Untold Truths: Have We Confused Independence With Never Needing Anyone?

During a recent conversation about relationships, I admitted that my dating history since my divorce has been sparse.

The explanations came easily. I was raising my children, and that responsibility came first. I was working, rebuilding and doing what I like to call empire building. There were a few frogs along the way. Some announced themselves early. Others required a kiss before the evidence became conclusive.

All of that is true, but it is not the whole truth.

I was not always ready. Beneath the schedules, responsibilities and ambition lived a fear I could conveniently rename busyness. My independence came from both temperament and necessity. I have always been resourceful, but life also taught me that if something needed carrying, I had better prepare my own back for the weight.

Eventually, capability stopped being something I practised and became part of my identity.

I wonder how many women recognise that transition? How many of us became independent because we wanted to be, and how many because life left us no sensible alternative? At what point did self-reliance stop being something we could do and become something we believed we must always do?

Independent women are admired. We are called accomplished, formidable and inspiring. Yet admiration can become complicated when our independence expresses an opinion, protects a boundary or refuses to shrink. It is easy to applaud a woman’s power in theory. Living alongside it may require something more.

But what does independence feel like from the other side?

Do men admire a self-sufficient woman and later struggle to understand where they fit in her life? Do they feel unnecessary because she asks for nothing, or unwelcome because she has become accustomed to doing everything herself? When women say men are intimidated by us, is that always true? Or is ‘intimidated’ sometimes a convenient word that saves us from asking whether we have left any room for someone to contribute?

Some men undoubtedly want a woman to become smaller so they can feel bigger. Others may simply be trying to find a door into a life built without them, and that distinction matters.

Being alone is often perfectly fine. Loneliness is different. Loneliness is facing a decision heavy enough to alter your life and wishing there were someone beside you who was equally invested in the consequences. Wanting that person does not erase independence. It simply acknowledges that survival was never meant to be the highest purpose of love.

I do not believe God created partnership because women were incapable of surviving alone. Partnership should offer companionship, counsel, intimacy, and a safe place to set down some of what life asks us to carry.

This is where conversations about leadership and submission become unnecessarily loud.

A man does not lead by overpowering a woman. Leadership is being secure enough to support her dreams, ambitions, peculiarities and individuality without turning love into a power struggle. It is creating the emotional safety in which fears, concerns and weaknesses will be cared for, not stored as ammunition for later.

The independent woman also has work to do. She must learn that receiving support is not surrender and that asking for help does not cancel everything she has built. When my heart feels safe, I do not need to control everything. I can receive counsel without surrendering my judgement. I can allow someone to be strong for me without becoming less strong myself.

So perhaps the questions belong to all of us. Women, when did capability become armour? Men, what has it felt like to love a woman who learned to live as though she needed no one? Did you feel welcomed, resisted, tested or diminished? Were you prepared to stand beside her without needing to stand above her?

Perhaps the #Unshakable truth is this: independence and partnership are not opposites. The real work is recognising when self-reliance is freedom and when it is fear wearing a very respectable outfit. A woman can open her life without surrendering herself. A man can contribute without controlling it. Perhaps love begins when both stop treating partnership as a contest over who is needed more.

‘See’ you next week.

IG Handle: @unshakable.is.a.state.of.mind