Every decision has its price

“I want it all! I want it now!”

We often believe we need to check off closeness, autonomy, security, belonging, and other needs one after another and live them all simultaneously.

Last week I described how our basic needs are organized in polarities, like closeness and distance.

The consequence is that when we strengthen one pole, we frustrate the other at the same moment. Not because something is going wrong, but because the architecture dictates it that way.

Today more closeness, tomorrow more distance. Sometimes more risk, then more security again.

Every decision has its price.

What does this mean concretely for our experience?

~ Well-being is not a stable state, but a constant balancing and moving between the poles of our basic needs. It’s the art of remaining flexible, instead of freezing at one pole.

~ Rhythm arises precisely because needs contradict each other: sometimes more contact, then withdrawal; sometimes risk, then security. If this movement is lost, life becomes rigid, empty, or chaotic.

~ Frustration is structurally built in. Every decision strengthens one pole and weakens the other. What matters is whether I can bear that something is currently falling short, without fundamentally devaluing it.

~ Conflicts cannot be optimized away. Healthy doesn’t mean conflict-free, but rather: consciously holding the tension between “I want closeness” and “I need space,” instead of prematurely declaring one side a mistake.

~ Favorite poles “always strong,” “always independent,” “always adapted”… this is how we give ourselves orientation under pressure, but we take away our flexibility. We often argue less about content than about whose preferred pole is allowed to prevail.

~ Regulation never happens only “within me,” but in the in-between space: leadership, culture, and relational climate determine which poles are permitted and which are considered weakness; persistent conflicts are thus more pole-collisions than character issues.

~ Feelings & experience are the sensory system of these tension fields: they mark where it gets tight between freedom and security, uniqueness and belonging. Without them, over-control or overwhelm remain as emergency solutions.

~ Development means less “more of X,” but rather more flexibility: feeling both poles, consciously prioritizing, and being able to bear the temporary frustration of the other without making it the enemy.

Maturation lies in no longer reading frustration as a deficit, but as a trace showing where we’re currently moving between the poles of our lives.