Dating : Your Partner is Responsible for Being Your Partner

The recent story “Your Self Esteem is Not Your Partner’s Responsibility” dealing with partner insecurities, is both spot on and also screaming for debate. It nails well the reality of an extreme — the dysfunction that occurs when one or both partners are so insecure that all the good the universe is sending them seeps out, and therefore they are never satiated. It is a great story because it provides clarity and focus on a real relationship problem.

OTOH, those that live with someone on the other extreme of the spectrum, someone who neither asks for or gives love and appreciation, are just screaming to be heard! What do these people want to say to the world? They want to say “Hang on, am I some pathetic sap just because I am dying over here, just because once and a while I would like some small morsel of appreciation and recognition?”

The answer of course is “no”. Many of us are broken. Some of us are broken in small ways, some of us are broken in large ways. It would be nice to live in a world where not being broken was just a matter of “character” or going down to the local therapist and having a quick chat that “fixes” us. But life is not that simple. It may be a long journey to get to the point where we know how broken we are, and it may be an even longer journey to address our problems, and those problems may never be fully addressed in our lifetime.

Some of us need a partner who has that little bit extra to give, who loves us enough to invest the time to understand us, who steers clear of fault lines that don’t need to stepped on, and gives us some space when we need it to work out for ourselves what is going on within us. Such partners will have to decide if it is all too much. For some people, it will be too much real soon, for others it is something that will simmer over years and decades as they try to sort through the pros and cons of being in a relationship with us. Horses for courses. It is a given that not all people are meant to be together, while others are perfect complements. Even with partners who are not “broken”, it would be expected that there is loving, caring, support, and encouragement. If there is not, what is the point of being in a partnership? Sex? Maybe for a while, but not over the long run, and definitely not into the third act of life.

The bottom line is relationships, in a free society, are a voluntary thing. Both partners get to voluntarily decide if the other partner is what they need in a partner, and that is person-specific. This is a decision process that occurs when first meeting, during courtship, during the magical years of early child raising, and through the later stages of life. Any given person may need a partner who is more or less attentive to us, and that may change over time.

Relationships — it’s complicated.