The See-Saw of Relationship Satisfaction
I’ve noticed that most of the people who end up on a therapy couch appear to overweight the experience of others.
This theme keeps popping up in my sessions.
How much do we balance the interests of others (belonging) with the interests of self (authenticity)?
Whether nature or nurture, we all seem to have ended up at different weightings.
To oversimplify:
If you overvalue self, or authenticity, you are a narcissist, an eccentric oddball, or a tyrant.
If you overvalue others, or belonging, you are a martyr, a doormat, or a stormtrooper.
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Humans are unique in the animal kingdom for how long and how much we depend on our caregivers. We represent an evolutionary bet on nurture.
This maximizes how much can be soft-wired or shaped to fit the environment we are born into. It allowed language and culture to take root.
To support this prolonged period of cross-generational programming, we rely heavily on our caregiver’s nervous system for safety and discernment. That’s why attachment theory is so important. Much of our brain is geared toward understanding and co-regulating with another nervous system. This means that we start out life heavily weighted to belonging.
In healthy development, our caregiver reflects our emerging subjectivity back to us and we start to develop our own feeling about things. Over time we lesson our reliance on our caregiver and start to internalize much of what we used to get from them. Possibly the most important thing we get is neuroception or our unconscious perception of danger. As this happens, the child is able to venture further and further out from the caregiver. We start to develop a stronger weighting on authenticity. As social animals, we never lose our need for belonging. As adults, we always have to balance authenticity and belonging.
Just as the child oscillates between caregiver and adventure, so as adults we touch back and forth between belonging and authenticity.
Even in sex, turn-taking is often a good idea. It’s hard to satisfy two separate beings simultaneously.
A see-saw is more fun when it can rock.
One for me. One for you. One for me. One for you.
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In therapy, it often feels like we’re bringing in more of the self into the picture so that the see-saw is not locked in a fixed position on the side of belonging.
What aspects of yourself are dormant, frozen, or under-appreciated? Do you know in your bones how special you are?
Then with more Self Energy, when you connect with partners and family you can do so from a more differentiated position. Two distinct energy systems coming together.
This makes for better relationships and allows the other to find their own authenticity outside of the relationship.
It is a true win-win.
