Extreme Dependence On The Partner: Psychological Causes And Solutions
Relationships are one of the most important experiences of our lives. In relationships we feel well-being, complicity, and at the same time it is a bond so close that we can lose our identity. When too many fears and insecurities are generated and there is extreme dependence on the partner we are talking about a psychological and emotional problem that leads us to constant discomfort.
Our mood is usually affected by what happens to us. However, the most important key to living with well-being and making your relationships (especially as a couple) work is that this well-being depends mainly on you: on your decisions, actions, routine, way of life.
If there is extreme dependency in your relationship, it leads us to not make our own decisions, very opaque or defensive communication, or always giving in to the other. This leads us to feel that we do not know ourselves and that we have lost our identity. In an emotional sense, We feel insecurity, anxiety, and if they are very intense and frequent emotions it leads us to discouragement.
Why does it happen to us? What are the psychological and emotional causes that can lead us to this? And above all, how can we solve it in a stable way? (even without necessarily leaving the relationship).
In this article we are going to solve those questions and you will be able to find solutions. What I am going to tell you is based on direct experiences with people who had this problem and have resolved it and I have accompanied them in their processes of change and therapy (in Empoderamiento Huamno you can read their testimonies).
In our digital world we are so over-informed that it creates more confusion for us. It is very common today to focus on others and what they do, but in Psychology and according to empirical evidence we know that this does not help us at all. What is really useful is to focus on yourself, how you manage what you feel and how to resolve it.
Affective dependence is: when your well-being (and therefore decisions and way of life) depends more on external factors that you cannot control. These factors are related to how the other behaves, how they communicate, what they do, etc. Of course, irresponsible, carefree, or even violent behavior makes us feel bad. Here we talk about the interpretation we make of what happens to us.
Dependency is based above all on fear. We see the relationship from fear and insecurity in such a way that what happens always goes through that filter. Let’s go deeper into the psychological and emotional causes that lead us to this problem.
Dependent self-esteem
We tend to think that self-esteem is high or low depending on how we value ourselves. But really it’s not just about valuing ourselves. Self-esteem is above all a system, a way of behaving that leads us to an emotional experience. Dependent self-esteem is what makes your well-being depend on what happens.
But this factor is totally uncontrollable. If our behavior is totally conditioned by what we believe others want or need, We lose our own identity, and without identity, we feel lost, anxious and discouraged. Functional self-esteem is one that is focused on building our own well-being and relating in a balanced way.
Dependent self-esteem is also a learning process: we learn to relate like this, in such a way that our self-esteem is affected. For this reason it is not very useful to focus the problem only on valuing ourselves, but on changing the way we relate primarily to ourselves and subsequently to the world.
Attribution of responsibility
People are responsible first of all for our own state of mind, decisions and processes. When we feel responsible for others (we can learn this in childhood if our ties held us responsible for what happened) we end up depending to adapt to others and thus not feel guilty.
Forgetting own interests and ties
Seeing relationships so fragile, we feel vulnerable and we adapt to the other in such a way that we forget about our own interests, as well as creating other bonds (mainly friendly). Relationships work much better when there are quality links with which to share. A partner is not a single bond, but rather the person with whom you share an intimate bond.
Solutions to extreme dependence: living with more emotional independence
Emotional independence does not mean that we are individualistic or solitary people, but that we build relationships in a balanced way, where the well-being of each one depends mainly on one and we share it in that bond.
Our ways of relating are learned systems that can change with therapeutic work. However, it is also common for many months or years to be spent looking for solutions that do not arrive. For us to really achieve stable change, we must go to the root of the problem and work on it comprehensively: with your self-esteem, belief system, ways of relating, emotion management, behaviors, etc.
Let’s see what the four main keys are.
Find the solution in one
When we live according to a hyper focus on the partner (what he does, why he behaves like that, we try to discover his “traumas” or get too involved in what we believe are his problems) it is yet another consequence of extreme dependence.
The way to change what you feel and how you manage it is to look for the solution within yourself. Instead of using short-term remedies to feel good only temporarily (as if they were patches), we have to go to the root of what is happening to you and dig deeper to apply concrete changes that make that change stable in the future. time.
Curiosity about yourself, the desire to know yourself more, acceptance (what depends on you and what does not) and above all trust in your own process are necessary states of mind and attitudes.
Discover how you manage your emotions
The main problem of extreme dependence on the partner or dysfunctional self-esteem is the management of emotions. Fear of loss or rejection, of how others will feel, insecurity and guilt are emotions that, if we do not manage them in a functional way, end up being too intense, frequent and long-lasting.
This leads us to anxiety and discouragement. But the problem is not those emotions but the way to manage them. For this reason we must start by analyzing how you manage your emotions now to know where the problem is and how to solve it.
Once we understand well how this dependency is generated, we have to design a concrete and individualized action plan. The action plan takes you to different and precise actions that make you change that system, get to know yourself, begin to live with more well-being and make your relationships more positive.
An online test is not enough to make an action plan that works. We have to know exactly what changes you need. For this reason I always work on the action plan with the people I accompany in a session.
Work with all parts of the personality
Any type of psychological and emotional difficulty, whether in relationships or not, is not related to just one area of ​​parsonality. All these areas (self-esteem, emotion management, communication, the way we relate, the belief system, etc.) are related and condition each other.
For this reason, in a change process that wants to solve the problem safely in such a way that it lasts over time, you must work with all these areas and their relationship.
Have constant company
Finally, accompanying only occasional sessions for this type of difficulties is not usually very effective. Dependencies, fear or insecurity occur daily and if support is temporary, we feel more loneliness and less help. For this reason, my way of accompanying is constant: every day, so that the person can consult me ​​with what they need at all times (without consultation limit).
In addition, we work with weekly tools where we can address each part of the personality, with an action plan and with sessions where we can go deeper into what is happening, always focused on solutions through our own self-knowledge.
If you are in a similar situation, do not believe that dependency is part of you or that it is forever. It is a learning that involves unpleasant experiences and we can change it. If you need help, you know that in Human Empowerment you can start your process, as well as on my author page.
