One of my favorite Valentine’s Day cards this year had this simple message: “Be mine. Just kidding, be your own autonomous person.”. I have seen three distinct patterns of love visually depicted on a continuum. On one end is a deeply dependent style of interaction, where one or both partners feel insecure, needy, clingy, unsettled, and likely unhappy when they are apart or fear they are coming apart. On the opposite end of the continuum is the independent extreme. Sometimes referred to as “married singles”, their lives and schedules and goals seem distinctly disconnected. Their life together does not look that much different from their previous separate lives. Far from dependent, they are disengaged and often very, very busy with their individual pursuits. The mid-range of the continuum represents interdependence, two whole people blending their lives together. (Esteemed family researcher Whoopi Goldberg titled her big book of relationships, “If someone says, ‘You complete me.’ RUN!”.) Interdependent couples complement and supplement each other. They enhance and enrich each other. Interdependent couples are not suffocatingly enmeshed with each other, nor are they distantly detached from each other. They choose to bring their whole selves together to form and cultivate a healthy, balanced bond, two whole people coming together to create a whole and wholesome relationship.

On the dependent end of the scale, it is not unusual to see imbalanced power dynamics. The principle of lesser or least interest suggests that the partner who is less dependent on the relationship holds more power. They get to call the shots because they have less to lose. The one who is deeply invested, who desperately wants the relationship to continue, may find themselves always giving in so the other doesn’t give up. They fear that the least interested and more powerful person will go away if they don’t always get their way. What an unfortunate way to live. As someone observed, “If you have to beg someone to be in your life, they don’t belong there.”

A similar maxim suggests that the higher the level of commitment, the fewer the demands, especially demands to change. The person who has a lower level of commitment to a relationship can leverage their power to insist that the other party change any number of things if they really want to stay together. It isn’t difficult to imagine directives such as, “I’ll stay with you if you…lose weight, change jobs, turn your back on your friends or family, look different, act different, be different.” In other words, let me make you over into the person I want you to be, not the person you are. If you want to be with me, then you will need to stop being you.

That approach to relationships is not love, it is control, dominance, supremacy. It is often expressed through manipulation that is demanding and demeaning. Mutually committed, mature partners accept each other as whole people with strengths and weaknesses, and a variety of different interests and preferences. They honor the individual person and personality of the other, just as they honor their own uniqueness. They understand that the beautiful blending of two whole lives into one whole relationship requires a commitment that gives space for individuality and grace for imperfections. The concept of two becoming one does not happen when one takes over the other. It happens when two people commit to creating something new and shared together.
And that is why I like the Valentine’s day card sentiment. Of course, I want you to be mine. But first, I want you to be you.