Recently I saw a couple who gave me one of those moments therapists live for: when something finally changes.
We’ve been working for weeks towards getting out of their well-worn patterns when it comes to conflict. Inching toward doing things in a new and better way.
They each have their “assigned roles” when it comes to how to make decisions. One is the dreamer: the one who gets excited about a new idea and wants to move on it right away. The other is the measured one, the practical partner who slows things down and asks the hard questions before anyone commits to anything. (Sound familiar? Most couples have some version of this dynamic.)
When they talk about the future, this is usually how it goes. One casts an incredible vision. The other starts poking holes with pesky practicality. One hits the gas. The other pumps the brakes.
Neither of them chose these roles on purpose. They just settled into them over years of the same argument playing out the same way.
Until last week!
This time the argument was about whether or not to buy a new house but it had been a myriad of other things over the years.
One partner had been practicing something we’d worked on in session: staying open longer before jumping to practicality, resisting the urge to be the immediate dream killer. And he did it! He stayed curious about the plan instead of shutting it down.
They were telling me the story about why this argument went better than most. Like, “Look at us! We are learning better conflict management skills!”
The “dreamer” spouse was surprised. They told me, “when he was being so open and curious about my vision, I started freaking out! I thought to myself, wait, should I be pumping the brakes? Is this really even a good idea?!”
Rather than both immediately taking their assigned positions, they each naturally moved more to the middle.
They hadn’t planned to do that. It happened on its own.
Why the positions shifted
In family systems work, this is called reciprocal functioning. Two people in a relationship aren’t operating independently, even when it feels that way. Each person’s role is partly defined by the other’s. When one person shifts, the other has to shift too, whether they intend to or not.
One spouse’s willingness to sit with uncertainty removed the counterweight they had been unconsciously relying on. They weren’t choosing caution on their own. The dreamer spouse was reacting to the absence of the planner’s usual caution, and since the system needed someone to hold that cautious position, the dreamer picked it up without noticing.
This is worth sitting with, because it means change in a relationship doesn’t require both people to work on themselves at the same time. One person moving is often enough to disrupt the whole pattern.
Balancing the Seesaw
Picture two people on a seesaw. Family systems need to stay in homeostasis. (The seesaw needs to stay balanced.) For the seesaw to stay level, both sides have to counterbalance each other. That’s homeostasis. This is how any family system holds steady. The system actively works to maintain balance.
The problem isn’t that they counterbalance. The problem is how far out they’ve each learned to sit in order to do it.
Everybody in the system will naturally readjust their position to maintain balance. So if one person moves out of their usual spot (their ingrained argument or decision role that has been yielding the same dysfunctional outcome over time), the other moves to maintain the balance in the system.
So how did they do that?
The answer to this question brings us to our second family systems concept: differentiation of self.
Connected Yet Separate Circles: Differentiation of Self
Differentiation of self is the capacity to stay yourself, clear on what you think and feel, while still being close to someone else. It’s the difference between having a self that bends a little under pressure and having a self that gets erased by it.
The planner’s shift is a good example. Staying curious about his partner’s dream required him to tolerate some discomfort. He didn’t know where the conversation was going. He didn’t have his usual practical objections lined up to manage that uncertainty. A less differentiated version of him would have reached for the old script anyway, not because the plan needed poking holes but because his own anxiety needed somewhere to go. Instead, he stayed present with the uncertainty and let the dream idea exist without immediately reshaping it into something safer.
That’s differentiation in practice. Not agreeing with everything. Not suppressing his own view. Just being able to hold his own perspective without needing to control the outcome in order to feel steady.
The three pictures show what differentiation looks like at different levels. In the first, two people are distinct from each other and still inside the same relationship. Neither one disappears into the other, and neither one disappears into the relationship itself. That’s differentiation.
In the second, the two circles have merged almost entirely. This is fusion, sometimes called enmeshment. There’s very little space between where one person ends and the other begins. Conflict in a fused relationship tends to feel unbearable, because a disagreement isn’t just a disagreement. It threatens the whole shared identity.
In the third, one person has moved outside the boundary of the relationship altogether. This is cutoff. It often looks like distance or independence from the outside, but it’s usually not actual differentiation. It’s often fusion in reverse, where the relationship still carries too much charge to stay close to, so the person leaves the field instead of learning to stay in it as themselves.
Most couples move between these positions more than they’d like to admit. The goal isn’t to land permanently in the differentiated picture and stay there. It’s to notice when you’ve drifted into fusion or cutoff, and find your way back toward staying yourself while staying close. Maintaining your sense of self while maintaining your attachment.
That’s what let this couple’s seesaw hold steady at a new position instead of snapping back to the old one. The husband’s differentiation gave him room to move. His partner’s reciprocal shift is what carried the change through the rest of the system.
This is exciting! This is how change and growth occur in a system.
What this means for you
You don’t need your partner, your friend, or your parent to go first. If you can tolerate the discomfort of staying yourself instead of retreating into your old assigned role, the system often adjusts around you. That’s not a guarantee the other person changes in the way you’d want. It’s a guarantee that the pattern can’t stay exactly the same, because you’re no longer holding up your end of it the old way.
Family systems theory isn’t just a way to understand your family. It’s a way to find the one place you actually have power to move something.
