The non-independence of relationships

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I have been working with people in dyads (that’s the way some psychologists talk about it now) for many years. I have found myself in several dyads. I am in a dyad now. I have studied dyads. I have studied people who have studied dyads. I have read books on dyadic data analysis.

In dyadic work people use the term “non-independence”. What they mean is that no matter how much any individual feels like he or she is alone in a relationship, nothing about it is truly independent of the other person in that relationship. If you are feeling lonely, that relates to your partner. If you are feeling excited, that relates to your partner. If you are feeling blah, blue, or blatto, that relates to your partner.

You say, “C’mon, not EVERYTHING relates to my partner. Where is individual responsibility and my individual sense of self? After all, I am not my partner. There are two individuals in this.”

I agree. There are two individuals, and each person has his or her own, subjective experience of being in the relationship. One person likes white towels and the other one likes blue towels. One person likes single-sheet toilet paper and the other likes doubles. One person likes vegetables, and the other doesn’t. One person likes rock and the other likes rap (now THAT combination won’t dance!).

No two people are identical; so, there will be difference in any relationship because each has his or her own, unique experience of self.

The meaning of “experience of self” can be appreciated in the question, “What is it like to be you right now?” The self is continually forming, and it emerges from the contact of the person in his or her environment. As David Mann wrote in ‘Gestalt Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques’: “Our selves emerge in the act of reaching out to our world at our respective contact boundaries in the present in an ongoing, ever-changing dynamic process.”

Self can consist of raw sensation, primitive need, and the pre-reflective sense of being situated. It also includes intentional awareness, which is the comprehension of the aboutness of one’s experience, purpose, and choice that all come from identification with one’s place in the situation as an individual. Self can also consist of the story one tells oneself about who he or she is, that is, what kind of a person he or she could be, and this is a result of reflection on the residue of experience. Frank Steammler, in an award-winning book from Germany, ‘Empathy in Psychotherapy: How Therapists and Clients Understand Each Other’, claimed that self forms through contact with that which is other and so is an intersubjective process.

The fact that people have subjective experience does not mean that people are not affected by one another. Psychologists and philosophers call that mutual influence “intersubjectivity”. So, intersubjectivity is one technical term and non-independence is another. What it all boils down to is the fact that when two people are in a relationship, whatever is going on is never just about one or the other. It is not his “fault”. It is not hers. If there is an argument and someone throws a pot at the other, the other has a part in that throwing. If one of them has an affair, there is a part in it that the “innocent” party has been playing. This is not to suggest that guilty people are not guilty or that the “victim” asks for it (whatever the offensive behaviour has been). It is to say that if you want to understand what is going on in the situation two people find themselves in, you have to approach it as an intersubjective, non-independent process.

I think one of the most difficult challenges God put at the doorstep of humanity is His purposeful use of intersubjectivity. He said in the Bible, for instance, that the marriage relationship is a picture of Christ’s relationship to the church. God is a being who knows relationship at the core of HIS being. He is the three-in-one. Some people think God created people so that He could have a relationship and not be alone. Wrong. There never was a time in which God was alone. Instead, though, he made human beings in His image, and he made us for relationship according to His nature as a loving being. The Bible says that God created humanity as male and female; we were designed for relationship from the ground up.

So, consider what an act of cowardice it was for Adam, after he and Eve had eaten of the apple, to complain to God, “The woman you gave me gave it to me.” Like, right. My sin is your fault, God. (Good luck with that one.) The intersubjectivity, the non-independence in that situation requires that Adam had a part in Eve’s experience. Adam had a part in her experience, and Eve had a part in his. They were in relationship. They were in that situation together, and that is the way it has been ever since for every couple, every “dyad” in which people might find themselves. It is a co-created experience, a co-created relationship, a co-created life. The two become one flesh. That is what one flesh actually means. They are joined in an intersubjective dynamic of mutual influence.

When I meet with people who come for couples counselling, I don’t lead with the Bible, but I know what is going on nonetheless. There has been a breakdown in the model, and the intersubjectivity has darkened. Instead of facing one another and enjoying one another, someone has begun to turn inward and contemplate his or her individuality. Someone has begun to say, “I don’t want this,” “This is not good for me,” or “I want something else instead.”

While “non-independence” doesn’t seem all that sexy and “intersubjectivity” likely seems too esoteric, sometimes it is useful to realise that if you are not happy with your partner, it likely has something to do with yourself.

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