Independence is a huge buzzword in the realm of personal development, and shocker, it is brilliantly misused and misunderstood. There’s a reason “I’m a strong, independent woman and I don’t need no man” became a meme. It’s a load of crap. Independence goes way beyond “not needing someone to complete you.” In the realm of relationships, individual independence is having your shit together so that you can thrive to normally unreachable levels with your partner instead of using them as a crutch.
The maturity continuum – learning to swim like a pair of dolphins instead of hanging on to the side of the pool for dear life
Author Stephen Covey is all over this idea in his oldie but goodie The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He talks about a maturity continuum from dependence to independence, and finally to interdependence. What the hell does that mean, old white guy?
As children, we are highly dependent on our parents, teachers, or other adults for much of what we do. I was thoroughly helpless at keeping myself alive until I was a teenager. Even then, it was a toss up if I would run out of clean underwear before doing something about it.
As I have grown older and reached adulthood, I have become more independent in three main areas: emotionally, intellectually, and physically.
I went from being able to tie my shoes to drive a car, able to solve simple addition problems to hold complex conversations about literature (or at least regurgitate SparkNotes), and able to say that I love my parents to conceptualize and properly grieve the death of loved ones.
The point of independence isn’t that you don’t need no man. It’s that regardless of if you are with someone or not, you can generate confidence, self-worth, and capability internally, rather than from something or someone external.
It is the direct antidote to codependence and the inevitable shitshow that comes with it.
From independence, we can then move to interdependence, which is the idea that a couple works best as a team. They can be happier and grow more together than on their own. Conversations, card games, and sex are (hopefully?) all a lot more fun with another person than on your own. Schools tend to teach us the foundation of intellectual and physical independence. Unless you had really spectacular parents, there isn’t anyone that will teach you about emotional independence, which is the most important and difficult part of independence in a romantic relationship.
Haley climbs out of the dependency hole with a ladder of pain and some self-help books
Before we met, my now girlfriend Haley was in a very unhealthy relationship that she eventually broke off after finally realizing how incredibly toxic it was. In the following months, she focused on developing her personal independence by reading self-help books and reorganizing her values. For her, one of the most challenging steps was to realize that she was codependent on her best friend. Whenever something difficult happened in her life, she would run to this friend for advice and to feel better about herself — and her best friend would do the same with her problems. Sounds like pretty typical female behavior, right?
By making this a routine, Haley became reliant on external validation and approval rather than her own internal strength and independence. This type of friendship weakened her — as it inevitably does to all other people in similar scenarios. She received short-term validation and help with her negative emotions, but became less and less able to deal with these emotions on her own, making her more and more reliant on others to thwart negative feelings.
Luckily, Haley is a wicked smart person, and she recognized where she was selling herself short and damaging her independence. By the time she asked to be my girlfriend, she had already made huge strides in her quest for independence and had a foundation in place to continue working on her weaker areas. I am thrilled to help her grow and continue to push her to be less dependent on validation from me and others, such as co-workers. Any guy truly interested in a healthy relationship finds it damn hot when a woman not only can take care of her own shit but can do it with ease.
Of course, I’m always there when something is really bugging her (I’m 100% confident Haley will back me up on this one), and we continue to work on a healthy balance of working through problems on our own and going to the other for support. In just over a year and a half, Haley went from nuclear-waste-level-toxic romantic and platonic relationships and low self-esteem to kick-ass confidence at work, including multiple raises/promotions, and a commitment to a healthy relationship.
Sean reattaches his spine and discovers that it does, in fact, help to acknowledge your feelings
I also went through a period of growth months before we started dating, although it played out very differently. I grew my emotional intelligence, learned to connect more intimately with people, and more accurately assessed my value as a dateable guy.
Just because I had never had a relationship before and had no experience with sex didn’t mean I couldn’t be attractive and learn how to grow into a kick-ass boyfriend. By looking honestly at myself, I realized that although I was frustrated that the women I was interested in were never interested in me back, I had never made it clear to them that I had an interest and never had the courage to simply ask one on a date.
I was coasting along, hoping that something would just fall into my lap. I thought that by being passive and noncommittal, I could avoid the pain and knock to my ego brought on by rejection. As I grew, I learned to respect myself and my time. I acknowledged that if I wanted to accomplish my goal of having an exciting dating relationship — like any other goal — I would need to be proactive and take a hard-working approach.
Secondly, as is often acknowledged by personal development authors and marriage counselors/psychologists, including Bell Hooks in her overly feminist but otherwise well-written book All About Love, men have been historically awful at being in touch with their feelings and unwilling to discuss their thoughts and emotions. I myself was woefully inept through my college years. I can’t recall a time that I ever shared anything close to my true emotions with anyone until the summer after my junior year of college.
Luckily for me, I developed a close friendship with my friend Ann, who became the first person to ever really push me hard to think about and share my feelings and not accept any bullshit, cop-out answers. After numerous uncomfortable conversations where I floundered to talk about my emotions and felt like a total idiot, I finally started to get it. I could recognize both my thoughts and feelings and put them together to create the full picture of who I had been and who I wanted to become. And I was finally comfortable enough to share this and not suck (as much) at talking about myself.
Keeping a good thing good
Growing my self-esteem and my emotional intelligence were huge steps for me. When Haley and I started dating, we were both at a place of relatively high independence. Yet to this day, we still work consciously on continuing to become more and more independent.
We practice rejection, we spend time apart even when we could be hanging out together, and we push the other to create solutions to our problems on our own before depending on the other for help. Usually I drive when we go somewhere, but I’ll occasionally ask Haley to drive to show her that I trust her behind the wheel and help her maintain physical independence. When I get quiet and stop sharing my feelings during a conversation, Haley politely reminds me to pull my weight and share my emotions like a man.
Practice and repetition are key to not only developing physical, emotional, and intellectual independence, but also to maintaining it once you have reached a high level of independence.
Love Yourz(elf) and G.O.M.D. (Get out measly dependencies)
So why do we still put so much effort into our independence when we know we can rely on each other for help in the areas that we struggle? Why work on your independence at all if you can just crutch on the person you are dating to complete you and give support when you need it?
First off, you don’t have time to spend on someone else if you are a mess yourself. If you do spend your time trying to care about someone when you don’t have your own ducks in a row, I guarantee there is some kind of unhealthy, dependent relationship going on. Your independence, self-esteem, and happiness are going to be determined by your partner’s mood and how they treat you in every small interaction.
If you want to be properly care about someone else, you need to care about yourself first. Cliché much? Turns out that basically everyone who has ever studied or written about love has concluded that you need self-love before you can truly love someone else.
What’s more, a higher level of independence means a larger capacity to love. Haley and I have both seen this play out radically in our lives, where there is a direct correlation between independence and our ability to love the other. Independence allows us to love and be loved more fully because it can completely be a choice rather than a situational requirement for our self-worth.
If we can handle the little stuff that bothers us or causes small struggles, we can connect on a far deeper level and spend more time on the interesting things. With the prerequisite of independence handled on our own, we can spend our time and energy together on interdependence — on creating more love and happiness together than we can individually.
We certainly still lean on each other for the tougher things. We will never turn the other away when they want to talk about something, big or small. And of course we don’t do everything equally or constantly critique our struggles — we play to our strengths and allow for some mistakes. But we also practice our weaknesses and work on our independence, which makes all the difference in our ability to enjoy a healthy relationship.