There’s a British psychologist, Martin Lloyd-Elliot, who talks of “our society’s addiction to co-dependent relationships.” He condemns the notion of “the idealised other”. He prefers the idea of two wholes getting together as a team rather than two halves desperate for the mythical other. Romance is fine by him. It’s the psychology of the participants that determines quality of relationship.

I agree with him and consider people to be driven half mad by their relationships and their chasing of fantasy. Yet just as much as I like the notion of two wholes working together I wonder if that too is only an alternative version of the mythical other.