The partner we keep a stranger

We can give a great deal in a relationship and remain deeply centered on ourselves.

We offer attention, a gift or a meal. Yet behind these gestures, the partner can continue to occupy a single function: producing our happiness.

The problem therefore does not lie only in what we give. It also lies in the place our partner occupies in our reasoning.

The genie of the lamp

We rarely enter a relationship empty-handed. We arrive with our dreams, our wounds and the image of what love should bring us.

We want to be listened to, desired, supported and reassured. We sometimes want a family, security or someone who helps us forget an old suffering.

Without realizing it, we then entrust the partner with the role of the genie of the lamp.

Their mission becomes to fulfill our wishes, repair what others have broken and remain available when we need love.

Of course, we also do things for them. But are we really seeking their happiness, or are we above all maintaining the person from whom we expect our own?

A person can offer a few joys while demanding permanent availability. Their gesture looks like a gift, but works like a secret investment.

Influencing is not using

Every relationship contains influence.

When we offer a gift, we hope to stir an emotion. When we value our partner, we want them to feel their worth. In intimacy, we also seek to give them pleasure.

This influence remains benevolent when our partner's happiness has value in itself and their freedom remains complete.

It becomes instrumentalization when their joy serves above all as a button we press.

Preparing their favorite meal to please them does not have the same meaning as preparing it only to obtain an agreement. In both cases, we hope for an effect. In the second, our partner becomes a means.

Hoping for reciprocity does not automatically taint the gesture. The question is more precise: if our partner does not give exactly what we expected, does what we offered them keep its value?

If the answer is always no, perhaps we were not giving. We were negotiating in silence.

Selfishness begins when our interest becomes the only center

Thinking of oneself is necessary. We have a body, needs, projects and a dignity that do not disappear in a couple.

Relational selfishness begins when our interest becomes the only center and our partner serves above all to satisfy it.

Their expectations count less because they are not ours. Their emotions seem excessive because we do not feel them. Their projects become secondary because they interrupt ours.

The partner tells us about an important project. We listen without seeking what it represents. They tell us that a behavior hurts them. We answer that this behavior would not have hurt us.

Our partner's world remains foreign not because it is unknown, but because it changes nothing.

Difference does not authorize indifference

"You have your way of seeing things and I have mine."

The sentence is true. The partner is not our copy.

But difference sometimes becomes an elegant excuse for learning nothing.

We are not obliged to be passionate about their project in order to take an interest in the joy it brings them. We do not have to feel their wound the same way in order to recognize that it exists.

Understanding means neither approving every request nor adopting all their priorities. It means accepting that a shared decision cannot treat their world as if it did not count.

Complementarity is built when what we do not spontaneously share still receives a place in the couple.

Understanding a pleasure that is not ours

We can dislike an activity and understand that it nourishes our partner. Their interest does not become a whim merely because it does not awaken the same thing in us. Attention to our partner's world sometimes begins with this recognition.

Let us imagine that an artistic project brings them pride, while we see in it only an expenditure of time. We can seek what they find in it, then discuss the means and commitments involved. Understanding the function does not oblige us to accept every cost. It only prevents us from judging the effort as if it produced nothing.

Reciprocity also requires that our own world be heard. A place given to our partner does not mean that their preferences automatically dominate ours. We seek an organization in which both existences remain visible.

The partner then ceases to be a useful stranger: we no longer know them only by what they provide us. We learn what makes them live, so that our way of building does not use their presence while ignoring their life.

Bringing our partner into our reasoning

Bringing the partner into our reasoning does not mean handing over to them the government of our life.

It means that their existence really modifies certain decisions.

Before choosing, we ask what this choice will make them live through. Before refusing, we seek what their request represents. Before demanding an effort, we look at the value we bring.

The partner remains a distinct person. Their happiness simply enters into the shared project.

This is perhaps where the "we" begins: when the good of one, the good of our partner and that of the couple can be consulted in the same decision.

Thinking of oneself is not thinking only of oneself

This distinction also prevents an injustice.

When a person has long forgotten themselves, their recentering can look like selfishness. They protect their time, refuse certain sacrifices and no longer respond immediately to every request.

Let us look at what came before.

Perhaps they watched over the couple until they discovered that no one was watching over them. What we call selfishness is sometimes a person who remembers that they exist.

Caring for oneself without erasing oneself is not caring only for oneself.

A lasting relationship requires real value for each person. This value does not necessarily return in the same form. Reciprocity is not accounting, but a visible circulation.

Giving more is therefore not always loving better.

We must understand what does our partner good, let their world influence ours and check that two people really find a place in the logic of the couple.

Does their world enter into my reasoning?

What do I expect from my partner without looking at their world?

Which gift still hides a silent negotiation?

Which request have I set aside because I did not feel it?

Which choice could integrate their good without erasing mine?

Is my partner a person or a function in my reasoning?