6 Ways to Balance Relationships

Margaret* was terribly upset. She’d been dating Anthony* for two months, and she’d thought the relationship was moving forward nicely. “I wanted to know where he saw us going,” she said. “I was thinking that we might eventually want to live together, although not yet, of course. So I asked him how he was feeling about me, about us, and what he was thinking about the relationship.”

Too Needy? or Too Independent?

Anthony’s response took her by surprise. “He told me I’m too needy,” she said, tearfully. “He said he liked women who were more independent. Less clingy. But,” she said, “I’m not dependent at all. I have a meaningful career – in fact, I’m more successful at work than Anthony is. I support myself completely financially. I have friends and a rich and interesting life. And in fact, I was making him dinner as we were having this conversation. What made him call me clingy?”

I couldn’t answer for Anthony, of course, but I know that she’s not the only one of my clients who has struggled with this kind of criticism. We live in a world in which independence and self-sufficiency are highly valued, but sometimes, as some of my PT colleagues have suggested, we can take it a bit too far.

Otto Kernberg, an early innovator in understanding borderline personality disorders, suggested that for individuals with this disorder, autonomy and mature dependency feels mutually contradictory.

In my experience this confusion is endemic to our culture, which sometimes makes it seem that you can only be autonomous, or independent, if you are never dependent on anyone else.

A Healthy Mix

Yet my PT colleague Mark B. Borg and his co-authors write, healthy dependency “can be one of the most genuine parts of a relationship.”

Further, psychotherapists know that healthy independence involves healthy dependence, and conversely, healthy dependence requires a capacity for independence.

Margaret was a respected team leader at work. She had a reputation for encouraging her staff to be both independent thinkers and team players. “We’d never get anywhere if everyone went off and did their own thing,” she told me in explaining her approach. “But at the same time, we need each individual to produce their own work, with their own ideas and innovations. Without that, we’d just continue to put out the same product with nothing new to add to it. Which would get boring and tired after a while.”

Was Anthony seeing a very different Margaret from the woman she presented at work?

Different Selves

Relational theorists suggest we all have many different selves, which emerge in the context of different relationships or interactions. I have found it more useful to talk about different ways of experiencing and presenting ourselves, depending on the context and the people we are with.

Margaret, like many other men and women, was more comfortable being autonomous but connected at work and with her friends, and more comfortable being dependent and connected in a relationship with a potential romantic partner.

There are many reasons for this dichotomy. The most obvious or traditional one may be that we learn how to be in relationships as a child, during a time when we are dependent and close.

Moving away from or developing independence while remaining attached to family is often complicated and may leave many of us feeling that we can only be close to someone if we are deeply dependent on that person.

Of course, the irony is that healthy intimacy requires a degree of deep dependency as well as individuality and autonomy.

Healthy Intimacy: A balance of deep dependency as well as individuality and autonomy

For many of us, school was a time of learning to be with others while we accomplished independent tasks as well. When that experience works well, many children develop a healthy sense of autonomy and attachment in relation to work/school projects and personal relationships. However, the road is bumpy for many children and most of us end up with some complex and lingering conflicts in this area.

We thus reach adulthood with some confusing feelings about connection, dependence, and independence.

How do we find a healthy balance between independence and dependence in a relationship? Here are five suggestions:

• Recognize that both independence and dependence are healthy, normal components of every relationship.
• Make room for different parts of yourself and your partner — your work self, friend self, lover self, family self all have something to add to every relationship.
• Make sure that you and your friend, partner, or family member are able to freely agree and disagree with one another.
• Find time to spend time alone and with others as well as together.
• Remain flexible but balanced when it comes to compromise. Sometimes in a relationship we give in to the other’s wishes, and sometimes they give in to ours. But in a healthy relationship, both sides compromise, although not necessarily at the same time.

If you’re in a relationship where independence and dependence are not well-balanced, get some outside help – a therapist or counselor can help you sort some of your questions and find ways to a better, healthier, and more evenly distributed connectedness.

Bring Your Different Selves Together

Margaret, for example, found it helpful to bring some of her “work self” into her interactions with Anthony. As we talked about some of the ways that she interacted with Anthony, we began to see that she did a lot for him, without really thinking about it. “I think he’s more dependent on me than I am on him,” Margaret said to me. “But maybe on some level he doesn’t like being taken care of. Maybe that makes it seem like I’m clinging.” We couldn’t know the validity of this hypothesis, but it seemed worth pursuing.

With some trepidation, Margaret told Anthony that she would not be cooking for him anymore, but that she would be happy to cook meals together with him. Anthony seemed surprised, then pleased by her suggestion.

Eventually, after they began doing more and more together as a team, he told her, “I don’t know what changed, but ever since we started cooking together, things have been a lot better between us.” And then, to her surprise, he said, “Tell me what you’re thinking about going forward. Do you see us moving in together?”

Finding a Balance: An ongoing task in any relationship

Neither Anthony nor Margaret had realized that they had been in an unequal balance of connection and individuation, or dependence and independence.

But Anthony’s complaint that Margaret was too clingy represented his discomfort with the imbalance. It’s not always simple to recalibrate, and a healthy balance is an ongoing process, not a final destination.

But the best way to find balance is to start working toward it.