I’ve created my own designs to visualize what I describe above. Unfortunately it is not possible to share images within the articles on Noomii. You’re welcome to reach out to me, for more information).