The rise of one-sided relationships

The rise of one-sided relationships is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. We are seeing it it in the growing phenomenon of intimate relationships with chatbots. We are seeing it in the rise of misogyny, more recently exposed in Louis Theroux’s latest documentary on the manosphere where men who want relationships with women entirely on their own terms. Whether the other person is treated as an object, ordered around, or replaced with a digital simulation altogether, the dynamic is driven by a rudimentary and infantile way of relating where only one person’s needs and wants matters. 

It is not only personal relationships

We see it more and more in contemporary politics. Democratic values increasingly eroded by political leaders acting as big children, with no accountability to the people they are supposed to represent. The populist and authoritarian agendas they pursue have little regard or respect for human rights and values. Populists, demagogues, cult leaders, charismatic figures of all kinds share one fundamental characteristic: an indifference to the real needs of those around them. They manipulate their voters and followers like they treat everyone – as pawns used to get needs met and nothing else.

What relationships actually require

As psychotherapists, we work with relationships, and healthy relationships are mutual. Both people exist, two subjectivities meet, and needs are negotiated. Relationships require communication, compromise, self-reflection and growth. They are frustrating, at times painful and difficult, but also joyful, rewarding and loving. The lack of mutuality and ability to relate makes us lonely, even if we surround ourselves with people. Learning to relate requires emotional and psychological work. There is no shortcut to any of that.

Vulnerability and the absence of direction

We live in a world where many people are adrift, without purpose, meaning or a clear sense of direction. Into that vacuum step the extremists, religious zealots, populists, cult leaders and charismatic figures who claim to know the way, and say so with such conviction that it becomes deeply enticing to anyone at a vulnerable crossroads. They profit from people’s lack of direction, from gaps in education, and from susceptibility to misinformation and to power. In a way this is nothing new – suppressive regimes and cults have existed since the beginning of time. The worrying factor is the rise of increasingly sophisticated technologies we can’t regulate and control alongside the dark side of humanity.

The dark side of technology

The rise of technology was supposed to be a good thing – a way to make life more efficient and to better the world. And in theory, I believe it can be. But there is a profound darkness running alongside it, and it is most visible in the capitalisation of human emotion and human vulnerability. Unfortunately, these technologies are not simply tools. They are becoming substitutes for real relationships.

A relationship with a bot demands nothing. No self-awareness. No growth. No real reckoning with oneself or with another person. The rise of social media, and now AI, has been fuelling a certain kind of collective delusion that one can be anything, have anything, and do anything without accountability to anyone. A socially condoned narcissistic bubble where anything or anyone that comes up against the deluded self becomes a hindrance and is therefore vilified. It is easier to use people, to disengage when it suits, to pursue whatever serves you best. And the disturbing reality is that people amass enormous wealth doing exactly this – monetising, capitalising, using. Is this the society we wish to live in?

A society of splits

What we are witnessing, across all of these phenomena, is a deepening of psychological splits – a defence mechanism, often characterised by black-and-white or dichotomous thinking, where individuals have developmentally failed to integrate positive and negative qualities of their primary caregivers into a cohesive self. This leads to an “all-good” or “all-bad” worldview rather than a more nuanced one where self and others are seen as both gratifying and frustrating – a more realistic take on the world and on relationships.

Rather than a move towards integration, understanding, tolerance, and the negotiation of multiple needs, views and opinions, society is becoming more black and white, more divided, more immature. We are yo-yoing between extremes, on both the left and the right.

Psychological and emotional maturity involves the capacity to hold complexity and to tolerate difference. It takes a certain degree of skill to be able to communicate across disagreement. To live with people who hold different worldviews, belief systems, and  opinions and to do so without needing to destroy or dismiss what we cannot immediately understand or agree with. This is what integration looks like and this is what we are moving away from.

The role of psychotherapy

Psychotherapists have a fundamental role to play here. Our work with people is precisely the work of reducing psychological splits: the work towards psychic integration and emotional maturity; the work of mourning what never was and relinquishing fantasy in favour of reality. Not a perfect reality, but reality as it is. That is what growing up looks like, both personally and collectively.

At its best, our profession seeks to do the exact opposite of exploiting human emotion: we try to help people tolerate it, understand it, and navigate it. We do not facilitate or collude with one-sided or narcissistic relating. We sit with the complexity of being human and try to help people find their way back to genuine connection with themselves and with others. In a world that is increasingly splitting, that work has never been more important.