When We Borrow and Lend Self in Relationships
- Leila & Devana
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 11 hours ago
SteadyCore Blog
These articles are for educational purposes only and are not a substitute for personalized guidance from a qualified mental health professional. The stories are fictional, created to illustrate common relationship patterns.
A Bowen Family Systems Perspective
Peter's phone buzzes on a Tuesday evening. His sister Grace's text message reads: Try turning it off and on first. If that doesn't work, maybe give Peter a call. He reads it twice, a little thrown.
Not because a printer problem is hard, it isn't. Because it's been years since something of their mother's landed on his phone before it landed on Grace's, and some part of him has quietly assumed that's just how it is now, that Grace is the reliable one and he's the one who shows up for dinner and not much else. He still remembers their mother's wifi password, though, an old habit from a life where he used to be the one who set that kind of thing up.
His first instinct is to text back, Grace, you've got this, you always do. His thumb hovers there a second, close to sending it, close to handing the moment right back to her the way he usually does. He doesn't send it. He calls his mother instead, half wondering if he's about to prove himself right, or wrong.
How This Pattern Can Develop
Patterns like this usually develop gradually, often becoming more visible during periods of increased anxiety, after a loss, illness, financial strain, or another significant life change. One person moves toward responsibility while another steps back. The immediate problem gets solved.
Bowen family systems theory describes this as a reciprocal process: the two positions are not independent but mutually reinforcing, each tending to call the other forward. Over time it becomes the relationship's usual way of functioning. Bowen called this an overfunctioning and underfunctioning pattern; terms that describe a relationship process rather than personality or ability.
What organizes the pattern is chronic, background anxiety rather than any single event. Their father's death may have made it easier to see, but significant life events tend to reveal these patterns rather than create them.
Neither position is comfortable for long. The overfunctioner carries increasing pressure and may experience more physical and emotional symptoms over time. The underfunctioner has fewer opportunities to bring forward their own thinking and capability. And the same person may overfunction in one relationship and underfunction in another, these positions are not fixed and not linked to gender.
The Call He Almost Didn't Make
Peter sits with his phone for a second before dialing his mother's number. He can't remember the last time he walked her through anything technical. Part of him wonders if she'll be annoyed it's him instead of Grace.
She isn't. She's mildly surprised, then just glad for the help. The printer restart doesn't fix it. Neither does unplugging the router, his second idea, which he offers with less confidence than he'd like. There's a stretch, maybe ninety seconds, where his mother's patience audibly thins, and Peter feels the old, familiar pull to just say let me get Grace to call you back, the exit he's used a hundred times without noticing he was using it. He doesn't take it. He asks her to read him the error message instead, actually listens, and works it out one wrong guess at a time.
When he hangs up, his mother says, half-joking, "Since when do you handle the tech stuff?" It's meant lightly. It still lands somewhere. He doesn't have a real answer for her, or for himself, but he notices he isn't rushing to explain it away either.
He mentions it to Grace later, in passing. She says, "Thanks for that," and neither of them makes it bigger than it is. But Peter carries something out of that call he didn't expect to find there: it wasn't relief that the printer got fixed. It was the surprise of discovering he hadn't needed to be rescued from his own mother's frustration. He'd just needed to stay on the line.
Does This Sound Familiar?
You catch yourself waiting to see if someone else will handle something before you try. Tasks you used to do without thinking now feel like they need more effort or confidence than they used to. Part of you feels relieved when someone steps in first, and part of you feels a little sidelined by it, like being spared and being overlooked have started to feel like the same thing. You've started to doubt judgment you used to trust completely.
Underfunctioning doesn't always look like doing nothing, either. Sometimes it shows up as worry that pulls someone else in to reassure you. Sometimes it's being unable to make even a small decision without checking first. Bowen noted that it can also show up physically, in fatigue, recurring illness, or a general sense of not being well, as the body reflects what the relationship system is organizing.
None of this means you've become less capable. It usually means capability that isn't regularly used starts to feel unfamiliar, which is a very different thing from actually losing it.
What Begins to Shift
This isn't about refusing help or insisting on handling everything alone. It's about noticing the moments you're waiting rather than deciding, and staying on the line a little longer before reaching for the easy exit.
Bowen observed that change in this kind of pattern usually begins with one person becoming more curious about their own functioning, rather than waiting for the other to shift first. Left alone, this pattern tends to grow rather than stay the same size, the gap between the two roles widening under more stress, not less.
With attention, the hesitation gets a little shorter each time it's tested. Tasks that felt unfamiliar start to feel merely rusty, and then not even that, and the quiet belief that less practice means less worth starts to lose its grip too.
A Couple of Common Questions
Does this mean I've been lazy or avoiding responsibility?
Not usually. This pattern tends to develop quietly, in families where someone else consistently steps in first, not through any conscious choice to do less.
If my sibling is happy to keep handling things, why should anything change?
Sometimes nothing needs to. But it's worth asking whether the arrangement still leaves room for both people to grow, or whether it's settled somewhere neither of you actually chose.
If this pattern feels familiar, individual counselling can offer a space to explore relationship patterns, family influences, and ways of staying connected to your own thinking while remaining connected to the people who matter.
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