What is Your Relationship Model?
Our emotional health and relational health have EVERYTHING to do with each other. We are social creatures; it’s impossible for us to become personally grounded and mature in isolation, and our lack of emotional maturity causes strain on our connections.
As a part of your journey of becoming more emotionally healthy & whole, consider how your relationship dynamics are helping or hindering that.
Here’s a question for you:
If an image or object illustrates what relationship model you have, what would it be?
Determine Your Relationship Model
Here are at least 10 different options (pick 1-2 that most stand out!):
Hub & Spokes - this was my default!
You have a lot of one-on-one friendship connections with others, but you’re not a fan of those "spokes" linking up directly.
You often find yourself controlling or being triangulated in other people's relationships with each other, with you as the middle party or go-between.
Each relationship stands on its own. Since everyone is so different, no two connections feel the same, making comparisons between them pretty much pointless.
Different individuals may nourish different aspects of who you are: there are people with whom to enjoy art, others with whom to pass the time, and yet others with whom to try novel experiences.
The tradeoff for freedom and novelty is entanglement and boundary issues.
Silos/Towers
You keep different parts of your life separate, almost like neatly packed boxes. Each area runs on its own, without much overlap.
What happens in one space - good or bad - doesn't have any impact on another.
People in different areas of your life might not know much about those in other spheres, which makes it easy to regulate (i.e., control or manage) the flow of information, emotional intensity, and your image or reputation.
Those you’re in relationships with might complain about not knowing and/or feeling shut out from some aspects of your life.
This arrangement helps reduce the sense of vulnerability, but also prevents you from being one integrated person as you become many partial versions of you.
Nurturing intimacy is difficult, and the tradeoff for safety is loneliness.
Concentric Circles - Spouse's Default
If your relationship model is Concentric Circles, you have "tiers" of people who have the same kind of access to you depending on what "level" they're in.
There's not a whole lot of focus on individuals within each tier, just the tiers themselves.
You also want people within each tier to get to know each other so that no one is left out. But when people from different tiers mix, it can feel a little off—so you tend to keep things at a level where everyone can easily relate.
Read more about concentric circles of friendship in this post.
You have a natural talent for bringing people together and helping them find common ground. You tend to take on a "role" in these tiers and stand out more than being a belonging member.
The tradeoff for breadth and reach is depth. You know and are known by a lot of people (who can open doors), but only to a certain extent.
People know you more for the position you’re in, less so for who you are as an individual.
Spiderweb - Work Wife's Default
The opposite of Hub & Spokes; you like the interconnection between different relationships (and often like being the one to connect people from different areas of your life - and getting credit for it!).
Your connections flow more freely, and there’s a natural ease in how people interact. But deep down, you still want to be the central thread that ties everyone together.
You’re happy to facilitate bonds, as long as no one ends up closer to each other than they are to you. You want to be the glue that keeps people connected and are scared of possibly being replaced.
Because there’s a focus on other people, it’s easy to lose yourself in the process. Why is it that you want credit for other people’s connections?
The tradeoff for involvement and credit is comparison, jealousy, and insecurity if others foster intimacy that are independent of you.
Dumbbell
You latch onto ONE person—and only one person. This chosen person becomes your EVERYTHING - they’re the source of all of your relational (possibly also emotional) needs.
This dynamic can put a lot of pressure on the other person—sometimes more than they can realistically handle. The other person feels smothered, burdened, or trapped because they are scared you might feel abandoned if they were to pursue other relationships (or just want time to themselves!).
This is often the source of conflict, which gets you to sometimes double down on the overexclusive reliance on the partner until the relationship becomes strained to the point of dissolving.
The tradeoff for not needing to spend effort establishing other connections is an unsustainable overreliance on the connection you have.
Electrons
Your connections with people are ever-changing and fleeting. People come and go (or you come and go).
There’s a lot of excitement, energy, and new connections if this is the type of your relationship model, but not much stability or consistency.
It’s fun, dynamic, and keeps things interesting, but long-term? It’s tough to sustain.
It's hard to tell who's close to you because of the shifting connections. Everyone comes and goes, and there's not a whole lot of attachment to any particular person.
That lack of depth in connections leads to deep loneliness, which might prompt you to further seek fun and light experiences to numb out that feeling (only to find out that it doesn’t go away but rather intensifies).
The tradeoff for novelty and ease is that you limit how much personal growth you can do, as relationships often serve as the foundation on which you do that important emotional process of working through difficult emotions.
Fortress
Everyone feels like a threat, an outsider, or someone to keep at a distance—there are no exceptions.
Relationships, if they exist at all, are more like trade agreements: a give-to-get dynamic where every interaction serves a purpose. Connections are strictly practical, transactional, and rarely, if ever, personal.
Other people need to demonstrate that they're trustworthy repeatedly, but they’re only given one chance to make it or break it.
Should others make mistakes, it only reinforces your view that others are indeed untrustworthy. The end result is that you recycle your negative and mistrustful perceptions of others and your standards become impossible for anyone to reach.
Being closed off from others also leads to greater anxiety and burnout, as it’s now all on you to fulfill all of your own needs (aka counterdependence).
Read more about counterdependence in this post.
The tradeoff for the sense of safety is cutoff from life’s abundant supply of resources and energy. At what point does starving yourself to feel safe not make sense anymore?
Would it be better to let down your drawbridge at least once in a while to see who actually IS trustworthy (even if they’re not perfect)?
Fog
It's hard to tell what connections are because it's not clear where you begin and the other person ends.
There's little to no definition (no boundaries) in the relationship:
Are you close? not?
Together? not?
Exclusive? not?
There's not a lot of movement that happens in these relationships because there's a lack of substance or definition. It’s difficult to nurture your connection with yourself because you don’t know who YOU are (with respect to the other person).
The tradeoff for the sense of peace and serenity (i.e., lack of conflict) is endless confusion and wandering.
Host/Parasite
This is where an empathic/caring person is in a relationship with a toxic person.
One person (the host) carries the majority/entirety of the relationship responsibilities, and the other is a moocher (the parasite) that sucks the host dry (after which, they just find another prey).
The relationship is not mutually beneficial, but inherently exploitative and abusive.
The host devalues themselves more and more over time and allows the parasite to exploit them (lack of boundaries).
When the host does try to eliminate the parasite, the parasite fights back even harder (for them it feels like life-or-death) until the host gives up and submits, maybe even justifying why this relationship is good for them when it’s not.
In order for this relationship to "die", the host needs an entire transformation of their life circumstances and environment - once rid of pests, they cannot go back to old habits lest they be reinfested.
The tradeoff for familiarity is total depletion. It’s terrifying to do what’s unfamiliar (like setting boundaries and becoming more assertive), but ultimately taking those brave steps to rid yourself of toxic people is what is ultimately good.
Symbiotic/Interdependent
Unlike a one-sided, parasitic dynamic, a symbiotic relationship model is built on mutual benefit. Each person brings their own strengths to the table, balancing out the other’s weaknesses.
They’re DIFFERENT but EQUAL—neither is better or worse, just complementary. There’s no need for competition or comparison because both people have space for their needs to be met, without one overshadowing the other. There is room for both of their needs.
In true interdependence, you recognize that:
Some needs are meant to be met by you
Some by others
Some by either you or others
Some by both.
There’s a natural flexibility in how your needs are met—if one person isn’t available, it’s not the end of the world. You’re able to find other ways to get your needs met. Because of this, there’s less pressure, less intensity, and more openness to other connections and possibilities.
The tradeoff? You have a higher chance for (both of you) getting much more of y’alls needs met at the expense of effort that’s most costly in the beginning but gets easier over time.
This is what allows you to get into (and stay in) your Emotional Flow rather than getting sucked into the Emotional Vortex (where all the prior arrangements inevitably lead!)
Want to learn more about what is dragging you into an Emotional Vortex, and how to get out of it, FREE your time, energy, and headspace, and move closer to building your ideal life?
Watch this ONE hour masterclass, so you can finally breathe more easily!
The Crucible for Growth
For better and for worse, the people who are in your vicinity will challenge your relationship model, especially when you hold a pattern that functions exactly in the opposite way as theirs.
My default pattern used to be Hubs & Spokes, until I just butted heads so often with my spouse (Concentric Circles) + work wife (Spiderweb) that I learned to do what they do and vice versa.
We three are better for our expansion of relationship styles, since it's like we each learned another language or two on top of our native tongue. Life is smoother, there's less reactivity all around, and there's more time nurturing our connection with ourselves and each other.
DISCLAIMER
As you grow, your relationships might have to shift accordingly, because the equilibrium in which they were created are no longer the same. This equilibrium is why sometimes your relationships might feel more strain when you do your personal work, since for every action/movement, there’s an equal and opposite reaction to maintain homeostasis.
If this happens to you, don’t interpret it as you doing something WRONG, but confirmation that you need to KEEP GOING to pursue what’s healthy for the BOTH of you!
Next Steps for True Interdependence
What is ONE thing you will do this week to move away from your current relationship dynamic towards Interdependence?
Save this post for later to come back to it.
The BIG Feelings First Aid Kit
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Grab this free PDF guide that shows you how to handle feelings like a pro so that you can keep moving forward in life!
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© Copyright 2024 Joanne Kim. All rights reserved.
Joanne Kim, Feelings Translator
Hi! I’m a therapist-turned feelings coach who helps Highly Sensitive Persons, Empaths, Enneagram 2s & 4s, etc. turn their BIGGEST feelings into their GREATEST superpower!
They are often the first (or only) person in their family to intuitively process and express feelings; consequently, they are often judged or criticized so that they learn to people please, placate, or perform until they hit a wall.
They’re super familiar with anxiety, guilt, and shame, partly because of an allergic reaction to anger (theirs and others').
Often the super responsible, empathic, and ethical person in their environments, they reach out to me after they're already burned out, resentful in their relationships, or sucked into their shame spiral.
The most common feedback I get from people when I share about how feelings work is,
"Why didn't anyone teach me this in school??"
Hence, I am building a school helping people work WITH their feelings so their feelings work FOR them.
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