Me vs. Us

Balancing personal needs with relationship commitment.

Commitment to a long-term relationship depends on both partners believing that they strive for the same things in life. Do they have the same ambitions? Do they plan for the same future? Do they agree on how they distribute their common resources? Do they focus on the same ideals and how they will be achieved?

When the relationship is new and love is in abundance, many couples are often aware that all those questions may not have perfect long-term answers, but feel confident that they can be resolved if and when they arise. Even when there are clear warning signs, they continue to believe that their initial commitments and mutual dreams will stand the test of time and major changes are not necessary to address up front.

In working with couples now for close to a half-century, I have often witnessed some of the most problematic areas that emerge as a relationship matures. Most of them were present from the beginning, but ignored or not as threatening compared to the joy of the new relationship. Others emerged unpredictably as one or both partners' needs and desires transformed as part of their natural evolution.

Though every couple is unique in their own ways, all seem to share the following six areas that are most likely to emerge over time. If they are seen as simply new differences that must be negotiated and compromised, the partners have the chance to create a transformative process and a good outcome. If, on the other hand, either partner perceives them as too limiting to endure, the relationship can fall apart. Time is of the essence.

Area 1: Unequal Appetites

When a couple is in the throes of new devotion, the partners are each other’s top priority. Members of their social circle tend to fall away, hobbies may wane, and personal desires take a back seat for a while.

As the relationship matures, suppressed differences are likely to emerge. One partner may like just a few, close relationships while the other thrives on large social and family groups. Sexual appetites that seemed perfectly matched now sort out differently. Outside interests pushed aside, reemerge as more important and may not be equally shared by both partners.

As these differences in priority become more omnipresent, it is crucial for the partners to negotiate how to deal with those imbalances, so that both feel represented and supported.

Area 2: Security Versus Risk

New love is very now-centered. The future is a fantasy of forever wonderful, and the past has not yet interfered. Both partners are risking whatever they held onto before they were together in favor of what feeds the passion and joy of their new togetherness.

Over time, one partner may seek the security of an actualized future, and want to invest in that direction, while the other is fine with just living in the now. Whether it be the need for commitment, the planning of future investments, or how to distribute the relationship’s common resources of money, time, availability, energy, and options, a widening difference emerges in the way they each want the relationship to go.

Area 3: Emergence of Buried Desires

Because of the total dedication of a new love, the partners experiencing it often suppress what they had intended to do with their lives before they met each other in favor of devoting all of their resources to the new partnership.

As they get to know each other better, they may find out that some of those dreams and personal commitments are not only hard to balance, but may even be mutually exclusive.

In great long-term relationships, both partners want the best for the other even if it means losing one another in the process. It is the essence of true devotion. But, because of their genuine love and support of each other, they do everything they can first to hold both freedom and commitment as equally sacred to keep the relationship together.

Area 4: Loss of Attunement

New lovers seem to feel that they live in each other’s hearts and minds and do or say those things that communicate that tuning in before any decisions are made.

If they utter a harsh word, they feel the other’s pain at the same time. If they share something that might threaten, they know that it might before they say it and let their partner know they care.

If that attunement falters, partners will begin talking at each other rather than to each other and feel the distance between them grow more damaging.

Area 5: Parallel or a Team

New partners work in unison. They constantly take the other into account before they make any decisions that might affect their relationship.

As they bring their relationship into the rest of their individual worlds, they can easily slip into committing to outside interests that dissolve their commitment to the relationship as that team. They can forget that they owe each other agreement on how to distribute their time and energy so that the relationship still is their common go-to place to regenerate and plan their mutual lives together. Parallel is not hurtful if it does not replace prioritizing intimacy.

Area 6: Uneven Evolution

The partners in any relationship do not grow or change in the same way, at the same time, or in predictable ways. What may be perfectly acceptable at one time to one partner can begin to feel entrapping if an old yearning resurfaces or a new one materializes.

Yet, relationships are living entities. As such, they must evolve or they will decay. If either partner feels a sense of same-old, same-old, the other must awaken to that change even if they do not feel it yet, themselves.

If one person begins to grow and change, and the other resists, the relationship will become strained. It is crucial that neither partner diminish what is happening to the other, but strive to negotiate the new imbalance together.

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