We want someone to take responsibility for our safety, material well-being, and happiness. Or they themselves tend to take on excessive responsibility for the other.
Being together does not mean tying us down
In a healthy relationship, each participant is primarily responsible for their own condition and the satisfaction of their needs (material, emotional and existential), without trying to take on more or transfer responsibility to another. Everyone is responsible above all for themselves, but in a couple relationship with ties, this principle is seriously affected.
confused responsibility
In a dependency relationship, responsibility is confused. We want someone to take responsibility for our safety, material well-being, and happiness. Or they themselves tend to take on excessive responsibility for the other.
In some respects, this manifests itself in the distribution of responsibilities. For example, a woman expects a man to provide financial support and support, and for this she will be responsible for the house, daily life and children; this is a typical example of confused responsibility, although so pervasive that it is almost a variant of the norm.
In more serious cases, we transfer responsibility for all aspects of our well-being to our partner, or we ourselves assume the responsibility of saving the other. Or, which is also quite common, both at the same time. For example, a woman may try to save her alcoholic husband from her for years.
the boundaries are blurred
In a healthy relationship, we are sensitive to our partner’s psychological and physical boundaries and can assert our boundaries. We feel when our actions or words cross the boundaries of what is acceptable to the other person.
At the same time, we ourselves are very aware of our limits and are able to say “no” the moment we don’t like what the other person is doing or saying.
This principle works the same in all areas. In the field of sexual relations, it is the ability to say “no” in a timely manner if a partner offers something that does not suit us. In business, it is our ability to defend our point of view in a relationship with a business partner.
In a dependency relationship, the limits are blurred. We lose the ability to understand where my territory ends and someone else’s territory begins. A merger forms, in which we often follow one of two scenarios: oswe sacrifice our needs and independence and lose the ability to say no, and then our boundaries are systematically violated; or we ourselves, not meeting resistance, more and more violate another person’s boundaries and deprive him of the right to independence. These destructive processes develop gradually and can go very far, up to the complete loss of borders.
A problem of hierarchies in the relationship
In a healthy relationship, everything is very simple: they are built on an equal footing, from the “adult – adult” position. Most often, participants in such relationships manage to respect their partner, count on his opinion. In such a relationship, we always agree as two independent adults. We are forced to seek a compromise, although this is not always pleasant.
In a dependent and attached relationship, polarization occurs. The roles of children and parents are included in us: one of the spouses assumes the role of a helpless and weak child, the second becomes a strong and caring adult.
At first, such a game can be quite pleasant and exciting: the dominant spouse feels his power and strength, the subordinate – cozy security and the absence of the need to decide anything, because the “boss” will take care of everything. But if such distribution of roles becomes fixed and chronic, then it is built a rigid dominance-subordination hierarchy in the relationship.
In such conditions, an adult becomes an aggressor and a child a victim. A strong hand very quickly begins not to defend, but to cripple, because the inferior spouse has lost the ability to defend their boundaries, and the superior, without meeting resistance, can no longer cope with uncontrolled aggression. So domestic physical violence develops in family relationships and psychological violence in friendships and business.
Put limits on dependency and ties
Of course, there is hardly a perfectly healthy relationship in which all parameters are around +10. Until now, unfortunately, we have not known such a relationship. But if you are living a relationship where the ties do not allow you to be yourself, and you have begun to notice that you stop