Independence and Dependence
Relationships are always a tricky balance of compromise and one of the more thorny subjects for me is social independence. Whilst of course it’s essential that you can go out and have fun as a couple and with your friends, I also think it’s crucial to have some social life outside the relationship.
The French Ex would have been delighted if we never saw anyone but each other ever again. I felt suffocated by this endless togetherness and missed my friends and my independence.
About once a month (after protracted painful negotiations) I was allowed out with the girls and I felt liberated. We talked rot, drank wine and laughed. The flip side was that he felt vulnerable and threatened by me doing so. All the reassurance in the world couldn’t convince him that a) I was faithful and b) there are few things less attractive to men than a group of loud, pissed women telling raucous stories. Inevitably, my desire for independence won and we split up.
English Ex was the opposite - to my great delight he was not only happy for me to continue seeing my friends, but encouraged it. He too had lots of friends, parties and things to do. We pursued our (mostly independent) social lives with single-minded singleton vigour, and though we lived together, we only saw each other at a party over the weekend and then on Monday or Tuesday evenings, both tired and slightly grumpy. Inevitably (isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing? It didn’t seem inevitable at the time), we lost our way. An excess of independence took over from our sense of inter-dependence, of being a team, of being together.
Perhaps my striving for independence is related to my unintentional commitment-phobia and my dislike of feeling vulnerable and exposed. Maybe.
Tall Tom and I are trying to strike a careful balance. He works so hard during the week that social life is out and at weekends also wants to see his friends. Part of me thinks it’ll be easier when we get to the stage of being able to mix seeing friends with seeing each other, but then I remember that that’s the mistake I made with English Ex. Dedicated time together is essential. So diary management, unromantic as it sounds, seems like the way forward at the moment. Oh, and a lot of cycling - he lives on the far side of London to me.
