Isn't the notion that your SO has to complete you utterly stupid?

mini me completes me

There is a difference between expecting to find someone to complete you and just finding someone that does complete you. Perhaps complete isn’t quite the right word for it though. My husband and I balance each other out. We can do everything we need to do on our own (and were doing it before we met), but it’s much different when we are doing it as a team. It comes easier when we are working together toward a common goal than when we were working individually on our goals.

I don’t know anyone with this stated expectation, and I think anyone who thinks they can define a relationship’s goal so simplistically has never known love.

I agree with @ Hypocrisy_Central. In my opinion, the strongest relationships exist between those people who do not look for / have someone who completes them but rather compliments them. If you are not a complete person as you are by yourself….. well, you have some issues to work out with yourself.

Just my humble opinion.

Yes, it is the greatest relationship lie of all time.
If you are not happy and whole by yourself nobody else can give that to you.

Complementary neuroses are the stuff most relationships are made of under that condition. lol

I think it is romantic drivel.

I agree with @Coloma – I have always searched for men with complimentary (with an i not an e!) neuroses. I really need someone with Felixness to offset my Oscarness. (Anyone who is too young to know Felix and Oscar, just google it.)

I dont know. I mean I think im a pretty bitchin person as it is, but my SO makes me so much better of a person overall. She drives and inspires me to want and do more with my life.

I’ve never believed those words were right on to what people were feeling. My take on it is by investing your time so intimately with another person, learning them, compromising (because no people are identical in their views and experiences), maturing in ways together- that’s what pushes us to learn more about ourselves as individuals and so it feels like it’s that other person that “completes” us when in fact they probably just tap facets of us not used all the time or explored yet.

No, not really. The ladies I have “dated” have all brought with them something that made my life richer…and yes…more complete. That is the big bonus in life meeting people that can enrich your life especially the ones you choose as a soul mate. ;)

Right, make your LIFE richer, but they don’t complete YOU.

2 halves don’t make a whole in relationship, they make 2 halves that are disappointed someone else didn’t make their incomplete feelings go away. haha

Marriage works best as a partnership. In a partnership, neither party “completes” the other, but they both bring strengths to the partnership that the other one might not have had. Thus the whole is stronger than the parts.

Would you have a friend “complete” you? Of course not. Yet that is exactly what your SO should be… your best friend.

It’s not that simple, but in a way I do feel that my boyfriend “completes” me. In the sense that when I’m with him I feel my best. I feel my happiest, most motivated, carefree. So I’m not “incomplete” without him, I’m just…..less.

My husband completes me…..at least once a week! (Wah wah waaaahhh) but seriously….it i love my husband and our life and wouldn’t want it any other way, but I am my own person, and wouldn’t be able to accept it if someone loved me as an” incomplete” person

I doubt the average person is represented on this site. I don’t find it hard to believe that many, if not most, people need another person in their life to feel complete.

I concur with the complimenting, rather than completing, idea. People in a strong relationship have attributes that interact well with the other person’s, but that doesn’t mean they’re incomplete without that.

So, if someone is incomplete without another person, are they not a full person? Does that mean they can’t vote? Maybe that’ll be the next big civil rights discussion.

Complete? What’s that? I don’t think we’re complete until we’re dead.

Now I’ve gone looking for a woman who could fix me, but that’s different from completing me, and it is a fool’s errand. If there is any fixing to be done, I’m the only one who could do it. However, at the time, I didn’t see any possible way of fixing myself, so I wanted help. I thought love would do it. It may have helped, but in the end the holes in me could only be filled by some kind of magic—a magic that probably had more to do with the mood stabilizers and the SSRIs than anything else.

All I can say is that if your SO has to complete you, then it seems to me the murder rate would be skyrocketing.

The only place you can find completeness is inside yourself. Looking for that in another person doesn’t do either of you any favors.

@Haleth

Agreed. It places an enormous burden on the other person to try and live up to that expectation of “completing” them. It often results in the other person being driven away.