How to Balance Differentiation and Bonding
To help keep a close personal relationship thriving, it's essential to balance differentiation and bonding. The structure of Mindful Compassionate Dialogue (MCD) is especially well suited to support both. For bonding, for example, MCD encourages vulnerability through sharing of feelings, needs, and other aspects of experience. For differentiation, for example, self-responsibility is supported through recognizing interpretations and distinguishing them from what actually happened (neutral observation), and by identifying your needs and making clear requests. When a relationship is in trouble, the balance of differentiation and bonding is likely tipped to one side or the other.
In relationships where differentiation is balanced with bonding you can authentically express differences and unmet needs, and responsibly do your own thing without it being a threat to the bond with another. You can honor each other's choice. You trust each other to be honest rather than resentfully giving in to the other's wishes. All this makes needs-based negotiation easier.
When differentiation is emphasized at the cost of bonding, it slides into alienation and painful disconnect. Here are some common symptoms of alienation:
Your relationship centers around the practicalities of life
You have trouble making time for play together
You seem to be living parallel lives
When you think of trying to create more connection, it seems like too much work
You are afraid of intruding on the other person’s life
Affection is rare
Other things take priority over the relationship and you are pretty fuzzy on where you rank
One of both of you make major life decisions without considering the impact on the other person
On the other hand, when bonding is emphasized at the cost of differentiation, a secure bond slips into enmeshment. Here are some common symptoms of enmeshment:
Blame is a common visitor to your relationship
One person's actions or state becomes contingent on the other person's actions or state. For example, this might sound like the following:
"I don't want you to be disappointed if I don't come along.”
"I won't do it if you're not happy about it.”
"I won't have a good time with the group if you are moping around.”
"How can you be so happy when you know I am going through a hard time?!”
"You have to do it with me, or I won't do it."
Demands show up, along with near cousins such as pressuring, guilt tripping, manipulating, belittling, minimizing, dismissing, and criticizing
You feel like you are walking on eggshells because reactivity is pretty common
You start to edit what you do and say in an attempt to please the other person
You start to have a sense that you have lost who you are
Balancing differentiation with bonding creates a consistent safe space for vulnerability. When you know that your vulnerability is held in respect and honor, you can express your inner world to another and hear theirs. The other person can be upset, sad, disappointed, etc., and you can offer empathy or you can let it be. You trust the other person to find their own resources or to make a request if they need something. Spontaneous offerings of warmth, affection, or support come from your heart rather than from a belief that you have to get the other person into a better state so you can feel better or that offering affection is something you are supposed to do.
If you have been through the pain of either of the extremes of alienation or enmeshment, then you might attempt to heal that pain by over-focusing on the opposite in your next close relationship. However, this simply creates a new kind of pain. A balance of both bonding and differentiation is essential so that with each decision, activity, and conversation, you can both create connection and honor difference and choice.
In the bigger picture of a close relationship or a partnership, it's important to reflect on how you have set up your lives together. If either of you are coming to the relationship with a sense of threat around bonding or differentiation, then you might be setting up your schedules, house, routines, etc., so that one extreme is systematically emphasized and the other is systematically neglected. For example, in an intimate relationship in which one partner works the day shift, the other works the swing shift, and each has extracurricular activities planned independently, the formation of a secure bond will be consistently neglected. On the other hand, a couple that has the same schedules and operates on the default assumption that "if we are not at work, we are together”, systematically neglects space for autonomy and difference.
In any close relationship, it often happens that one person is biased toward protecting bonding, and the other is biased toward protecting autonomy and acceptance of differences. This can devolve into conflict, with each person trying to cajole the other to switch biases. Instead of tightening in your corner around protecting your value, remind yourself that needs are never in conflict. And when there is a particular quality of honor and connection present the door to creativity opens wide and strategies to meet all needs can be found.
Practice
Take a moment now and notice if you tend to emphasize bonding or differentiation in your relationships. During the coming week, challenge yourself to give more attention to the opposite. To prepare, name three examples in which you've habitually followed your bias toward bonding or differentiation. Replay those examples in your mind, imagining what you could have done to support the opposite.
