When thinking of independency, I feel a certain tension that pulls at two parts of me. There is the feminist who knows that I am an independent woman, who works hard on her own and knows and believes whole-heartedly that I am capable to do things on my own. Then there is the side that is in love with my boyfriend, who believes that dependency is a healthy way to be in a relationship; but dependency needs to have a healthy limit. When I was single, I tried my best to make it known to that I was independent. Mostly because I had no one to be dependent on. Then when I started dating Owen, I found someone I could depend on. The longing for someone to be there for me physically and to understand what I was going through—no matter what—was found through my boyfriend.
Over time we found that there was almost an unhealthy amount of dependency through our relationship. We imagined that it could happen to any couple. There is a beautiful, honeymoon phase where you just want to spend with each other and really build a solid foundation of communication and trust. But then we found a fault of our relationship. Nothing to end it over, but we realized that although we gladly leaned on each other that didn’t mean that is what we needed. Upon seeing our situation we committed to finding out solution. Through prayer and mediation with God about what our next step was, we found that we needed to find our independence once again.
It has been gradual and has included multiple steps unique in each way but we have found our independence again. Here is a short list of things that we decided to do or that happened to help us find our independence:
- Spending less time together: Although hard when you only want to spend time with someone who understands you the most, spending time doing the things you love alone or even just without your significant other can allow you to remember and be true to what you love. The time that we didn’t spend together we spent in our own devotion or in the dedication to do the things we love.
- Spending more time with our individual friends: In relationships it is inevitable that you have the same friends and you end up hanging out with them together all the time, but it is important that you guys have friends that you see individually. Those friends you will be able to hang out and spend time with them outside of each other. Those friends will help you be who you want to be and remind you what you love and remind you that you can have fun without your significant other (trust me, that is actually okay!).
- Doing what each other loves: When in a relationship you guys already do what you love, most of the time it is a compromise. After working on things separately it is important to show the results to each other and be able to share with each other the re-found loves. The commitment to do and learn to see and like what the other loves, showing that effort and committing to no compromise days of what one person wants allows you to be independent and show the things you love.
This thing I would not recommend to couples because it really sucks but to be honest it played a huge role in our independence…
4.Long distance: My boyfriend felt God pulling him to stay in our college town in Washington while I went to our hometown in California. Over all this summer we will be separated for a total of eight or nine weeks. Although this is nothing compared to other couples I know, this really helped us fill our time obviously with each other. On top of that, that time apart allowed us to be apart and see how much we love each other and appreciate the time we got to spend with each other and the time we will spend with each other.
Through these small things we decided, or even the things that fell upon us, we were able to find independence in our relationship. We found independence was really important to us because through the years we want to be able to still be ourselves and love each other more because of our independence and the things we love individually. Our independence is key to why we love each other and why our relationship is healthy. Just like there is an unhealthy amount of dependency there is also an unhealthy amount of independency for each couple. Working on finding each couple's balance is a part of the hard work that comes with relationship. Being independent is important in relationships because then you are able to still be who you are and love what you will be doing for the rest of your life and enjoy who we are as individuals for the same amount of time.
