Meeting with a Neurosis

When two people meet, we like to believe that two free, available individuals, fully present to one another, are discovering each other. But from a more psychological — or perhaps spiritual — perspective, one could say that, ultimately, one neurosis meets another.

In Buddhist language, this idea could be brought closer to that of one ego meeting another ego: each person enters the relationship carrying their own history, conditioning, fears, expectations, attachments, and particular way of perceiving the world.

The word neurosis may sound pejorative. Yet it should not be.

The point is not to reduce a person to a diagnosis, still less to consider them “ill.” Rather, it is to recognize that each of us is the extraordinarily complex result of everything that has shaped us: our upbringing, our past, our genetics, our experiences, our wounds, our traumas, our learning, our relationships, our successes, our failures, and the interpretations we have built from all of it.

In a sense, we are conditioned beings.

Some of these conditioning patterns are light and flexible. Others are more rigid, older, and more deeply rooted. Some barely interfere with the way we live. Others strongly influence the way we love, attach ourselves, defend ourselves, distrust others, or constantly seek their approval.

There are therefore as many degrees of neurotic complexity as there are people.

It Is Not Perfection That Matters, but Compatibility

The essential question in a relationship may therefore not be: “Is this person perfectly balanced?”

No one is.

The real question might instead be: “Can our two ways of functioning coexist with enough flexibility?”

When one person meets another, it is not simply two personalities that meet. It is also two defense systems, two emotional histories, two ways of handling closeness, two sensitivities, two relationships to abandonment, freedom, desire, frustration, and intimacy.

In other words, what is at stake is not necessarily the meeting of two “healthy” or “neurotic” people, but the compatibility of their respective ways of functioning.

A person may have significant vulnerabilities and yet be very flexible within a relationship. They may know their wounds, avoid confusing them with present reality, and be able to question their own reactions.

Conversely, someone who appears extremely balanced may become remarkably rigid when a relationship touches certain sensitive areas.

The determining variable then becomes psychological flexibility.

The ability to move. To listen. To recognize that the other person is not oneself. Not to immediately interpret. Not to turn every discomfort into a conflict. To be able to say, “I was hurt,” without necessarily concluding, “You are someone who hurts me.”

This is often where the true quality of a relationship is decided.

When Neuroses Fit Together… or Collide

Some encounters immediately generate a tremendous amount of tension.

Jealousy.Fear of losing the other person.The need for control.Emotional dependency.Punitive silences.Unspoken expectations.Repeated disappointments.A constant need for reassurance.Fear of abandonment.Fear of commitment.The need for fusion, followed by the need to escape.

And sometimes, what looks like extraordinary passion is simply the highly effective meeting of two systems of wounds that recognize one another.

One person needs reassurance; the other needs to feel indispensable. One fears being abandoned; the other fears being engulfed. One pursues; the other withdraws. The more one pursues, the more the other withdraws; the more the other withdraws, the more the first pursues.

Each person may then feel that the intensity of what is happening proves the importance of the relationship.

But intensity is not necessarily a sign of compatibility.

Sometimes, it is simply a sign that the two neuroses are stimulating one another.

Lightness as an Indicator

Conversely, there are encounters that are surprisingly simple.

We talk.We listen to each other.We understand each other.We can be ourselves.There is no need to calculate.There is no need to provoke jealousy in the other person to test their attachment.We do not spend our time interpreting a message, a silence, or a change in tone.We do not constantly feel the need for reassurance.

The relationship can breathe.

This does not mean that there will never be disagreement, sadness, or frustration. A living relationship necessarily contains moments of tension.

But there is a fundamental difference between an occasional conflict that can be worked through and a relationship that seems to constantly feed the fundamental wounds of both people.

That is why one of the best indicators of genuine compatibility might be something very simple: lightness.

A sense of naturalness.

An understanding that does not require constant effort.

We do not constantly wonder how we should behave. We do not try to become someone else in order to be loved. We do not need to manipulate the relationship in order to maintain the bond.

There is simply room for two people.

The Absence of Unnecessary Suffering

The quality of a relationship is therefore measured not only by the positive emotions it produces, but also by what it does not produce.

The absence of repetitive and destructive conflicts.

The absence of chronic jealousy.

The absence of compulsive attachment.

The absence of dependency.

The absence of impossible expectations.

The absence of systematic disappointment.

The absence of that strange feeling that one must constantly “work” on the relationship just to make it function.

Of course, every relationship sometimes requires work. But there is a difference between taking care of a relationship and constantly repairing a deep incompatibility.

In the first case, the effort is occasional and creative.

In the second, it becomes structural.

And when a relationship constantly requires one person to transform themselves simply to tolerate the other person's way of functioning, something deserves to be looked at honestly.

Some Neuroses Are Much Deeper

We must nevertheless distinguish ordinary human rigidity from much deeper psychological structures.

Some patterns are so rigid, so defensive, or so far removed from a sufficiently stable perception of reality that they can make a relationship extraordinarily difficult. Without making any diagnosis here — and without confusing neurosis with psychosis, which are clinically distinct concepts — there are situations in which psychological suffering is so profound that the other person's good will is simply no longer enough.

In such cases, the relationship can become what one might call a “chronicle of a failure foretold.”

Not because the other person is bad.

Not because it is impossible to love someone who is deeply wounded.

But because a relationship cannot, by itself, accomplish the psychological work that a person sometimes needs to undertake for themselves.

Love does not necessarily replace awareness.

Patience does not always replace inner work.

Understanding the other person cannot indefinitely compensate for their inability to look at their own mechanisms.

When wounds are very deep and a person refuses to acknowledge them, the other person often ends up having to adapt more and more. They have to walk on eggshells, anticipate reactions, reduce their own needs, change their behavior, and give up certain freedoms in order to avoid triggering the other person's insecurities.

But a relationship cannot function this way indefinitely.

One neurosis cannot always align itself with another neurosis.

Sometimes it can.

When both people possess enough awareness, flexibility, and capacity for introspection, their vulnerabilities can even become opportunities for growth.

But when one of the two systems is deeply rigid, it becomes extremely difficult for the other person to compensate indefinitely.

That is when genuine inner work may become necessary.

To Meet Someone Is Also to Meet Everything They Carry

Perhaps this is what a meeting ultimately is.

It is never simply “me” meeting “you.”

It is my story meeting your story.

My fears meet your fears.

My defenses meet your defenses.

My expectations meet your expectations.

My wounds sometimes meet yours.

And behind all of this, two human beings are trying to create something that goes beyond their conditioning.

From a Buddhist perspective, we could take the idea even further: what we call “I” may not be as solid as we imagine. We are made up of conditions, habits, perceptions, and attachments that are constantly changing. The ego is therefore not necessarily an enemy to be defeated, but rather a set of mechanisms to be observed with awareness.

In the same way, speaking of “neurosis” can become a way of demystifying and de-dramatizing the human condition.

We are all, to different degrees, conditioned beings.

We all have our blind spots.

Our sensitivities.

Our automatic patterns.

Our stories.

The question, therefore, is not who is “neurotic” and who is not.

The question is rather how imprisoned we are by our own way of functioning.

And perhaps genuine compatibility does not consist in finding someone who has no neurosis.

That would probably be impossible.

It consists instead in meeting someone whose way of functioning can engage with ours; someone with whom our vulnerabilities do not need to turn into warfare; someone with whom the relationship retains enough space, freedom, and flexibility.

Because ultimately, perhaps the most beautiful kind of encounter is not one in which two people become dependent upon each other.

It is the one in which two complex stories can simply exist together, without constantly needing to repair, control, or possess one another.

Two human beings.

Two stories.

Two egos, perhaps.

Two neuroses, certainly.

But sufficiently aware and sufficiently flexible that, when they meet, the relationship becomes lighter than the wounds that shaped them.