Adapting Versus Over-Adapting in a Relationship
116. Adapting Versus Over-Adapting in a Relationship
Do you wonder what the right balance is between being tolerant, adapting to the other and over-adapting?
Or what the difference is between making compromises and romantic over-adaptation?
Or have you already asked yourself whether it’s good to change for the other person or the relationship?
In short, you wonder what level of indulgence is healthy for the couple?
This difference can be particularly hard to identify if you suffer from emotional dependency.
In this episode, with the perspective of the 600 people I’ve accompanied, I’m going to try to give you the keys to know whether you are adapting or over-adapting in a relationship.
Adapting Helps You Develop Your Team Spirit
If you start from the principle that you are a team with your partner working toward a shared vision, you can understand that having a certain tolerance, a certain flexibility, can help toward the common goal of building a beautiful, fulfilling relationship. In this first case, adapting is positive for the couple and an opportunity to develop your team spirit. For example:
- If your partner is always late, does making a scene every single time he is late help build your relationship, or is giving him a meeting time 15 minutes earlier, taking his usual lateness into account, a more constructive adaptation for the couple?
- Is adapting your timing for getting married or having children to your partner’s a better choice than forcing it through at the risk that your partner regrets it afterwards?
- Is leaving your place of residence to move to your partner’s city too much of a sacrifice?
The answer can’t be generic, it depends on the history of the relationship, on the reciprocity in investing in the relationship, on the balance of adaptation on each partner’s side. For this, here are three questions that let you decide whether this adaptation is beneficial for you and the relationship:
- Is this adaptation an invitation to behave differently from my usual bias or to develop my team spirit? For example, if you know you have trouble being tolerant toward yourself or others, developing tolerance toward your partner helps you develop an important quality for forming a good team.
- Are you able to accept the consequences of this adaptation without resentment, and does it help the common goal? For example, if you’re okay with postponing the baby project by 6 months because you want to be an understanding person and you want to let your partner follow his own pace to decide for himself to become a parent, do you fully accept the consequence of waiting these 6 extra months?
- Do you see a balance in risk-taking and adaptation within your couple? If not, what impact can this imbalance have on the relationship in the long run? I talk about this point in more detail in episode 84 on the emotional bank account. For example, if you decide to leave your city to be with your partner, you’re going to give up a job, your circle of friends; is your partner also taking risks to make the relationship work, for example making the effort to move out of his apartment so that you move in together, or has he also adapted for your relationship in the past?
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You Change and Grow Thanks to the Relationship
I often say that the couple is the best personal development tool because it will press exactly where you need to work, for example:
- If your partner asks you to commit and you’re afraid of losing your freedom.
- If your partner reproaches you for not being clear with your friends and you feel controlled.
- If you freak out as soon as your partner goes out because you’re afraid he’ll leave you.
In this case, adapting can also be positive because it’s an opportunity to grow.
So How Do You Know If These Adaptations Really Help You Grow or If You're Over-Adapting and Accepting Something You Don't Want?</
Here is a series of questions that can help you find your answer:
- What is the impact of my behavior on the other?
- What would be the impact on me if my partner did exactly the same thing?
- Is this a reproach I’ve already received in my past romantic or friendship relationships?
- Do I want to evolve in this area?
- If it’s the other’s insecurity, how could I grow here, what level of adaptation would reflect my wish to be an indulgent/supportive partner?
- If it’s your insecurity, what can you do to get past it, and how can sharing with your partner what scares you, what is going on inside you, your intention, help you in this change?
I’ll take the 3 examples I mentioned earlier to illustrate this reasoning.
Let’s start with the example of commitment and the fear of losing your freedom to answer these questions:
- You realize it creates insecurity in your partner,
- If your partner had the same attitude as you, you would doubt his love for you
- You know it’s actually a reproach you’ve received in the past
- You want to evolve in this area
- You notice it’s your personal insecurity because in fact your partner doesn’t deprive you of your freedom, in this case changing for the relationship is an opportunity to grow and you can then reflect on what will help you in this change: understanding your fears, sharing them with your partner, asking him for understanding.
If you take the case where your partner reproaches you for not being clear with your friends:
- You realize it creates panic in your partner
- If your partner had the same attitude, it would be totally okay for you
- You haven’t really received this kind of reproach in the past
- You don’t feel the need to evolve because you don’t see the problem
- You notice it’s more of your partner’s insecurity because in fact you aren’t ambiguous with your friends and your commitment is clear, stopping seeing your friends to reassure your partner would in this case be over-adapting. The level of adaptation that would be okay to be an indulgent/supportive partner would be to reassure her and/or to include her with your friends.
And finally the case where you freak out when your partner goes out:
- You realize your partner feels suffocated
- If your partner had the same attitude, you would feel suffocated too
- You know it’s a reproach you’ve received in the past
- You want to evolve in this area
You know it’s your personal insecurity because your partner’s commitment is clear. In this case changing for the relationship is an opportunity to grow and you can reflect on what will help you in this change: working on your patterns from the past, talking about this insecurity with your partner, for example in episode 67 Internal security versus external security I talk about how you can cultivate more internal security and how your partner can also help you by giving you external security.
When Are You Over-Adapting?
For me there are several criteria that show you are in romantic over-adaptation:
- You don’t take the time to ask yourself what you think about the consequences of the adaptation on you, your well-being, your needs, your limits, on the balance in the relationship.
- You don’t dare to communicate an opinion that is different from the other’s for fear of upsetting him for fear of losing him, which means that your adaptation has the sole purpose of keeping the relationship going and is not in itself a way to grow or to develop your team spirit.
- If this adaptation goes against your values and the projects you want for the couple.
- If this adaptation is one-way, not reciprocal.
- If this adaptation is synonymous with suffering. This is often the case with emotional dependency, I talk about it in episodes 74 Freeing yourself from emotional dependency and 73 the different types of dependency in love.
Find the Origin of Your Need to Over-Adapt
If you tend to over-adapt, there is a reason. This reason comes from your past experiences where you perceived that to be loved you have to give up being yourself, that love is conditional and that it necessarily involves sacrificing yourself.
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Getting Out of Romantic Over-Adaptation
Getting out of romantic over-adaptation is a relearning that will at first require you to go against your natural reflex:
- The first step is to get into the habit of including yourself in the equation of the relationship (I talk about it more in episode 68 Empathy and commitment ) and to ask yourself what you want in this relationship, your needs, your limits, your preferences.
- The second step will require you to learn to communicate your needs to the other person, your limits, your preferences so that the relationship is satisfying for you and to make sure there is a balance in terms of adaptation.
- And finally, once you feel these first two steps are fully acquired and there is a sufficiently solid and healthy foundation in the relationship, look at the adaptations that can be an opportunity for you to grow or to develop your team spirit.
And if you need help with these steps, this is what you learn in the program Opening up to love. You can take the Day of the Past option, a day of Somatic Deprogramming: psycho-corporeal work to deprogram nervous system automatisms and reprogram new relational reflexes.
Sandy Kaufmann
is a somatic therapist and coach, based in Switzerland. She is the author of two books published by Éditions Eyrolles and has accompanied more than 600 people. She is the creator of the Somatic Deprogramming method and hosts the podcast “S’ouvrir à l’amour“, ranked in the French top 50 in the relationships category.
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