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Do you ever feel as if you’re trapped in the web of your own personal family 
soap opera, unable to make a move without inviting disapproval or 
“wounding” someone? Have you ever thought you escaped your past, only 
to find yourself caught in dramas with spouses, children, friends, or 
coworkers? Expressing your individuality or differentiating while remaining 
close to your family can break this distressing cycle, but this is not easy. 
Recognizing how expressions of individuality become stalled can help you 
avoid problems:

• Early in life, you have an outer, false self that keeps you attached 
  and in harmony with those on whom you depend. This false self is 
  capable of acting, pretending, and doing whatever is necessary for 
  the sake of survival.

• Beneath the outer layer is a solid self that strives to be unique and 
  self-governing. When your caretakers are threatened by differences, 
  you may feel unsafe shedding your outer, false self. Your priority 
  becomes maintaining the bonds of survival by fusing or acting as 
  though you are one with others.

• At some point, the desire for independence pushes from within. An 
  emotional cutoff can happen in an impulsive burst. At this stage, you 
  may become rebellious, withdrawn, a relationship nomad, “ruggedly 
  independent,” or you may move a great distance from home.

• Surprisingly, attempts to fuse with the first appealing person often 
  follow an emotional cutoff. Initially, the new relationship masquerades 
  as freedom. Eventually, the desire for independence surfaces, 
  causing another emotional cutoff. The more intense the cutoff, the 
  more likely it is that a cycle of fusing and cutting off will repeat itself in 
  other relationships.

DIFFERENTIATION IN MARRIAGE

Courtship is usually the most open period in a relationship, when people 
express many of their thoughts, feelings, and fantasies. However, after 
marriage, each spouse becomes sensitive to subjects that upset the other 
and avoidance of differences begins. When the urge to merge conflicts with 
the reality of differences, problems develop. Clinging, pleading, 
helplessness, aloofness, rigidity, arguing, and possessiveness, all indicate 
anxiety about differences. There are three ways that friction in the struggle 
for oneness is handled:

1. Dominance/yielding: One spouse becomes dominant and appears 
   rigid, and the other adapts and becomes pliant. Neither person is in 
   touch with his or her true needs. One is constantly giving up self-
   awareness and the other is overextended. In times of stress, the 
   yielding spouse loses the ability to function and becomes physically 
   sick, depressed, or acts out impulsively. If the dysfunctional spouse 
   dies or takes a healthy stance, the rigid spouse can collapse into the 
   dysfunctional position. In a healthy marriage, the dominant and 
   yielding roles are not fixed. Spouses can alternate roles with ease, 
   and both are comfortable assuming the leadership of the family.

2. Marital conflict: The outer, false selves of both spouses are rigid 
   and resistant to differences. The couple alternates between periods 
   of intense closeness and periods of distance and conflict. During the 
   latter, divorce can occur. Sometimes, conflict evolves from 
   dominant/yielding patterns. The compliant spouse refuses to 
   continue in the role and becomes rigid. The couple may be able to 
   bypass a divorce crisis if one spouse begins to express individuality 
   without being influenced by the other’s distress about changes in 
   long-standing patterns.  Murray Bowen’s ideas on differentiation are 
   summarized in Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (Jason Aronson, 
   1978).

3. Triangulation and projection: Spouses avoid differences and 
   conflict by forming alliances with children or by focusing on 
   “disturbances” in a vulnerable third party. The conflict between the 
   parents is then displaced or projected onto the emotional state of the 
   child, as the following examples show:

• A mother who does not feel sufficient levels of closeness with her 
  husband tries to meet her emotional needs with her child. The child 
  exhibits the mother’s rejection anxiety by being fearful of school.

• If a father is missing intimacy, he may overfocus on his daughter. The 
  mother supports this bond, as it enables her to avoid anxieties that 
  closeness triggers. At puberty, “Daddy’s girl” takes drastic action to 
  break away through an unwanted pregnancy.

Sometimes, all three patterns of domination, conflict, and triangulation can 
operate to form a very complex system. When tension is great, other 
people get involved to form interlocking triangles. Social service agencies 
can even become entangled with a family during crises.

DIFFERENTIATION IN “RECREATED” FAMILIES

Those who cut off from parents and later from spouses often seek intense 
relationships at work and in social settings. These environments can 
provide a “safe” means for satisfying emotional needs without the demands 
of intimacy. Gossiping, alliances, and coalitions in these groups imitate the 
triangles that occur in families. Expressing opinions by saying  “I agree with 
. . . that . . .” or siding with one of two conflicting parties suggests that 
triangulation is taking place. You can differentiate in such organizations by 
having some differing views while remaining involved with the group.

BECOMING YOUR OWN PERSON

Despite an obstacle course of emotional cutoff, conflict, and projection, 
there are young people who find a way to develop their own views and 
make independent decisions. In adolescence, some denial of attachment to 
parents and fusion with peers is necessary, and the more differences a 
family tolerates, the smoother the journey out of the nest will be. In 
adulthood, the differentiated individual can have close, intimate 
relationships while pursuing outside interests. Regardless of the group or 
relationship you are in, you can avoid alliances and triangles so that you 
can be tethered to loved ones without being tied.