The Space Between Us: Why Relationships Become Stuck

Some relational moments seem to be surprisingly familiar to many of us, where, despite both people wanting to feel closer, clearer, or more connected, the conversation begins to move in a direction that neither really intended. One person may find themselves explaining more than they meant to, trying to communicate something increasingly carefully or intensely, while the other begins to retreat, become quieter, or struggle to stay present in the interaction. At other times, one person may move closer and closer in an attempt to feel understood, while the other experiences an equally strong movement to create distance, not necessarily because they care less, but because closeness itself has begun to feel difficult to stay in.

These moments can feel intensely personal while they are happening. It can seem self-evident that the difficulty lies in what one person is saying, or in what the other person is failing to understand. Often, there is a powerful feeling that if only we could explain ourselves more clearly, find better language, remain calmer, or finally say the thing we have been trying to say all along, then the interaction would settle, and both people would leave feeling more met.

And yet there are times when the opposite begins to stand out. The recognition that different conversations, and sometimes entirely different relationships, can begin to take on a strangely familiar shape, with each person gradually occupying positions that feel increasingly difficult to step out of, despite neither consciously choosing them. It is often here that attention begins to move away from the content of the conversation itself and toward a question of whether something else may be happening within the relationship. From these positions, we may find ourselves projecting onto others: no one ever understands me; all my partners end up like this; all (insert gender identity!) are difficult/over emotional/selfish, etc.

When relationships become smaller than either person intended

One of the more interesting things about difficult relational experiences is that they rarely begin with two people deciding to misunderstand one another. More often, they begin with two people trying very hard to maintain a connection while responding to very different internal experiences, and over time, the range of possible responses gradually narrows.

Curiosity can begin to give way to certainty, and listening becomes increasingly clouded by anticipation. The interaction slowly becomes about what each person needs in order to remain emotionally balanced within it, and without noticing, both people may begin responding less to each other and more to the positions they have found themselves occupying.

This is part of what Jessica Benjamin writes about in her thinking on intersubjectivity and complementarity. Rather than viewing difficult relational patterns as belonging entirely to one person or the other, she describes how relationships can begin to become organised into reciprocal positions, where one person gradually becomes the one who explains, reassures, pursues, or acts, while the other becomes the one who withdraws, resists, accommodates, or feels increasingly acted upon.

Her point is not that people permanently become these things, but that interactions themselves can begin to create conditions in which each person’s response unintentionally strengthens the other’s.

What makes this particularly difficult is that from inside the experience, these positions often feel completely justified. The person moving closer may experience themselves as trying not to lose connection. The person creating distance may experience themselves as trying not to lose themselves. Neither position is necessarily wrong. Yet together they can begin to produce a feeling of increasing deadlock, where both people leave feeling unseen despite trying very hard to remain understood.

Why understanding does not always resolve the feeling of being stuck

When relationships begin to feel painful, it is understandable that the instinct is often to increase effort, to become clearer, more persuasive, more open, or more articulate in the hope that enough understanding will finally create movement. Sometimes this does happen. But there are also moments where understanding alone seems strangely insufficient, where both people can intellectually recognise each other’s position and yet still feel disconnected.

Benjamin’s writing offers another possibility: she suggests that what we are often longing for is not necessarily agreement, validation, or even complete understanding, but the experience of remaining fully ourselves while continuing to feel connected to another person who is also allowed to remain separate. There are echoes of this in Esther Perel’s work, particularly in Mating in Captivity, where she returns repeatedly to the idea that closeness and separateness are not opposing forces in relationships but experiences that need to remain in movement with one another.

Benjamin describes one way of thinking about this through the idea of thirdness. Rather than understanding relationships only as an exchange between one person and another, thirdness refers to the emergence of a shared reflective space that neither person fully owns and neither person can entirely control. This is not compromise, stepping back from what matters, or arriving at a perfectly balanced middle ground. Instead, it describes moments where attention begins to move away from proving, persuading, defending, or withdrawing and toward becoming curious about the interaction itself.

From this position, the questions often begin to change as conversation becomes less directed towards who is right, who started it, or whose experience should carry more weight, and more interested in what is happening between two people that keeps pulling them into familiar positions. In this sense, thirdness is the idea, or arguably the skill, of holding the relationship itself as a third object to be curious about, not to control and win.

Further reading

These ideas are explored in the work of Jessica Benjamin and her writing on intersubjectivity, mutual recognition, complementarity, and thirdness. Her paper, Intersubjectivity, Thirdness and Mutual Recognition, offers a thoughtful introduction

https://terapia.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Reading-14-Jessica-Benjamin-Intersubjectivity.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com