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Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Yesterday, I wrote about the distinction between the Insurgent Left and the Progressive Establishment. Today, I want to continue trying to enrich people’s understanding of the Democratic Party factional landscape by drawing a distinction on the moderate side between Tactical Moderates and True Believers.
It can be a little hard to tell the difference because if you’re moderate for tactical reasons, you’re of course going to say that you’re a True Believer. And True Believers still believe in the tactical case for moderation and will make that case in an effort to gain support.
The distinction is often revealed only in the moment.
Abigail Spanberger had a somewhat moderate-ish profile as a House member from a blue-leaning purple district, and she ran for governor of Virginia on that profile and won. Virginia only allows governors to serve one term and is a solidly blue state on the federal level, so to whatever extent Spanberger has ambitions to become a senator or serve on a national ticket or in a cabinet, her incentive is to cater to the Progressive Establishment.
The fact that she is instead operating as a force of restraint against the Democratic legislature is thus a source of real frustration to a lot of Virginia Democrats. But I think she’s correct on the merits to raise doubts about mandating collective bargaining for local government employees.
When Sarah McBride went on “The Ezra Klein Show,” it seemed to me that she was trying to create space for a tactical retreat from an electorally indefensible line on trans women’s participation in competitive women’s sports. Martina Navratilova, by contrast, is trying to persuade Democrats that the left’s line on this is genuinely wrong.
I think that within reasonable bounds, tactical moderation is smart.
I do not agree with John Bel Edwards’s positions on guns or abortion, but it’s obviously the case that no candidate espousing progressive views on those topics would have won a gubernatorial election in Louisiana. It would’ve been great if he’d been persuaded to run for Senate. In general, I’d love to see Democrats nominate more politicians like that in the Deep South because it would create a chance to make progress on Medicaid expansion. Both parties’ decision to just write off huge swaths of the country as unwinnable is bad for America, and a renewed spirit of tactical moderation would bring real substantive benefits.
But I also think moderate Democrats are running on fumes in terms of what tactical moderation can accomplish. Expanding the tent in terms of red state recruiting is a totally reasonable agenda that I think even very left-wing people should see the merits of.
At the end of the day, though, if you want to capture the heart of the party, you need to make arguments that are grounded in conviction, and that means arguing on the merits.
Consider former Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Everyone who wasn’t completely addled understood that Democrats were wildly lucky to have a West Virginia Senate seat and that there was no way a conventional progressive could have won the 2012 and 2018 Senate races there.
But I think most progressives felt that Manchin was clearly drawing dead in terms of re-election in 2024 and what they wanted him to do in 2021–22 was YOLO it and vote for filibuster abolition and a sweeping progressive agenda.
And that really is the logic of tactical moderation.
Harry Reid had an old joke about Susan Collins, saying she’ll always be with us except when we need her vote. And there’s clearly something to this. Collins cast a totally inconsequential but highly salient “no” vote on Amy Coney Barrett right before her 2020 re-election, but she cast a consequential vote in favor of Brett Kavanaugh and many lower court judges earlier. She’s criticized or broken with Trump on a number of issues but never really collaborated with Democrats to meaningfully restrain him and clearly maintains a sufficiently cordial relationship with the White House that unlike John Cornyn, she never faced a serious MAGA challenger.
But it’s also true that Collins provided decisive votes in favor of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, and against Affordable Care Act repeal in 2017.
There’s probably just no such thing as a politician who at heart agrees with the base about everything but is also good enough at faking moderation to repeatedly win races in tough states like West Virginia and Maine.
So while it’s certainly coherent to appreciate a Manchin-style figure on a purely tactical level without agreeing with him on anything, I think it’s unrealistic to expect that actual politicians are just totally faking it.
Among other things, once you start playing the role of “guy who champions the interests of coal communities against the demands of green groups,” you’ll come to realize that the green groups are genuinely wrong about some things. At the end of the day, I think environmentalists are basically right about coal. But no advocacy community is right about everything, and there’s plenty the climate movement gets wrong. Most elected officials are not incentivized to delve too deeply into the merits of policy or to really scrutinize their coalition partners’ demands. But a Democrat from West Virginia is incentivized to find things the Progressive Establishment is wrong about, so over and above anything tactical, he’s likely to find genuine points of disagreement.
Personally, I think Manchin was wrong on the merits about some important stuff (notably the filibuster) but also substantially correct that the Build Back Better legislation that congressional leadership was pushing for was inflationary. His push to make Democratic climate efforts more focused on innovation and clean energy deployment and less focused on blocking pipelines was right on the merits. The country would be better off today if Democrats had embraced his permitting legislation more fulsomely.
The True Believers
All the way at the other end of the spectrum, you have Representative Ed Case of Hawaii.
Case is a formidable electoral over-performer. In the Split Ticket database, he overperformed by 17 points in 2018, 14 points in 2020, 18 points in 2022, and 17 points in 2024. He’s been in and out of the Blue Dog caucus over some internecine disputes that I don’t really understand, but he generally has a moderate Blue Dog-ish record. He faced a primary challenge this cycle that, for example, slammed him for supporting the SAVE America Act.
The thing about this is that while Case’s vote-getting skills are impressive, there is genuinely no tactical case for having a moderate in this seat.
Kamala Harris won his district 62 to 37. Elizabeth Warren is, as Slow Boring readers know, an absolutely terrible electoral underperformer. It just doesn’t matter because she represents Massachusetts. But Harris did slightly worse in Massachusetts statewide than she did in Case’s district.
Case is moderate because it’s what he believes, not because it’s what he needs to believe to win his district. He’s also lost several statewide primaries — once for governor, twice for Senate — in part because the Democratic Party primary voters of Hawaii generally prefer someone more progressive. In that light, it’s actually pretty impressive that he fended off an insurgent challenger this cycle, and it’s notable that he had to do so based purely on arguing the merits with no real electability case to be made.
Case is truly a one of one in this regard.
But I have absolutely talked to members of Congress who’ve told me they secretly wish they had purple seats so they could mod-out a bit more and then plead electability when the groups give them shit for it. I think this is mostly a mix of lying and self-deception, but it contains a grain of truth. Most people — even people who would describe themselves as quite progressive — have an issue or two where they break from the pack. But vanishingly few safe-seat members are like this. You don’t see many guys in a D+7 seat who espouse an idiosyncratic moderate position on something unless it’s closely related to home state or district politics.
But plenty of people have a heterodoxy or two they’re quietly stifling. There are also plenty of members who like to engage in what I’ve termed “dog-whistle moderation” or maybe meta-moderation, where they’ll speak in abstract terms about the need to meet voters where they are and change the Democratic Party’s brand and not be held hostage to extremists.
These types tend to complain a lot about the Insurgent Left in a way that doesn’t totally make sense. Iowa didn’t flip from being an Obama-Obama state to a Trump-Trump-Trump state because of Bernie Sanders (who, after all, was in the caucus the whole time). It flipped because mainstream Democrats got more left-wing.
But if you want to change that, you need less obfuscation and more Ed Case energy.
Beyond “the establishment”
Mike Zapler wrote a piece for Axios this week titled “The Democratic Establishment’s Ideas Deficit” in which he argues that “centrists” know what they’re against but have a harder time defining what they’re for.
I think he made some good points but also repeats a fundamental conceptual confusion about this.
If by “the Democratic establishment” you mean something like “the party’s congressional leaders and its past few presidential nominees,” then the reason they have a hard time defining what centrist agenda they favor is that they do not favor a centrist agenda.
It’s actually not even slightly difficult to specify the policy priorities of the Biden-Harris administration as advanced in Congress by Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. The Biden-Harris administration wanted to increase the tax revenue share of G.D.P. while making the tax code more progressive and to use the vast majority of that new revenue to increase spending on clean energy and social services. They believed in abortion rights and affirmative action in college admissions and a fairly crude approach to elite representational politics. On their watch, domestic oil-and-gas production reached new record levels but only after efforts to halt new leases were blocked in court. They believed in the neo-Brandeisian antitrust agenda and appointed its key leaders to top regulatory jobs.
The reason this agenda appears to be just “stuff progressives want, minus some of the stuff that progressives want” is because literally that’s what it is.
The establishment’s enthusiasm for progressive policy is tempered by electoral prudence, court losses, and leadership’s need to set priorities, but their agenda is genuinely a subset of the progressive agenda.
At the same time, an alternative centrist agenda is not hard to find or hard to understand. It would emphasize deficit reduction to put downward pressure on inflation and interest rates and prioritize clean energy abundance while championing domestic fossil-fuel production as superior to foreign production as long as demand for oil and gas exists. It would center ideas, like performance pay for teachers, that aim to increase the productivity of the public sector. It would be an agenda that balances the need for an inclusive economy with a healthy respect for the virtues of free markets and that takes seriously supply-side regulatory constraints on things like housing and health care. Add in the notions that crime control and border security are genuinely important state functions, not things to be engaged in reluctantly as a rearguard effort to avoid political harm.
These are not unfamiliar or secret ideas. They represent substantive moderation, a belief that the progressive NGO blob’s analysis of the major policy problems in American life is not really correct or adequate to the scale of the challenges the country is facing.
I understand why many moderate True Believers don’t want to be more assertive about these kinds of issues. They’re afraid of losing primaries to candidates to their left, and they think that articulating some loud and proud moderate positions is risky compared with minimizing the substantive differences and making a tactical case for moderation.
That analysis makes sense, to an extent, but I think that after 10 years of factional warfare, we can see that it’s a losing strategy for the long term. Nobody wins elections based on a pure politics of from-the-heart conviction. But opportunism and practicality can’t be your whole argument. Actually picking fights about important public-policy questions — not fights with the far left but fights with the establishment and the status quo — makes you seem more authentic and interesting. Picking these fights could also help push back against the sense that moderates practice an inherently dreary politics of limits and “no, you can’t do that.” I think there’s something genuinely inspiring about an agenda that uses abundant housing, rapid economic growth in blue states, and low crime to unlock new avenues of opportunity. It’s really shameful for New York and California to be worse at teaching kids to read than Mississippi, and it would be really amazing if the results achieved by their public school systems were commensurate with the resources invested.
Since moderates are better at winning votes, they’ll always have a tactical argument at their disposal. But I think there are a lot of closeted True Believers out there who right now are so afraid of losing to leftists that they forget to actually be different from the leftists they’re afraid of. That needs to change.
A few years ago, a Mount Pleasant parent named Joanna was out walking with her child when she noticed a familiar foe cropping up in the cracks of sidewalks and in her neighbors’ yards: the beautifully named but troublesome tree of heaven.
Joanna (who asked to go by her first name in the story for privacy reasons) not only recognized the young trees but understood the threat: her previous apartment building had been at risk of foundational damage due to the aggressive root system of a tree of heaven. She also knew that her neighbors had previously mobilized around other environmental projects, like Mount Pleasant Village's initiative to plant and care for native plants in the neighborhood.
“I thought, ‘Wow — we could actually do something,’” she said.
The tree of heaven, a deciduous tree identifiable by its smooth oval leaves with pointy ends and a distinctive burnt peanut butter scent, was originally brought to the United States from China back in the late 1700s and originally valued for its ability to grow nearly anywhere — even in urban areas that were hostile to other greenery. In the classic coming-of-age novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, the tree of heaven mirrors the resilience of the story’s young female protagonist. “It would be considered beautiful,” reads the book, “except that there are too many of it.”
That is certainly the case in D.C. The city’s tree of heaven problem is “pretty bad,” says Jeff Stottlemyer, ecological landscaping lead at Swamp Rose Co-op, a local native plant nursery and landscaping company. While it was once prized as a tree that could provide shade in urban settings, the tree is now mostly known as a hindrance.
“It establishes itself and puts on a lot of vegetative growth very quickly,” said Stottlemeyer. “The biggest long-term threat that they pose is actually just making it harder for the native plants that are so critical for our local ecosystems and, in particular, our local food webs ... to grow and thrive.”
The tree is a prolific reproducer — a single female tree of heaven can drop over 300,000 seeds in a single year. Because of this, “the population [of trees of heaven in D.C.] is widespread and increasing,” a representative of the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) said in an email to the 51st.
Trees of heaven are also the preferred host of the pesky spotted lanternfly, an invasive insect that can lay many more eggs if it’s feeding on a tree of heaven, as compared to other tree species.
After spotting the trees of heaven in Mount Pleasant, Joanna, along with her husband, began researching the basics of controlling this invasive species from Penn State Extension's website. The most effective time of year to take trees of heaven down, they learned, was in late summer and early fall, because that’s when the trees move nutrients down into their roots — a perfect time to soak up herbicides.
In summer 2024, Joanna reached out to her neighbors to see if anyone would be interested in using a herbicide mix on the trees in their yards. A dozen responded yes, including 31-year resident of Mount Pleasant Sheila Krumholz, who learned from Joanna that her yard had a mature tree of heaven. “I feel terrible, because it was spreading for a long time before I realized what it was,” she said.
Krumholz and other neighbors had concerns about the use of herbicides — understandably so, as these chemicals can pose serious hazards to human health and harm surrounding wildlife. But in the case of trees of heaven, they may be the only option for gardeners looking to slow the spread. “There are a relatively small set of invasive species where responsible targeted application of herbicide is our suggested method,” said Stottlemyer. “Tree of heaven is one of those.”
Trees of heaven send out deep roots that can sprout up from the earth as far as 50 feet away. Pulling out a smaller root is virtually impossible, said Stottlemeyer. Even trying to cut it down will trigger a tree of heaven to produce upwards of a dozen more root sprouts — making the problem even worse.
DOEE also pointed out that the research-based approach for removing tree of heaven is by using a systemic herbicide, although the representative explained that “any herbicide must be used in strict accordance with its EPA-approved label.” D.C. residents are allowed to apply a general-use pesticide to their own property without a license. “For larger trees, residents are best served by hiring a licensed pesticide applicator or a certified arborist,” the representative noted.
Stottlemyer recommends adding tracking dye to herbicides, which gives the solution a dark blue hue so that it’s easy to tell where it’s been applied. He also strongly recommends that people use personal protective equipment, like nitrile gloves and protective eye equipment, to prevent any contact with chemicals.
Ultimately, thoughtful application of an herbicide seemed like a fair trade-off to Joanna and her neighbors, if it meant the opportunity to tackle both trees of heaven and spotted lanternflies. Working in their backyard, Joanna’s husband made an herbicide solution using triclopyr, one of the chemicals recommended by Penn State as posing “little risk” to surrounding plants from root uptake. He also added a bit of diesel to help the mixture absorb into the stems. The group of neighbors then applied the solution in small doses, using a paintbrush or a small spray bottle, to the bases of the young trees of heaven on their property.
“It took five minutes to do one spritz on the half a dozen very small plants in my yard,” said Joanna.
Joanna and her neighbors have seen some success in their efforts. In the trees she targeted last year, none returned back in the same spots — though because of their ability to reproduce an overwhelming amount of seeds, and because of their wide-spreading root system, she acknowledges taking them down in large numbers is a bit of a Sisyphean task.
Krumholz was able to successfully remove the mature tree of heaven in her yard by using the “hack and squirt” method: a more intensive strategy where cuts are made into the tree and then filled with an herbicide. The next year, she hired an arborist to confirm it was dead and finally remove it from her property. She was hopeful that would take care of the root suckers on her property — but to her disappointment, they still cover her yard.
“I had hoped that by killing the tree, I was killing the roots running from the tree,” said Krumholz. But she knows that the root suckers in her yard may come from another source. “They're all over the neighborhood.”
Luckily, Joanna and her squad are back at it this season. She says there’s been significantly more interest: 30 people are now in the neighborhood group chat dedicated to talking about the trees and where they’re spotting them. “Everybody's sharing these strategies, and it's a really great way to both tackle issues that you can't tackle on your own,” Krumholz said. “And it's a great way to meet your neighbors as well.”
Boundaries are frequently framed as a kind of interpersonal cure-all for modern life, an answer to everything from burnout and people-pleasing to family conflict and toxic relationships.
But boundaries aren’t just another pop psychology term making the rounds on social media. They’re a foundational tool for all kinds of relationships.
“Part of being in community with others means people will ask things beyond your capacity or behave in ways that rub you the wrong way,” said Naiylah Warren, a doctor of couple and family therapy. Setting boundaries can help us communicate our needs, protect ourselves from being taken advantage of and ward off interpersonal resentment, she explained.
However, common misconceptions can keep us from using them effectively. We spoke to experts about what many people misunderstand about boundaries, what healthy ones look like and how to put them into practice.
What we get wrong about boundaries
People often think of boundaries as a means of controlling someone else’s behavior, said Minaa B., licensed therapist and author of “Owning Our Struggles.” Telling your mother-in-law which topics are off-limits. Asking your co-worker to stop texting about work on the weekends. Insisting the person you’re casually dating initiates every other hangout.
While these may be reasonable changes to want, they’re requests, not boundaries. “A request is when you ask someone to do something for you or to stop a certain behavior,” explained Minaa, whose legal name is Jessmina Archbold but goes by Minaa B. professionally. “A boundary is what you’re going to do if that request is not honored.” Think: leaving the room when she brings it up, not replying until Monday on Slack, and stepping back from inconsistent communicators.
According to Minaa, people can mistake the request part of the equation for the boundary itself and get frustrated when that alone doesn’t work. But without a consequence, people aren’t always motivated to change old habits and patterns.
Some individuals may also have a negative view of boundaries in general, Minaa and Warren point out, considering them a sign that either there’s a problem in the relationship or someone has screwed up.
But at their best, boundaries help us navigate everyday differences and lead to stronger connections and deeper understanding. “We have to get a little more comfortable with asserting our unique preferences and needs instead of assuming that other people are supposed to know better,” Minaa said.
The makings of a good boundary
Setting an effective boundary means focusing on what’s within your control — which can be more than you might think. “You can control your participation in a particular dynamic, the access that people have to you, how much you disclose, how you respond to someone else and how much you’ll put up with before walking away,” Warren said. “What you cannot control is other people.”
Sometimes boundaries can go unspoken, Minaa said. For example, you can decide not to answer calls or texts after 9 p.m. without making a public service announcement. Or you can make a request (such as to call earlier in the evening) while leaving the boundary itself implied (that you won’t pick up otherwise).
That said, it’s often easiest, kindest or most effective to make your wants and needs clear. This can be in the moment (“I’m actually not a fan of nicknames, if you could avoid calling me that”), or escalating to a larger conversation if someone pushes back or doesn’t listen. (“I’ve asked you a few times now to use my full name — if you do it again, I’ll have to cut our conversations short.”)
In some healthy relationships, boundaries could be more of a conversation than an ultimatum. “Everybody is shaped by their experiences and their environments, so there are going to be times when you and someone else have different opinions about what is normal and acceptable,” Minaa said, noting that both parties should be free to express their points of view and boundaries. Then it’s up to both of you to decide how to respond to any mismatch.
Tips for setting better boundaries
If you want to get better at expressing your personal limits, here are a few strategies experts recommend.
Repeat yourself as needed
If a boundary needs repeating, it’s not always a sign someone is being malicious or intentionally disregarding your wishes. “If you’ve been operating one way and then introduce a boundary that changes the dynamic, it’s going to be new for the person on the other end, and they might need time to adjust,” Minaa said. “Sometimes we have to say things more than once for someone to really get it.”
Minaa recommended using simple, firm phrases such as, “I’ve already told you how I feel about this — my stance hasn’t changed,” or, “Like I said, I’m going to have to step away when you talk to me like that.” According to Minaa, it can even be helpful to question why they keep crossing the line with something like, “Did you forget I asked you not to do that, or are you hoping my response will change?”
Prepare for some discomfort
An unfortunate reality of boundaries: Sometimes they’re uncomfortable to set, whether you’re anxious in anticipation or upset in the moment. For that reason, Minaa said that setting boundaries and managing discomfort go hand in hand. When you’re dysregulated — such as in fight-or-flight mode or swept up in strong emotions — you’re more likely to avoid the conversation, miscommunicate or fall back into patterns such as people-pleasing.
Before establishing a boundary, Minaa recommends taking steps to calm your nervous system, such as deep breathing, meditation, a walk, reading for a few minutes or another grounding practice.
Practice in low-stakes situations
Boundaries often come up in relationships that feel emotionally charged: a difficult family member, a demanding boss, a longtime friend. But Minaa suggests practicing assertiveness in lower-stakes situations first. Saying “No, thank you” to a perfume sample at the department store, declining an upsell at a cafe or sending food back when an order is wrong can all help you develop the skill of expressing a preference or limit out loud.
“Eventually you build a muscle that you can use in high-stakes relationships, too,” Minaa said.
Avoid sending mixed messages
According to Warren, one of the quickest ways to undermine a boundary is to enforce it inconsistently. “If you tell a friend that you’re too exhausted to talk on the phone on Mondays, but you pick up anyway, what message is that sending?” she asked.
Sticking to a boundary doesn’t mean you have to be rigid. Flexibility is fine — it just circles back to good communication. “There’s nothing wrong with saying, ‘Mondays are usually too busy to chat, but I actually have some time today. What’s up?’” Warren said.
All told, she said, good boundaries tend to come back to the golden rule: “Focusing on what you can control — which is yourself and your own behavior — is how you’ll see the most growth in your relationships and the biggest benefit to your mental health.”
“You’re so selfish!” It’s one of the harshest — and perhaps most common — accusations in a romantic relationships.
Sometimes it’s a remark blurted out in the heat of an argument. But more often, it’s the culmination of months or even years of feeling that the relationship has become fundamentally one-sided — that one partner consistently chooses themself or their own interests above the needs of their partnership or the home in general. They might spend excessive time or money on hobbies or activities outside the home, or even choose to work long hours, leaving the other feeling unseen, depleted and increasingly resentful.
As a couples therapist, I’ve found that successful relationships require equal measures of selflessness and self-interest. We need enough of the former to show that we care deeply about our partner’s happiness and enough of the latter to protect our own well-being. Too much selflessness breeds resentment. Too much self-interest erodes trust. The challenge isn’t choosing one over the other: It’s knowing when each is called for.
Here are the key differences between selfishness and self-interest, and how you can strike the right balance between tending to your own needs and your partner’s.
Why do some people seem more selfish than others?
While there are many potential pathways, people who grow up emotionally or materially deprived often enter adulthood believing there won’t be enough love, attention or security to go around. Their selfishness isn’t necessarily driven by greed so much as fear. They focus on their own needs or are stingy with their time, affection or money because they’re afraid there won’t be more opportunities in the future. Those early experiences may also leave them deeply mistrustful of others, making compromise with a partner feel risky rather than reassuring.
Ironically, the same childhood can produce the opposite pattern. Some people become chronically self-sacrificing. They learn to expect very little, believe they should be grateful for whatever scraps of affection or attention they receive and fear that asking for more will lead to rejection. They confuse prioritizing or asserting their needs with being selfish.
Still others prioritize themselves because they feel entitled to. They believe their needs are more important than anyone else’s, perhaps because they saw this attitude modeled by a caregiver during childhood, or they possess narcissistic traits that make it difficult to recognize their partner’s experience as equally important. For them, compromise feels less like cooperation than humiliation.
Still others aren’t intentionally selfish at all. They’re overwhelmed by work, caregiving, financial pressures, depression or chronic stress. When emotional reserves are depleted, people naturally become more focused on their own survival and less attentive to the needs of those around them.
I’ve also found that sometimes, what one partner experiences as selfishness, the other may experience as fairness.
A spouse who has worked a 10-hour day may feel entitled to relax when they get home. Their partner, who has spent those same 10 hours caring for young children, may feel equally deserving of a break. Neither is necessarily selfish. They’re simply operating from different assumptions about what each has contributed and what each deserves.
How selfishness spreads
Couples are constantly shaping each other through positive and negative feedback loops. In healthy relationships, acts of generosity tend to inspire generosity in return. Feeling appreciated makes us want to be more considerate. But the reverse is equally true. Selfish behavior often provokes more selfish behavior.
“You never tell me when you’re going out with your friends, so why should I tell you when I’m going out with mine?”
“You don’t make time for my family, so I’m not making time for yours.”
Before long, each person feels justified by the other’s behavior, and negotiation gives way to scorekeeping. Rather than asking, “What’s best for us?” each begins asking, “Why should I be the only one trying?”
While reciprocal selfishness is the more common pattern, reciprocal self-sacrifice can also damage a relationship. When neither partner feels entitled to ask for what they want, both quietly accumulate disappointment while insisting they’re “fine” or deferring to the other’s preferences. Neither gets enough of what they need, and intimacy suffers as a result.
The difference between selfishness and self-interest
Healthy self-interest is not the enemy of a good relationship. In fact, it’s one of its foundations.
Healthy self-interest means setting boundaries, pursuing meaningful goals, protecting your physical and emotional health, and asking directly for what you need. It recognizes that your needs matter — but so do your partner’s.
Selfishness, by contrast, looks like pursuing personal wants regardless of the cost to the relationship. It involves dismissing or minimizing your partner’s needs, expecting accommodation without reciprocity and resisting compromise.
The healthiest couples don’t choose between caring for themselves and caring for each other. They learn to do both.
How to find the balance
Don’t wait for permission to pursue what brings you joy, but don’t ignore your partner’s need for compromise. For example, “There’s a class I’d like to take that meets Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. I know that means you won’t have my help getting the kids to bed, so I’m wondering if there’s some kind of trade that would work for you?”
Be assertive about your needs while remaining genuinely open to negotiation. So instead of capitulating at the first sign of resistance from your partner, deepen your understanding of their concerns, be willing to compromise, and consider if there’s a reasonable alternative, but continue to emphasize the importance of what you need.
Learn what brings your partner meaning, pleasure and relief, and make those things matter to you. A helpful exercise is to have each of you write a list of 10 specific things that make you feel happy, loved or cared for, then commit to doing at least two things from your partner’s list each week.
If setting limits or asking for what you need feels impossible, consider working with a therapist or taking an assertiveness course.
The strongest relationships aren’t built on endless sacrifice or relentless self-protection. They’re built by two people who believe both deserve to flourish, both voices should be heard, and both sets of needs belong at the table.
If you have a question for a therapist about mental health, relationships, sleep, dating or any other topic, email it to AskATherapist@washpost.com, and we may feature it in a future column.
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