Over- and under-functioning

It seems to be my month for researching personality and relationship issues. Once again prompted by Oliver Burkeman in the Guardian Weekly, I came across another new concept, that of over- and under-functioning within a relationship.

I was especially drawn to this concept because, once more, it resonated with me academically, and I also had some personal experience to draw on.

It seems that in any pair, be they for example business partners, romantic partners or parent and child, there is a risk of a cycle where one partner over-functions and the other under-functions. If there is a natural division of responsibility, with each adequately taking responsibility for their own life within the relationship, then over- and under-functioning implies some sort of breakdown. One partner takes on more than their natural share, while the other abrogates their responsibility and relies on their partner.

Of course the problem is that these habits become reinforcing, and a pattern develops that becomes gradually more extreme and very difficult to break. The under-functioning one becomes gradually less and less able to take on tasks, and the over-functioning one observes this and compensates more and more.

This feels to me to be a realistic and helpful model. Indeed, I might even speculate why the problem is not even more common than it is. This aspect of most relationship types feels like a natural state of unstable equilibrium, with any imbalance only likely to worsen over time.

Even worse, we are probably naturally attracted to people with the opposite tendency. Two over-functioners together probably boss each other to distraction and fight over everything for control, while two under-functioners would struggle to get much together in the first place. We might be pre-destined to play out our dysfunctional roles.

Over-functioning and under-functioning personality types manifest themselves in various symptoms. The former group can value control too highly, while the latter can be subject to depression, and easily slide into addictions.

One great thing about the model is that it provides its own route to solutions, without needing lots of assessments and counseling – though of course in many cases this can help and may be required.

The key seems to be for those of us that over-function to recognize this and step off the gas pedal in our relationship. Relying on the under-functioning partner to make the first move will probably result in a long wait. But the over-functioning party simply needs to stop doing things before the partner gets around to it, and indeed to allow things to go undone and for the partner to face the consequences.

That is tough, but so much easier than starting with our partner. It just needs recognition, some patience, and sticking it out when there are consequences. If the situation is entrenched, it will take time to change, but that is surely the way to try.

Once there have been a few disasters and then a few situations where the under-functioner manages to avoid disaster all on their own, then the partners can discuss together a way forward, including a division of tasks that shares the load and allows the under-functioner to rebuild confidence.

Given the tendency towards unstable equilibrium, how can we avoid the trap in the first place? I have not read anything about this, but I wonder if one key is allocating tasks according to strengths and preferences. There are some aspects of a shared life where I would be a diehard over-functioner, but there are other aspects where I would find it easier to delegate. Just like in trade or business, specialism is a fine thing for everyone.

Even when there is specialization in place, it does us good to reverse roles every so often, just to maintain our abilities and to keep things fresh. On our recent holiday, I consciously delegated all financial and agenda-related matters. I am sure I was not easy to put up with and that I looked like I was always ready to criticize or to shout “I told you so”, but it worked, and actually by the end of the holiday it felt quite liberating.

A parent-child relationship is interesting in this context. Here, the challenge is to gradually row back from what starts as an OF-UF relationship out of necessity. It may be that parents who are natural over-functioners in their other relationships are the ones who need to learn to let the child grow through taking responsibility and making mistakes. None of us find that easy, but some personality types will find it easier than others.

I was for many years in an extreme OF-UF relationship, as the over-functioning partner. Often such relationships degenerate further into some kind of dependency and co-dependency. These are all concepts that I knew nothing at all about until I made the decision to address the flaws in that relationship, or actually until just afterwards, when I was in a cycle of counselling and help groups and trying to read up about what might be going on.

One tragedy is that I let things drift along for so long, although people have told me that all other options might have been even more tragic. But another tragedy is how I only really started analyzing and studying after it was too late, because I had already stacked the odds even more against a happy resolution by choosing the initial approach I did.

Probably in common with most, I diagnosed that all the problems lay with the under-functioning partner, and therefore it was incumbent on then to find solutions. But of course years of under-functioning and associated problems had removed all the useful tools for this to happen, and the approach I took only served to undermine confidence still further.

Probably there was no likely route to success. But if I had started by putting a mirror against my own behaviour and changed that first, then at least there might have been at least a small chance of a resolution.

This is why I think articles about these models are potentially useful. Burkeman does a good job of explaining complex issues in simple language. No doubt many experts see his articles as gross simplifications leading to all sorts of erroneous self-diagnoses and false remedies. They are probably right, but I believe they neglect the positive side.

Most of us drift through life blissfully unaware of our own dysfunctions. If we can find ways to know more about ourselves, we can sometimes fix our problems before they become too severe. I am sure my case is similar to many, in that I only started seriously researching, and also finding fantastic help from wonderful groups, once the situation had got beyond redemption. I just wonder if my life had been different if I had read the OF-UF article fifteen years earlier.

This is another context where the internet is such a superb resource. Having been aroused by a simple article, it was easy to explore further, as deeply as I wished and down whichever alleyways I chose. That would have been so much more difficult before the internet.

Finally, there is an analogy with physical medical issues. Don’t we just hate people who always turn a small ache into a major crisis, and fuel their hypochondria through the internet? And if we struggle with them, imagine how the medical profession feels, having to deal with all these new-fangled experts in their surgeries week after week. No wonder they all turn out like Doc Martin!

But before we write off these self-help sites as bad, we should remember the alternative. True, there are risks from amateur misdiagnosis and flawed remedies and the fear that comes from belief that we might be sick. But if the downsides are matched by a few successful early diagnoses, the balance might be a good one overall. Making our physical and mental ailments more widely understandable might be an important achievement of modern societies.