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You know that you have great difficulty being alone. If your partner is not there, you would prefer to be kept informed throughout the day. You want to know what he or she does, where it happens and with whom exactly. Without realizing it, you constantly show that you don’t like it when he or she does something with others.
While you may feel that you are only showing that you care about your partner, this demanding behavior can also rub the other person the wrong way. In fact, other people may also find it disturbing if they are not ‘allowed’ to spend time with your partner.
The result? A lot of friction with the people you love so much. We also call this strong degree of dependency a symbiotic relationship and chances are you’ve never heard of it. Reason enough to tell you more about it.
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What is symbiotic relationship?
A symbiotic relationship involves above-average involvement and dependence between two or more people. This symbiotic dependency is mainly seen in love relationships and parent-child relationships, but it can also occur among friends.
Between lovers
In the beginning of the relationship, you are always together. You want nothing more than to be with your partner day and night, even neglect your friendships (temporarily) and only have eyes for your partner. So actually a bit like a little baby who only focuses on his or her mother.
Parent-child
because we also see this dependency between a parent and child and for that we have to go back to the relationship between a mother and baby. The baby is completely dependent on the mother when it comes to nutrition, protection and care. Yet the mother in turn is completely independent.
What is the cause?
The term symbiotic relationship is often seen in developmental psychology and when we look at it again, we see that the first relationships already develop during childhood. As a baby, you are nothing more than one with your immediate environment. After all, you do not yet know that you have your own personality. That awareness only comes later, for example when you are able to say your first words.
You increasingly disconnect from your mother and this can even lead to rebellious behavior when you are a teenager. However, it is possible that even as a teenager you still fully rely on your parents. It is often during this phase that the symbiotic dependency will or will not play a role in your further life. In the worst case, this manifests itself in a symbiotic relationship with your partner.
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Symptoms/characteristics
We already talked about how in the beginning of a relationship you have eyes for no one else but your partner. However, most people will be able to tell you that this will come to an end sooner or later. When the infatuation phase turns into a steady relationship, from being in love to loving , you will notice that there will gradually be more distance between the two of you.
You pick up your daily routine again and try to polish up the neglected friendships. If all goes well, you go to the movies with your friends again or dive into the pub together as usual. In healthy relationships, this is completely normal. You are both unique individuals and it is therefore only normal that you also do your own things.
In an (unhealthy) symbiotic relationship, the degree of independence is disturbed. In fact, there is a disturbance between giving and taking. In the worst feeling, this can lead to complete dependence on one of the partners. In this way, you think for the other and you do not know where your own boundaries are. If the other is not around for a while, you feel torn, empty, and helpless.
Okay, we may be exaggerating a bit, but the point we want to make is that the other person is responsible for your happiness in life. And that’s not okay.
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Implications
The result is that what should be a normal relationship increasingly turns into an unhealthy symbiotic relationship. In a love relationship, you recognize this by the constant need for everything to revolve around the two of you. If other people are involved, it gnaws at you and you show that too.
Without the other person you cannot be yourself and in the worst case this leads to a feeling of jealousy . Because of jealousy you constantly try to ‘claim’ your partner and this is usually not appreciated by your loved one’s social circle.
The result? That there are confrontations with your partner’s relationships and therefore also with your partner. We often see that people in these kinds of unhealthy relationships even ignore or forget their own happiness. Everything revolves around the other.
Solutions
Everything that is unhealthy must be healed as quickly as possible, that is common knowledge. In this case, that means that you need to move from an unhealthy relationship to a healthy symbiotic relationship as quickly as possible. How can you ensure this?
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Agreements among each other
Every healthy relationship involves awareness and understanding. In the most favorable case, you make agreements that both partners feel comfortable with. The distortion between give and take that we talked about above is being corrected again. After all, in a relationship you have to give and take and if all goes well, this happens to the same extent.
It is therefore crucial that both partners realize that you are both individuals with your own activities, social contacts and personal goals. If you want to continue with each other in the long term, it is important to give each other enough space to be yourself.
Expert help
Have you sat together at the table often enough and has it even led to serious arguments? Then it might be a good idea to call in a third party for expert help. And although we know how annoying it is for you to involve a third party in your relationship, we would still like to urge you to do so.
A relationship therapist can really help, because in an unhealthy symbiotic relationship we are talking about a serious problem. Explore together how you can balance the relationship .
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Striving for a healthy (symbiotic) relationship
Ultimately, you do this with one goal in mind: a healthy relationship . This relationship can still be symbiotic, as long as it is healthy. What do we mean by that? You may know each other so well by now that you can finish each other’s sentences. Although that may be a somewhat sweet example, in our opinion it is the ultimate example of a symbiotic relationship. Because yes, you can depend on each other, and yes, you want to spend as much time together as possible, but also make sure that you can let each other go every now and then.
Let your partner go out for a weekend with his friends and don’t forget your own social contacts. Make sure that these kinds of things are possible and over time you will notice that you can grow old together.
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