Belonging Without Disappearing

“Ambivalence, Autonomy and the Challenge of Holding Two Truths at Once”

I have recently returned from spending several weeks in Sicily, the island both my parents are from, a place I have also called home at different points in my life and one that remains deeply woven into my sense of identity and belonging. My life is rooted in London; it is where I have spent an extensive part of my life, where my immediate family is and where the everyday architecture of my world has been built. And yet, when I return to Sicily, something shifts. I reconnect with family, old friendships and a culture that has shaped me, but also with a part of my identity that seems to come more fully into view there - perhaps even another way of being. If London is where much of my life is organised, Sicily is often where I experience the feeling of living it. Both are part of who I am, although in very different ways.

Perhaps this is part of growing up between cultures. When more than one place has contributed to your sense of identity, you can find yourself perpetually comparing one with the other, becoming more aware of what each offers through experiencing what the other lacks.

There is, I think, something of the immigrant experience in this - and perhaps something inherited by the children of immigrants too. One culture inevitably becomes the lens through which we see the other. What we miss in one place becomes particularly visible when we encounter it in another. We can feel deeply at home somewhere while simultaneously noticing all the ways in which we are different from it.

What struck me particularly during this visit was the contrast between the collective nature of Sicilian life and the individualism of the city life I return to in London.

In Sicily, life seems to happen between people.

People stop and talk. Coffee is rarely just coffee. Food is shared, conversations extend beyond their allotted time and somebody usually knows somebody who knows somebody else. People enquire, advise, help, interfere and, inevitably, gossip. Community is created through countless small acts of participation in one another's lives.

Gossip can, of course, be intrusive or unkind, but at its more benign it also tells us something about collective life: we remain interested in one another, we are held in other people’s minds and our lives remain connected.

There is something deeply nourishing about being woven into the lives of other people.

Connection, in its simplest form, nourishes us.

And yet, after a while, I also find myself longing for something else.

Space.

Privacy.

The freedom to disappear for a while without anybody wondering where I am.

London offers this generously. City life allows us to close our front doors and decide when, how and with whom we engage. There is enormous freedom in that anonymity.

But freedom has its shadow too.

Nobody interferes. But sometimes nobody notices.

Nobody asks where you have been. But sometimes nobody asks how you are either.

And it occurs to me that perhaps the tension I experience between these two cultures is not so different from something I encounter repeatedly in my clinical work - and particularly in couples work.

Our very human struggle between belonging and separateness.

We want to belong, but we do not want to disappear.

We want intimacy, but we also want freedom.

We want to be known, but not necessarily scrutinised.

We want people to care about us, but sometimes we want them to mind their own business.

Perhaps the problem is not that we want contradictory things.

Perhaps the problem is that we find it so difficult to accept that we do.

The Difficulty of Ambivalence

We often use the word ambivalence to mean indecision.

“I’m ambivalent about the relationship” can sound as though somebody simply has not yet decided whether they want to stay or leave.

But psychologically, ambivalence means something richer and more complex.

It describes our capacity to experience contradictory feelings towards the same person, relationship or situation at the same time.

I can love you and sometimes be irritated by you.

I can want you close and sometimes want you to leave me alone.

I can miss you when you are absent and feel crowded when you are present.

I can be deeply happy in a relationship while still experiencing doubt.

None of these feelings necessarily invalidates the other.

Yet human beings seem to have a powerful desire for internal consistency. We want to know which feeling is the “real” one.

Do I want this or don’t I?

Am I happy or unhappy?

Do I want closeness or independence?

Is this relationship right or wrong?

Sometimes, of course, these questions need answering. Ambivalence can tell us something important about a relationship that is no longer working for us.

But sometimes our insistence on resolving the contradiction becomes the problem.

What if both feelings are real?

What if psychological maturity involves developing a greater capacity to hold opposing experiences without urgently needing one of them to cancel out the other?

Betty and Craig

A couple I shall call Betty and Craig came to see me relatively early in their relationship.

They were affectionate, attracted to one another and clearly enjoyed being together. There was no dramatic crisis bringing them into therapy. Instead, both were becoming aware of subtle tensions that seemed to emerge as their relationship became more important.

Betty described herself as someone who valued independence enormously. She had built a full life of her own and had been accustomed to making decisions largely without having to take another person into account.

She wanted a relationship. She loved intimacy and was surprised by how deeply she had come to care for Craig.

But the more important the relationship became, the more she noticed another feeling emerging alongside her love for him.

Fear.

Not particularly a fear that Craig would leave her.

She was frightened that somehow she might lose herself.

At times when the relationship began to feel particularly close, Betty would sometimes notice a restlessness emerging. She found herself becoming more questioning, noticing small differences or irritations that had previously seemed relatively unimportant. It was often at these moments that she became more aware of her need for space and separateness.

Then something interesting happened.

When Craig became absorbed in his own life, Betty sometimes experienced the opposite anxiety.

She missed him.

She wondered whether he was thinking about her.

She noticed herself looking for messages from him.

The distance that she had wanted could suddenly feel unsettling.

Betty found this deeply confusing.

“How can I want space from him and then miss him when I get it?” she asked me.

Her assumption was that one of these experiences must reveal what she really felt.

I wondered whether both did.

Protecting the Self, Protecting the Good

Craig's way of managing emotional experience was quite different.

He appeared more naturally able to inhabit the present. If something was going well, his instinct was to enjoy it rather than examine it too closely.

Betty admired this quality in him. There was an ease to Craig's enjoyment of their relationship that she sometimes wished she could borrow.

But it too had another side.

Craig had been hoping for a particular opportunity at work. He had invested considerable energy in it and had quietly allowed himself to imagine what it might mean for him.

When the opportunity did not materialise, he mentioned it to Betty almost in passing.

He was disappointed, he acknowledged.

Then almost immediately he changed his tone shifted.

He said, it didn't matter. There would be other opportunities. Anyway, work was a boring topic and Betty probably didn't want to hear all about it.

They moved on.

But Betty sensed that something had been left behind.

When she returned to the subject later, Craig initially resisted. He did not see the point in dwelling on something he could not change. More importantly, they had been having a lovely evening. Why allow something disappointing to take over?

For Betty, however, Craig’s tendency to quickly reassure her that everything was fine and move on could leave her feeling shut out of his emotional experience. What Craig intended as protecting the good between them could sometimes leave Betty feeling outside of it - a little out in the cold.

This seemingly ordinary exchange revealed something much larger about their different ways of managing emotional life.

Betty was protecting something important:

Can I remain myself while loving you?

Craig was protecting something different:

Can I acknowledge what is difficult without allowing it to define the whole experience?

Neither position was wrong.

In fact, both contained considerable wisdom.

Betty understood that relationships require two separate people. Craig understood that disappointment does not have to become the organising principle of an entire day, evening or relationship.

The difficulty arose when either position became absolute.

Betty's need to preserve herself could become vigilance. She could find herself monitoring the relationship for signs that she was becoming too absorbed in it.

Craig's capacity to remain positive could sometimes make it harder to give disappointment, sadness or frustration the space they deserved.

Both were protecting something valuable.

And both, at times, risked excluding something equally valuable in the process.

When Two Things Are True

Much of our psychological distress arises not simply from what we feel, but from our struggle with the fact that we can feel two apparently opposing things simultaneously.

Betty's therapeutic work was not necessarily to decide whether she wanted closeness or independence.

She needed both.

It can be tempting to understand this simply through the language of attachment and to interpret a need for distance as evidence of an avoidant attachment style, for example. Attachment theory can offer a useful framework, but human relationships are often more complex than the categories we use to describe them. A wish for separateness does not necessarily represent an avoidance of intimacy; sometimes it reflects an equally legitimate need to preserve a sense of self within it.

Wanting space did not automatically mean something was wrong with her relationship.

Missing Craig did not mean she should abandon her need for autonomy.

She could love him without disappearing into him.

Craig faced a different version of the same challenge.

Could something disappointing be given proper attention without becoming everything?

Could he be disappointed about work and still enjoy his evening?

Could sadness and happiness occupy the same emotional landscape?

Could he acknowledge something negative without fearing that negativity would contaminate what was positive?

The answer for both of them required a movement away from either/or and towards both/and.

Betty could want closeness and separateness.

Craig could experience disappointment and pleasure.

A relationship could contain difficulty and still fundamentally be good.

For both of them, the work became less about resolving contradiction and more about increasing their capacity to tolerate it.

Because intimacy asks us to do something psychologically difficult.

It asks us to allow another person's reality to exist alongside our own.

Difference Is Not Necessarily a Threat

Every relationship brings us into contact with difference.

Our partners will not always think as we think, feel as we feel, want what we want or respond as we would respond.

Initially, particularly when we fall in love, difference can seem relatively insignificant. We focus naturally on similarity: the things we enjoy together, the values we share, the ways in which we feel understood.

But eventually difference arrives.

One person wants more contact. The other wants more space.

One wants to talk something through. The other would rather let it go.

One experiences enquiry as love. The other may experience too much enquiry as intrusion.

One believes difficult feelings need expression. The other believes giving them too much attention risks making them bigger.

And often, without realising it, we begin trying to convert the other person to our own way of being.

The question becomes:

Which one of us is right?

Yet perhaps successful relationships require something altogether more challenging.

Not the elimination of difference, but its integration.

This does not mean abandoning boundaries, tolerating harmful behaviour or endlessly compromising ourselves in the name of acceptance.

It means developing the capacity to recognise that another person's different way of experiencing the world does not necessarily threaten our own.

Perhaps intimacy is not finally achieved by finding someone who experiences life exactly as we do.

Perhaps it develops when two people become increasingly able to accommodate difference without experiencing it as danger.

We can remain separate and still belong to one another.

Sicily, London and the Space Between

This brings me back to Sicily.

Perhaps what I find so compelling about moving between Sicily and London is that each place brings me into contact with a different human need and with different parts of myself.

Sicily reminds me of our need for the collective.

Community is created through countless small acts of participation in one another's lives: sharing food, offering help, lending an ear, exchanging news, stopping for a conversation, drinking a coffee together.

Even gossip, for all its potential mischief, can reveal something about collective life: people remain interested in one another.

Our lives are witnessed.

But collectivity has its shadow.

Interest can become interference. Concern can become intrusion. Belonging can carry obligations and expectations. The same community that holds us can sometimes feel as though it is holding us too tightly.

London offers the counterpoint.

Individualism gives us privacy, autonomy and freedom. We can choose our communities and decide how much of ourselves we reveal.

But individualism has a shadow too.

Privacy can become isolation.

Independence can become disconnection.

The freedom to disappear can eventually become the experience of not being noticed.

Perhaps this is also why those of us whose identities have been shaped by more than one culture can find ourselves perpetually comparing.

When I am in London, I can become particularly aware of what Sicily offers that London does not.

When I am in Sicily, I become equally aware of what London allows me that Sicily sometimes cannot.

What feels missing in one place can become what we most long for in the other.

Perhaps this is one of the more complicated inheritances of migration. We can carry more than one idea of home inside us and each exposes something about the limitations of the other.

But perhaps we do not have to decide which one is right.

Both can belong.

Just differently.

From Either/Or to Both/And

I increasingly think that one of the more difficult tasks of being human is learning to resist our tendency towards either/or thinking.

We want certainty because certainty feels safer.

If I am happy, I should not feel sad.

If I love somebody, I should not experience doubt.

If I want intimacy, I should not need distance.

If my relationship is good, there should not be difficult conversations.

If community is nourishing, I should not sometimes want to escape from it.

If somewhere feels like home, perhaps somewhere else cannot.

But human experience rarely behaves so neatly.

We are contradictory creatures.

We can feel gratitude and resentment, love and irritation, certainty and doubt, belonging and alienation - sometimes within the same hour.

Perhaps emotional maturity is not the elimination of these contradictions but the development of a mind spacious enough to accommodate them.

In relationships, this means learning that conflict does not erase love, separateness does not necessarily mean abandonment and autonomy does not have to threaten intimacy.

It means discovering that two people do not have to become the same in order to remain deeply connected.

And perhaps identity works in much the same way.

We do not necessarily have to choose between the different places, cultures, relationships and experiences that have made us.

Integration does not require sameness.

It requires room.

Conclusion: Belonging Without Disappearing

Perhaps this is what my time between Sicily and London has brought into sharper focus.

Connection nourishes us.

We need other people. We need to be known, remembered, thought about, asked after and missed. Much of our sense of ourselves develops within relationship with others.

But we also need enough psychological space to remain ourselves.

Too much collectivity can swallow the individual.

Too much individualism can lead to isolation, depriving us of the connection we need.

Relationships ask us to negotiate precisely the same tension.

We need to come close without disappearing. To move apart without abandoning. To acknowledge what is difficult without allowing it to erase what is good.

Betty did not need to stop wanting freedom in order to love Craig more fully. Craig did not need to surrender his capacity for optimism in order to make room for disappointment.

Instead, each needed to become more able to accommodate the other's position within themselves.

Perhaps that is one of the most important things relationships can teach us.

Difference does not always require resolution.

Ambivalence does not always require a decision.

And contradictory feelings do not necessarily mean that something has gone wrong.

Sometimes they simply mean that we are human.

Perhaps the challenge is not to decide whether we belong to ourselves or to one another, but to discover that these are not opposing states.

Like belonging to more than one place, perhaps we can belong in different ways - remaining rooted in ourselves while allowing our lives to become deeply intertwined with the lives of others.

We do not have to disappear into another person in order to love them, nor remain entirely separate in order to remain ourselves.

Perhaps the task is learning how to remain fully ourselves while still allowing ourselves to belong - in our relationships, our families, our communities and the wider collective.