leaning in relationships

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Wilburforce, I think your rather rigidl definition of equal partnership and what's "healthy" is missing the point.

There IS "healthy" leaning as long as it's mutual, takes turns, one person's strength takes up where the other person lack AND VICE VERSA.

What's "healthy" is when two flawed people can help each other deal with life better in healthy ways because each person brings different strengths to the whole.

That is actually a healthy relationship and what most people do. I don't know many people at all who are both just completely, utterly stoic and perfect in every way so that they don't need anything from anyone, not even each other.

But I do know TONS of couples who are made up of deficits and together they make a stronger whole, because they compliment each other in a healthy balanced way.

EVERY human being is flawed. EVERY human being struggles with not always being the perfectly stable person or strong person and that's where we all have to balance each other out.

The partnership you seem to be talking about seems to involve androids.......

I don't think a disability means someone can never have a healthy relationship. I think this is more about people in relationships being excessively dependent on each other.

If someone had a disability and couldn't work but helped around the house where able, and had their own coping mechanisms for things like depression, I don't see how that's a problem. Even if they couldn't do housework there would be other things they could help with or do to busy themselves beyond something like being online all day. They can still add to a relationship and their partner will have traits that aren't ideal too.

In other relationships, people seem dependent on each other to know what to do with themselves, define who they are, and cheer them up absolutely any time they're down. Without that other person, they're helpless.

People in relationships naturally turn to each other to help them and share, they just need to be turning to the relationship as a nice addition to life and a partnership, not a way to get themselves and their problems taken care of. Most people do lean on their spouses in a sense, as those are the people they're possibly sharing a home, bills, and even children with who know them well. If something happens, they're in the best position to help.

It's kind of hard to summarize it. The use of "partnership", "benefits" and "get something out of it" all is indicative of a NT-perspective on relationships. It all sounds like a business transaction that is signed with regular sex. We are supposed to mass-date people in order to find somebody we share interests with (and one suspects, somebody that matches the "equal partner" criteria). Then the story goes, we start having sex in order to attach. Nothing wrong with it if you are constructed that way, but none of this is really for me. I like to start with a crush on somebody I don't know, and then attach while still not knowing much about them. Then I expect them to be kind of clingy and leaning because if they are not, then they are not attached enough. I cannot regulate attachment with sex, so for me it is important that attachment has built-up in other ways (mostly with obsessing), and being clingy is a sign of that.

I agree with you Sweetleaf, that's my belief too -- I don't believe it's unhealthy to be better off as couple than either party would be alone. That's pretty much the story of every couple I have ever known. You can bet your boots both parties couldn't have half of what they have together, alone, and that goes not just for material circumstances (men just as much as women) but also mutual emotional health.

The H model suggests to me, too, people who don't even really need each other in any way at all. I don't think there are any true, genuine "H" situations in the whole of life, really.