I was a teenager in the 90s, the era of R&B. One of my favourite songs from that time is Back in One Piece by Aaliyah and DMX. R&B songs are often about love. This song is about DMX needing his freedom, while always coming back to Aaliyah at the end of the day. And even though they never explicitly talk about it, the exact same thing naturally applies to Aaliyah. Giving each other freedom in a relationship can feel very scary because you never really know what the other person is doing when you're not around. To reduce those fears, it can be very tempting to create rules and boundaries for one another. It may seem as if that gives you more certainty and safety.
But does it really? For the other person, these kinds of agreements can quickly start to feel suffocating. An unintended reaction may be that they begin fighting harder for their freedom and perhaps even start doing the very things you've forbidden them to do. But the opposite can happen as well. You may try so hard to meet all of your partner's expectations that you become constantly afraid of making mistakes and slowly lose your enjoyment of life. And perhaps you're forbidding your partner from doing things that you would secretly like to do yourself. Do you still allow yourself to do those things? Or do you start limiting yourself as well?
Relationships work best when you give each other freedom: the freedom to be who you are. As DMX raps: “If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was.” Trying to manage your partner and deciding what is and isn't allowed in a relationship will eventually make the other person feel trapped.
You don’t need to the love of your life how they are supposed to behave, that they should be faithful and loyal, or how to treat you with respect. Most people know the difference between right and wrong, even if they sometimes pretend they don't. Rules and demands don't only create stress for your partner; in the long run, they won't work for you either. Because will your partner actually follow your rules? How will you keep track of that? And what will you do if you discover that your partner sees things very differently?
You might think: Sure, but our ideas about loyalty and faithfulness may be different. And that's true, they might be. It's important to talk about these things and discover whether you're truly compatible. Communication is extremely important. You can't read each other's minds. And people can also learn from one another. So if someone thinks differently from you at first, that can change over time. But your partner won't change because you demand it. People only change when they genuinely want to. What you really want is to discover who your partner truly is, without your pressure, without your demands and without your boundaries. Only then can you decide whether this is the person you want to give your heart to. Because do you want someone you have to force into becoming the person who makes you happy? Or do you want someone who does his best to be that person?
Marloes Spaander is a therapist with a background in social work and many years of experience teaching Critical Thinking. She now uses that experience to help people recognize and break free from unhelpful thinking patterns, create more space for calmness, trust and mental freedom. Marloes makes complex psychological processes easy to understand through stories, metaphors and personal experiences.
She offers online therapy for:
- Improving self-image and self-confidence
- Retroactive Jealousy OCD (RJOCD)
- Relationship OCD (ROCD)
- Relationship therapy
- Online stress
- Climate anxiety
