Be careful of over-familiarity, lack of respect
Relationship strategists Mo and Phindi warn couples that too much familiarity can banish respect and kill commitment It is indeed a good thing to know your partner like the back of your hand, as it were. It’s great to know his favourite colour shirt or tie, and how she likes her eggs done. Familiarity is an asset in marriage, but beware the danger of over-familiarity.
The danger of over-familiarity is when you think you are close enough to your partner to excuse you for doing things that are obnoxious, while not allowing those things to be done to you. You might call the flip side of familiarity a type of entitlement, when you believe you have earned a free pass and therefore have the right to do certain things because you know what’s best for the other.
As a couple, we ourselves once only realised we were in this trouble when we were already knee-deep.
Our interaction was characterised by howling, criticising, ignoring, teasing, irritability, being crude, moody, nagging . . . the list just goes on.
We also meet a lot of unhappy partners that often complain, “I wish my husband or wife would act the way he or she did while we were dating.”
It is not so much the dating and courtship season that is being missed, but the presence of respect. A respect that diminishes with increased familiarity and erodes when over-familiarity sets in.
Some of the most obnoxious behaviours are displayed when you’re over-familiar to one another. It’s not cleaning up after yourself, not saying “thank you” because you think your gratitude should be a given, not verbalising “I love you” because she should know by now, or “I’m sorry, please forgive me”.
These acts of over-familiarity disappoint and draw anger because for one partner they symbolise a lack of respect, while for the other they merely represent the comfort and perceived lack of need to stand on ceremony.
Unhealthy familiarity is a cancer that eventually sucks the life out of an otherwise healthy relationship. It is said that living together for a long time eventually leads to greater liking of each other. This may be true in cases where you make an effort to understand one another better and therefore grow in love. In many cases however, the more familiar couples become with one another, the more they start to take each other for granted. And therein lies the chance of being in a rut.
It’s a lot easier to choose a safe behaviour in a relationship than a behaviour that challenges us to grow. Why? Because security is sweet. As partners, you are comfortable knowing what to expect and are able to handle whatever situations may evolve in your relationship.
