When Adaptation Becomes Erosion

One of the gifts of being a therapist is that sometimes our clients mirror something within ourselves, allowing our own lives to become more conscious through the work we do.

For many years, adaptability was part of my self-identity structure. Think about it, when you move continents to immigrate all on your own, you have to be able to adapt – quickly; so that you can read the environment, reinterpret, minimize friction, adjust expectations, have a sense of belonging, and function in a brand new culture. It is necessary for survival, and I seemed to have that survival strength in my blood, so I was quite proud of myself.

Until this question arises: At what point does adaptation stop being wisdom and start becoming erosion?

When adaptation becomes a way of being, the gradual normalization of chronic adaptation can become compromise at the cost of your own desires. And automatic adaptation can also be self-abandonment wearing the costume of maturity. Adaptability without boundaries can become infinite accommodation. This can show up in your work place, your friendship, or your personal relationship. And infinite accommodation has a hidden cost: the self becomes increasingly difficult to detect.

A recent new client of mine came to see me devastated. She has been with her partner for 20 years. Over the past 10 years, they were having less and less sex. It was not a lack of desires on her end. Her partner rarely initiated it. And at times, he was having erectile dysfunction. So, of course, she didn’t want to pressure him. “I was trying so hard to understand him that I found excuses for him in my mind, like he’s too tired, he’s getting old.” She adapted, for many years, rarely expressing her own desires. A few occasional indirect mentions never seemed to go anywhere.

Can you imagine the shock when she discovered, that for many years, not only did her partner constantly watch pornography, browse escort listings, contact them, but also occasionally hire them?

That was when even her deeply conditioned adaptability reached its limit.

What first helps us survive uncertainty and isolation can, over time, become dangerous. The ability to adapt can get so strong that it overrides the ability to accurately register deprivation. How can you keep adjusting to conditions you never truly chose?
If you didn’t consciously choose it, it may not be true acceptance at all, but rather emotional anesthesia. Many couples live in such an anesthesia for years. “We don’t talk about sex anymore, so we find and live in our own interests.”

But the nervous system keeps score. I wondered how much of her own desire, aliveness, wanting, and hunger for intimacy was suppressed, internally getting quieter and quieter, even though for years she was still smiling, managing and the relationship was still functioning.
Socially speaking, Adaptation is normally rewarded – “understanding”, “mature”, “resilient”, “low maintenance”, “practical”. Listening to her, I began noticing how deeply adaptation had shaped not only her relationship, but also my understanding of strength.

How many of us have built a life around accommodation? How much do we adapt to an emotional architecture that may not truly nourish us? How many of us choose from “I can adapt” instead of “I actually want this”?

A person can survive almost anything psychologically if they are intelligent and adaptive enough. But survival capacity can become misleading evidence: “I handled it, therefore it must be acceptable.”

Not necessarily.

One of the harder truths in long-term relationships is that people often do not cross their deepest boundaries dramatically. They cross them gradually through repeated accommodation.

A thousand little “understandables.”

And because each adjustment seems understandable in isolation, the larger pattern can remain invisible for years.
I wondered what might have happened if my client had asked herself, at one point, “What does this relationship actually become if I stop adapting around it?”

That question can be frightening if, like me, adaptation is one of your core competencies, maybe even part of your identity and pride.
But there is a developmental stage beyond adaptation – discernment, which asks:

• What genuinely nourishes me?
• What merely functions?
• What costs too much life force?
• What am I denying from myself?
• What have I normalized because I can tolerate it?

Traditionally, therapy can become focused on whether a client should leave, stay, forgive, repair, or reshape the relationship. In our work, we first moved the centre of gravity away from emotional management of her partner back toward herself, shifting from “What preserves the relationship at all costs?” into “What preserves me?”

Yes, the betrayal happened. Yes, it matters. But she does not need to build her future around ongoing injury.

When remaining inside the structure costs too much of oneself, either the structure will have to adapt to the self, or the structure dissolves.

After the session, I sat quietly for a long moment. There is something profound about rediscovering the self beneath years of accommodation — and allowing her to exist again.