Mutually Assured Flourishing: A Foundation for Evolving Together

Tracking the Path Toward Empowerment

Some months ago, while traveling with my girlfriend in Cebu, we were at the hotel, and an idea was downloaded to me through some level of inspiration that I couldn’t have planned. I recalled the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction from a television show called Godfather of Harlem, a reimagining of the story of Bumpy Johnson played by Forest Whitaker.

Sometime during the show, Bumpy is on trial via the Italian mobsters in Harlem who have looked upon all he is doing as going against their principles. As he is a Black man, he isn’t entirely on the inside of the Italian mob but nonetheless, he did gain their trust and ran their books. Mutually Assured Destruction came in when the trial, and his framing, was ultimately being charged forward through Vincent D'Onofrio’s character, Vincent "Chin" Gigante, who wanted Bumpy dead and out of the way for his own enterprise.

However, Bumpy had walked in with the proverbial unpinned grenade in his hand when they placed the gun to his head — assuring that if he didn’t make it out of the trial, the information he had on all of them, placed with a trusted anonymous third party, would put them all away for good. They couldn’t touch him.

I wondered in Cebu, with that idea having reentered my mind, what the opposite would look like.
If instead of the U.S.A. and Russia having a cold war, what if they wanted to ensure both countries’ success in the world?

It came to me that I wanted my relationship with this beautiful woman traveling with me to be observant of this sort of principle. From that time on, through trial and error, I developed the idea further and constructed some basic building blocks for a Mutually Assured Flourishing relationship — one that allows, enables, and supports a solid foundation for growth and evolution.

What follows is the general framework for implementing these principles in your own life, relationships, and communities.
Godspeed.

1. Defining Mutually Assured Flourishing

Mutually Assured Flourishing is Success. Success is Mutually Assured Flourishing.
You measure success through the choices you make individually or together that lead to everyone winning and everyone learning and everyone gaining and everyone eating and so on.
How good is it when the world you inhabit has everyone taking care of everyone without having to sacrifice for everyone?
The agreement starts one at a time, especially in a couple’s MAF arrangement.

2. The Color and Continuity of MAF

A relationship built on Mutually Assured Flourishing ensures the relationship never loses its color.
The principles behind MAF are the blueprints for a stable foundation and you can’t learn that from someone else — you practice it with each other.
You endeavor to ensure the MAF machine can keep running on the electricity you’re both willing to pump into it.

Recognition that what we have only works if it remains what we have is the same recognition that tells me that who you are is who I fell in love with.
And we can change and we can grow but I still want to know you are you.

3. Interdependence Over Independence or Codependence

Mutually Assured Flourishment pushes not for total independence and definitely not for total codependence … but an interdependence between the parties involved.

It’s perfectly alright to depend on and be depended upon.
To lean on and be leaned on.
To ask for help and to offer it.
And it’s okay to say no as well.

The interdependence at play means I may ask for help, but you are not required to give it.
And you may ask me for help, but I maintain my own choice in the matter, and I can both say no and love you still.

4. Boundaries as the Guardrails of Flourishing

Mutually Assured Flourishing does not exist without the boundaries that protect it and as a result those creating a relationship housing it and being housed by it.

The give and take requires being clear about what you want, what you need, what you are willing to put up with, and what you are not.

You cannot mutually assure success for each other if you do not know the limits, boundaries, and expectations of both yourself and those connected through the mutual assurance — and are not willing to guard them.

5. Wanting Without Sacrifice

Wanting for yourself is not bad, although society may teach that as so.

Mutually Assured Flourishing begins and ends with a decision to not have to sacrifice what you want but to help your Mutually Assured partners get what they want without losing what you want in the process.

I will do my best to assure your victory in getting what you want, and you will do the same for me.

6. Investment Without Owing

Mutually Assured Flourishing is not about owing each other.
It’s about doing everything in each other’s power without an expectation of a return on the investment.

You are investing — but in the relationship — and the investment means that even your success is my success and my success yours.

And your success, even something as simple as seeing you create your first work of art using my materials, is already a return on my investment.
And from that, my love can grow, allowing me to invest further in the relationship.

When only one side sees this, it is possible to be seen as one person loves the other person more.
But when both parties have Mutually Assured Flourishing and are in agreement about it, the loving deepens and grows, and investing becomes a fun objective for the both of you — the investment in each other.

7. Conflict as a Path to Stability

Mutually Assured Flourishing has never meant we don’t need to have conflict.
In fact, it could — for any given relationship — mean exactly the opposite:

That I will go right to the center of that conflict when it shows up.
I will not back down from something that needs to be addressed.
I will not ignore the warning signs.

And through that poised intention, on the other side of that conflict is the joy of having mutually assured that nothing is going to come back and bite your mutually assured flourishing partners and you in the ass.

8. Timing, Change, and Renewal

Knowing when to change and when to stay the same and when to release can be all about the right timing in a Mutually Assured Flourishing understanding.

You place all the right pieces where they need to go, and you wait or you take action or you stay your hand or you bide your time.
But in every case, timing matters.

Don’t wait too long ... but also don’t put yourself at risk with your actions you should have waited on.

Know when to — with your Mutually Assured Flourishment relationship agreements — update them, end them, or keep them the same.
And knowing the difference of when to do each is built inside the relationship on the foundation you already have together by now.

CLOSING REMARKS

In closing, I want to add that the idea itself can only be fully grasped from the inside.
Take your time and feel out the principles working through the solutions expectations one at a time while you allow the growth and evolution to work out through the opportunities that show up for you to do so.

Every challenge becomes an opportunity.
Every conflict becomes a learning experience.
Every difficulty becomes a chance to create something new.

And with you and the people in connection with you in agreement about how it works, you cannot be stopped.
Good luck in this journey.
It’s all yours.