The Psychology of Asking Your Partner for Help
One of the recurring types of clients I see is hyper-independent people who can do and manage absolutely everything on their own. Yet, the very thing that could be the pinnacle of freedom in their life is the source of fatigue and the feeling of loneliness.
They consistently struggle to ask their partner for help or to let them in their world, which causes distance and alienation within the relationship. This hyper-independence is often a sign of being exposed to smothering care early in life.
In 1966, psychologist Jack Brehm described a curious paradox: when a person’s freedom is restricted in childhood, even with the best intentions in the caregiver’s mind, the child tends to grow into an adult who actively pushes help away and does things on their own. (1) Even at the cost of inconvenience.
Some parents offer help by correcting their children a lot. For instance, taking over a task the child was already attempting: putting on socks, tying their shoelaces, remaking the bed after the child in a “better” way. It sends the message “you don’t do things as well as I do.” And this kind of care brings a competition of comparisons in which the child always loses to an adult.
Another example is deciding what’s best for their child on behalf of their child, while dismissing the child’s wishes. A teenager wants to take an art elective, but the parent enrolls them in an extra math class instead and tells them afterward: “It would be better for you.”
Or, a pretty common one, nagging the child about organizing his or her room and keeping it neat at all times, as if the child cannot have any autonomy of creative chaos on their own, including in their own space.
While parents carry responsibility and teach their children how to adapt to the adult world (hopefully, and provided that they are well-adapted themselves), the incessant acts of behavioral control, guilt-induction, shaming or love-withdrawal if the child doesn’t do things to a parent’s liking can be masked as care.
Leonard Berkowitz’s research found that increased pressure to receive aid reduces a person’s willingness to accept help from the person pressuring them. (4) So, if the parent pressures the child into receiving care or help, as the parent sees fit, the child can become averse to any form of help, care or support over time. And develop hyper-autonomy.
Moreover, research shows that children who have experienced conditional help grow into adults who suffer from physiological stress when they receive help or caring support. Their heart rate spikes, their muscles tense, and they feel a sudden physical urge to escape. (1, 5)
In order for help or care to be accepted well — or for someone to ask for it proactively — several conditions need to be in place:
1. Help needs to be offered from the position of equality
People are more likely to accept help if it is offered by equals.(2) In the case of children, even though parents are not on equal footing with their children, when a child feels respected by their parent and treated as a person in their own right, they are far more likely to accept the parent’s help and be grateful for it in the long run.
The same dynamic runs in a relationship between partners.
Jack’s job is the one the family moves for, so Lucie gives up hers to follow. Now she’s underemployed, and he covers most of the bills. He’s sending the message: “Don’t worry, I’ve got us.” However, when she talks about missing her job and wants to resume working in new circumstances, Jack is dismissive about it. “I earn more, you earn less in any case.”
Her needs are unacknowledged and his help comes from above. It’s unequal and it breeds resentment in Lucie. Jack is convinced that she has to be grateful for his contribution, refusing to admit that his help is offered in an atmosphere of superiority that fuels dissatisfaction in the relationship.
2. Help needs to support self-competence
Fisher et al. noted that people refuse help when it evokes in them the “feelings of failure, inferiority, and dependency.” (2) Kelley also found that when the help recipient concludes that his or her need was caused by external factors — the task is difficult and many people struggle to do it — they are far more likely to accept (and ask for) help. (6) And vice versa: when the need for help feels like the manifestation of one’s own incompetence or inadequacy (as with the example above of tying shoelaces), the recipient abstains from getting help.
In couple dynamics, it might show up in something as ordinary as planning a trip. A spouse books the flights: business class, paid for, done! And says: “It’s faster if I just do it alone.” What could have been a nice surprise:
a) took away the couple’s enjoyment and the bonding activity of ordering the tickets together,
b) raised an implicit question: whose judgment gets to stand?
The booking isn’t the problem here. The problem is that the decision was made alone, and the other partner is handed a finished fact, as if they are inadequate to be involved, and should only be grateful for the outcome.
3. Balance of power between the giver and receiver
In some families children are subjected to “parentification”: the child is expected to comfort their parent, to guess their thoughts, to not be too much of a burden, to emotionally care for the parent. In other words, to do what the parent is supposed to do for the child.
In such cases the child might develop mistrust toward those offering help, because the child imbibed that help and care, when it comes, always comes with strings attached and guilt-induction.
As I write in my article “Understanding Our Inner Child in the Struggle for Real Love“, the roles often flip within couple relationships as well. We want our partners to love and care for us like children, but to treat us like adults. We regress and project parental roles onto them.
This creates a lot of confusion around asking for help. Druian et al. (3) showed in their experiments that adults are very reluctant to ask for help from children, even when children are presented as of equal ability (e.g. in spelling), as it impinges upon their power status.
Therefore, if one partner is unconsciously taking on the psychological role of a child (they want to be the center of attention, pampered and coddled, have the right to play the helplessness card at any time, to be naive, shed responsibility etc.), the balance of asking for and giving help goes awry.
In conclusion, independence and autonomy are wonderful for an adult. However, when they become “hyper,” when they serve as a defense against losing oneself, they prevent you from asking and accepting help from your partner, from relaxing, resting and bonding within a relationship.
What’s important to understand here is that even fiercely independent persons still long for care, help and support. They just don’t know how to receive it, and are afraid to ask for it from their partner.
They don’t really know what care or help looks like without suffocation. And this is one of the things that therapy helps uncover and rebuild: the kind of care that is emotionally safe for you, rather than depleting.
Bibliography:
- Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. Academic Press.
- Fisher, J. D., Nadler, A., & Whitcher-Alagna, S. (1982). Recipient reactions to aid. Psychological Bulletin, 91(1), 27–54.
- Druian, P. R., & DePaulo, B. M. (1977). Asking a child for help. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 5(1), 33-39.
- Berkowitz, L. (1969). Resistance to improper dependency relationships. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 5, 283–294.
- Loeb, E. L., Davis, A. A., Narr, R. K., Uchino, B. N., Kent de Grey, R. G., & Allen, J. P. (2021). The developmental precursors of blunted cardiovascular responses to stress. Developmental psychobiology, 63(2), 247-261.
- Kelley, H. H. Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Vol. 15). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967.
Published by author on Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-psychology-of-relationships-and-emotional-intelligence/202609/the-psychology-of-asking
