Fake Fairness is Killing Our Relationships — and It’s Everywhere

Notes on mutual deprivation and performed restriction

One of the most dangerous, quiet killers of modern relationships isn’t conflict, or even distance — it’s fake fairness. And I need to talk about it.

I’ve spent the last 6 months deep in the weeds writing my first book, ‘in kinship’ and exploring themes of belonging, estrangement, and abandonment. And y’all — I have to tell you, I think I’ve just coined the very first original terms for this book: mutual deprivation and performative restriction. When I first realized these dynamics needed names, I felt this wild mix of excitement and shock — excitement because the phrases immediately made these patterns visible, and shock because, after all my research, I couldn’t find them anywhere else. Not in the books, not in the articles, not in the studies. It felt like finding something hiding in plain sight — like I had stumbled onto something that so many of us feel but didn’t yet have the words for.

There’s another reason I lost my mind when these words fell out of my head and onto my screen. Besides the proof of concept that I was actually making progress after some very hard weeks of writing that almost had me ready to give up — it was because language matters. Too often, our language in these conversations leans toward creating character archetypes — labeling people as avoidant, anxious, narcissistic, codependent — instead of transforming how we are relating. I’m not interested in pathologizing people — I care about giving us ways to talk about the dynamics that so many of us are stuck in without even realizing it. It’s rarely about “bad” people — it’s about painful patterns we don’t yet have the words to identify or interrupt.

The Fear Beneath the Surface

One of the deepest threats to any relationship is the fear of losing oneself in it. Whether it’s with a partner, a friend, a parent, or a community — when we feel like caring for someone else will cost us our agency, we start making tiny, dangerous bargains with ourselves.

We all want to choose and be chosen, not trap and be trapped. Rainer Maria Rilke said it perfectly:

"I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other."

Yet, how often do we actually experience that? More often, I hear stories about people who feel like they have to disappear themselves a little in order to stay, or keep what they have.

Enter Fake Fairness

In our effort to protect ourselves from being consumed by relationship, many of us start trying to build what looks like “equal” relationships. Equal sounds good, right? But what we’re really doing bypassing the important work equity demands of us, and slipping into fake fairness.

The First Pattern I’ve Named: Shrinking Ourselves

Fake fairness often looks like shrinking ourselves to even the playing field. This is where mutual deprivation starts to show up.

Say you love going to concerts, but your partner gets easily overstimulated. So you just stop going altogether. Not because you no longer love it, but because it seems fair. You’re trying to keep things balanced — but the cost is your joy.

In families, this is the classic dynamic where the “helper” sibling becomes the default caregiver and starts swallowing their own needs. They aren’t less needy or more selfless — they’ve just been conditioned to shrink to survive.

The Second Pattern I’ve Named: Mutual Deprivation

This one hits hard. Mutual deprivation is when the relationship runs on the rule that everyone must receive the same thing, whether or not it’s what they actually need.

You want a hug every day after work, but your partner doesn’t need daily affection. So you decide it’s “unfair” to ask for something they don’t want themselves. No one is allowed to have more. No one is allowed to need differently.

This isn’t fairness. This is shared scarcity masquerading as compromise.

As Fromm says in The Art of Loving: "Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says: 'I need you because I love you.'" Mature love lets us bring our real, unique needs into the room.

The Third Pattern I’m Naming Here: Ongoing Performative Restriction

Now here’s where it gets even stickier. Performative restriction — another phrase I am so thrilled to introduce — happens when we start systematically and ongoingly denying ourselves (and often others) certain wants or needs, not because we truly don’t care about them, but because we think it’s the “right” thing to do.

It’s the friend who stops inviting you on trips because you once said you were budgeting — even though you never asked them to stop. It’s the partner who never initiates intimacy again because they’ve decided you must not like it since you were tired once. It’s the parent who withholds affection from adult children because they “don’t want to smother.” Performative restriction creates an ongoing choreography where everyone pretends to want less than they actually do.

And here’s another layer — sometimes, people don’t even ask for what they need because they wouldn’t want to give it themselves. Even when their partner or friend might happily provide it, they hold back out of a fear that they’ll be seen as unfair or too much. "If I wouldn’t want to do this for them, it’s not fair to ask for it myself," they think. But relationships aren’t about mirroring each other's exact wants — they’re about generosity, difference, and negotiating real needs.

So How Does This Show Up?

In romantic partnerships, mutual deprivation sounds like: “I don’t really need words of affirmation, so I won’t give them to you either,” or “I don’t like big holidays, so we just won’t celebrate them at all.” Meanwhile, one or both people are quietly grieving or becoming resentful.

In families, performative restriction shows up when a parent stops showing physical affection to a child because they fear making them uncomfortable, or when adult siblings stop asking for help because no one else does.

In friendships, mutual deprivation can sound like: “I won’t share my accomplishments because you’re having a hard time,” or “I won’t ask you for support because you haven’t asked me.” What looks like consideration can easily become disconnection.

All of these examples boil down to this: fake fairness is leaving us with thinner, more distant, and more brittle relationships. We aren’t actually safer when we all have less — we’re just lonelier.

Moving Toward Mutual Satisfaction

So, what can we do to break free from these dynamics and move toward mutual satisfaction? How do we shift out of mutual deprivation and performative restriction and toward something that actually nourishes us? The shift starts with awareness — acknowledging when fake fairness is present and calling it out for what it is: a fear-driven, scarcity-based pattern that prevents true connection.

We begin by asking different questions. Not: "What would make this equal?" but "What would make this satisfying for both of us?"

Mutual satisfaction invites us to acknowledge that our needs may not match — and that’s okay. Fairness isn’t about sameness; it’s about making sure each person gets to be nourished. This might mean negotiating, stretching, or collaborating, but not shrinking.

We have to relearn how to give — and ask — with intention. When we can lean into the joy of giving what the other truly needs, even if it’s different from our own, we’re beginning the process of mutual satisfaction. It’s not about getting everything we want, but rather learning to build a relationship where both people’s needs are seen, respected, and met in creative, flexible ways.

It looks like saying, "I love concerts, and I want to keep going — even if you don’t come," or "You don’t need daily affection, but I do — can we find a rhythm that works for both of us?"

It means trusting that difference isn’t dangerous — it’s an opportunity for creativity.

And maybe most importantly, it’s about remembering that real relationships aren’t transactional. They are not kept afloat by equal tallies but by mutual care, by seeing and meeting each other where we are — and where we can’t, by finding a way through together.

It’s also about breaking free from the pressure of always being the “good” one or the “sacrificing” one. Relationships thrive when we allow each other to be human, full of contradictions and complexity. We can’t perform our way into true connection — we have to be with each other in our full humanity.

This is the invitation.