Are You in a Symbiotic Relationship?

In the 1970s, Aaron and Jacqui Schiff defined symbiosis as a phenomenon where two or more people behave as if they were one person, writes psychologist and psychotherapist Elma Omersoftić for the portal Living.

In a psychological sense, symbiosis is a term most often used by Transactional Analysis to explain unhealthy relationships that prevent an individual from fulfilling their full potential in life and living authentically.

Symbiotic relationships can be recognized in various forms: in relationships between parents and children, spouses, partners, friends, etc.

How to Recognize Symbiosis?
If you have ever experienced in a relationship with another person that you neglected your own needs, while at the same time making decisions and excessively worrying about the other person's life, and the other person in the relationship passively allowed you to lead them through life, neglecting their own capacities, it is possible that you were or still are in a symbiotic relationship.

Symbiosis can only be called healthy in the relationship between a mother and child while the child is at an age when they are unable to care for themselves, or when one person in the relationship currently lacks the resources to care for themselves (e.g., illness).

An example of symbiosis in our culture is the prolonged psychological attachment of children to parents, characterized by separation problems and the passivity of the adult (e.g., around 30 years of age) in terms of not making decisions independently or taking responsibility for their actions, continuously relying on the support and opinion of their parents.

We witness such symbiosis in parent-child relationships even after marriage, when these behavioral patterns continue and begin to affect the joint life of two people.

A symbiotic scenario can also occur in a partnership – when one person in the relationship makes life decisions for both, and the other adapts. This would mean that one of the partners takes on the role of parent and adult in the relationship, and the other person adapts and takes on the role of child. Such a relationship prevents partners from using all parts of their personality. For example, the person who decides like a parent may feel a great burden and forget their own needs to cry sometimes, to feel helpless, and to make mistakes, while the person who adapts may forget that they possess the capacity to decide, to get angry, and to feel all the advantages of a mature personality. The partner who adapts in the relationship uses passive behaviors to invite the other partner to take care of them.

Symbiotic relationships can have long-term consequences for an individual's physical and mental health in terms of low mood, feelings of hopelessness or being 'stuck', low self-esteem, psychosomatic illnesses, anxiety, various irrational fears, difficulties in establishing social contacts, etc.

How to Get Out of a Symbiotic Relationship?

1. Initially, it is important to change the attitude that exiting symbiosis means disaster and necessarily means breaking contact between people in a symbiotic relationship. On the contrary, exiting symbiosis helps each person in the relationship to better understand their personality, expand their social contacts, and thereby increase life experience and self-esteem.

2. The second step is to gain insight into the causes of symbiosis, which are a consequence of certain prohibitions in childhood (discussed in the previous column) such as the prohibition on growing up or the prohibition on one's own thoughts or emotions.

3. It is important to consider what your needs are in the relationship and to openly share them with your partner, parent, or friend. Do not forget that anger is a normal emotion in a healthy close relationship, and anger will be necessary for you to get out of a symbiotic relationship.

4. If you are the person in the symbiosis who takes care of and decides everything, consider whether you have perhaps dismissed the capacities of the other person in the relationship and whether you should delegate some responsibilities to them (e.g., organizing trips, paying bills) and consider what needs your 'inner child' would gladly fulfill for itself, but you don't have time due to taking on too many obligations.

5. If you are the person in the relationship who excessively gives in and adapts, start taking responsibility to let the other person know that you are an adult personality.

6. Start thinking that it is perfectly okay to be in a relationship and be different.