Author's Note: First published in Clepsydra Magazine I've been thinking a lot lately about how we choose our partners. What kind of people do we choose? By what criteria? Can we get along with everyone? For example, provided that you try very hard and constantly work on your relationship? The search for answers to all my and other people’s questions led me to create my own “theory” of freedom. I write the word “theory” in quotation marks only because I am well aware of what it means to create a new psychological theory! How much effort, time, research is required to prove, argue, and finally release your theory into the world, where critical analysis, accusations, erroneous interpretations and even oblivion are sure to await it. Therefore, my theory of freedom has not yet been empirically proven; it contains only speculative conclusions, based partly on my observations, partly on my personal experience, partly on my advisory practice. But I can say one thing: no matter who I tell it to, almost everyone immediately perceives it with hostility, very, very critically. Then they think about it, start asking additional questions, reasoning, in a word, they begin to think about it. And then I learn from these same people that they shared their thoughts with friends, discussed, argued. And this means to me that there is something in this theory - something catchy, forcing me to weigh, reason, and try it on for myself again and again. THINK ABOUT YOUR FREEDOM.So, let's begin. I believe that each person has his own so-called freedom coefficient. This is a personal characteristic. Maybe it’s a character trait, maybe it’s a phenomenon of one of the personal spheres. I think this is some kind of number, most likely from zero to one. I believe that this coefficient is a kind of constant. This means that it is formed in the family, under certain conditions, under the influence of certain factors. Reaches a certain level and then remains constant. In the future, only extraordinary circumstances can change it. Psychotherapists and philosophers include love, war and psychotherapy as similar. This coefficient consists of external and internal factors. A person with a low coefficient - close to zero - will be extremely dependent. From a lot, practically, from everything. He will be strongly attached to a certain place, people, relationships, things. Such a person will be a little mobile, inflexible in decisions, conservative in his views, stable in his affections. A person with a high coefficient close to one will be infinitely free. I can imagine that he will be able to easily move from city to city, from country to country, from one continent to another. Maybe he won't even have his own home. He, as in that fable by I.A. Krylova, “under every bush” he will find “a table and a house.” Such people are called “people of peace.” In any country, under any roof, and sometimes even in the open air, they feel safe. In the morning they do not know where they will be in the evening and where they will have to spend the night. And when they go to bed, they don’t think about what they will eat tomorrow. Neither fears nor anxiety arise in them even if there is no money in their pocket or food in their backpack. In general, it is completely clear that these are two polarities: on the one hand, absolute freedom, on the other hand, extreme dependence. Can you imagine how one quality will change, gradually turning into the opposite as the coefficient increases from zero to one? So young people who have graduated from school, shackled for years by parental control, all sorts of prohibitions and taboos, suddenly break free - they become students. Freed from parental dependence, they taste “freedom”, “drink” it in one gulp, intoxicated by the sensations. And then for years they sort out the “mistakes of youth”... One good friend of my daughter’s friend, a pleasant young man from a good family, entered a military school after school. But even military discipline could neither sober him up nor maintain even the illusion of control. At first there was freedoma little - AWOL, going to nightclubs. Then it became more - work in a nightclub as a dancer. When the guy was expelled from the military school, freedom in his life increased. And then, like a bolt from the blue, an accusation of double murder! He swore that he was not guilty, that he had been framed. Perhaps this is true. However, the court did not believe him. At the age of 22, the former cadet received a sentence of 25 years. He had more time to sit than he had lived on earth by that time... Freedom was over. The unfreedom that has been committed has begun. There are other examples, more positive. One of my colleagues, a good friend of mine, was born and raised in Ukraine. I don’t remember how he got to America, but he managed to get a Green Card. During this time, he learned and became a knowledgeable and effective psychotherapist. Talking about how he became a US Citizen, he smiled: “They thought they had given me American citizenship. But in fact, I received a passport as a Man of Peace! I am free in almost everything, all doors are open to me, all borders!” At first he traveled a lot, and then he began to come to Ukraine more and more often, to conduct more and more projects, trainings, and conferences. Once we met in the same group. We, all the participants, gathered in a group in the morning, some from the hotel, some from home, some from friends. He spent the night in the room next to our training room. On a foam mat. One day I arrived half an hour early. He had already washed his face and went to the nearest market to buy food for breakfast. Looking out the window, I watched him choose a product and talk about something with the gloomy, sleep-deprived saleswomen. “How do you live without a home?” - I asked him when he returned. He busily laid out his simple breakfast on the table - some homemade cottage cheese and fresh carrots. “You know, it’s okay. It was just difficult when I got sick. And things just don’t work out with women,” and he crunched a carrot. And then I thought, could I live without a home?... Yesterday I found his personal website. He no longer describes himself as a “tramp psychotherapist.” It seems he now lives in Ukraine. Perhaps he has a HOME?.. One can also imagine the opposite picture - the freedom coefficient goes the other way, changing from one to zero. An absolutely free person, a person of the World, suddenly becomes excessively dependent, acquires many attachments and an abyss of responsibility. Here is one example. Some time ago, the media unanimously reported that the world-famous traveler Fyodor Konyukhov became an Orthodox priest. Meanwhile, Fedor Konyukhov has more than 40 unique expeditions and ascents under his belt, six! trips around the world. He crossed the Atlantic 15 times. Konyukhov is the first Russian who managed to complete the “Grand Slam” program (North Pole, South Pole, Everest) and the first traveler in the world who reached the five poles of our planet: Northern Geographic (three times), Southern Geographic, Pole of relative inaccessibility in the North Arctic Ocean, Everest (height pole), Cape Horn (yachtsman's pole). The vast majority of his expeditions are solo: solo voyages, solo ascents, solo travels. Years of loneliness, years of unconditional freedom. Having completed his first expedition at the age of 15 - he crossed the Sea of ​​Azov on a rowing boat - on the eve of his 60th birthday, Konyukhov is preparing to become the rector of a temple on the largest island of the Dnieper, Khortitsa. There he is going to bless young travelers setting off to conquer mountains and oceans. A temple on the island... As if the river was charged with the responsibility of keeping him here at home from swimming and traveling. And service to the Lord, consciously chosen by a mature person, represents, in my opinion, a conscious renunciation of worldly freedom. Many examples of fluctuations in the freedom coefficient can be observed every Monday on Channel One television in the program “Wait for Me.” So a man left home to go to work... and disappeared for several years. Someone went to a nearby store in the evening to buy a pack of cigarettes and disappeared. Someone left friends towards home, butnever returned home. It is interesting that some of these missing people are still being sought. Inconsolable loved ones have been searching, writing, calling for years. They find it! But to the question “WHY did you leave? Left? Didn't come home? - people just shrug their shoulders. They can't answer. They really don't know. “I just suddenly decided, sat down and left.” What is this if not a fluctuation in the freedom coefficient?! I was dependent, attached, and suddenly became free from everything and everyone! The most interesting thing is that, most likely, there are no guarantees that this person will not disappear from home just like that one day for no apparent reason - NO. Maybe there are people whose freedom coefficient is generally subject to fluctuations? Or maybe each of us from time to time experiences such pendulum swings - from freedom to dependence, and back - from dependence to freedom? These questions have been haunting me for almost a year now... But this is only the first part of my theory. But the second part is about our relationships with partners. When Fedor Konyukhov was still traveling, and the News was talking about his new records, I always thought about how his wife and children were living now. If the husband is always on the road, even if it is recorded in the Guinness Book of Records, his wife is forced to be, in fact, tied to the house. Someone must look after the house, the children, feed them, help them do their homework, do the laundry, and generally provide them with a piece of bread! And this means, the more free one partner is, the more attached and dependent the other becomes! “What a brilliant guess! - the critical reader will smile. - Who didn’t know this?! This has been known for a long time, and no one is interested!” But that's not my idea. It only relies on these indisputable facts. And then I reason like this. There is a husband and wife, each of whom has their own personal freedom coefficient. I assume that these coefficients can be added. I don’t know why I decided that they needed to be folded. I just decided that and that’s it. By the way, this idea is what prompts questions and comments from many of my friends and colleagues. But for now I think so. And this sum of the coefficients of husband and wife or simply partners in numerical terms can range from zero (if both are extremely dependent) to two (if both are absolutely free). BUT! If two people who love each other and want to be together have freedom coefficients close to or equal to one, then agree with me! — a pair of them simply won’t work! COUPLE simply will not exist. It won't make sense! If one flew into deep space, and the second travels through the seas and oceans of the Earth, no matter how much they love each other, this will not be a family or a couple! Do you agree, my dear readers? I believe that there is some sum of the coefficients of two people, there is some number from 1 to 2, which is a kind of bifurcation point on the path from dependence to freedom. Let's solve a simple problem, like we did at school. Let this be the number 1.31. Why? Don't know. That's just how I decided. Of course, this number is conditional. But I believe that someday mathematics will solve this riddle. So here it is. If the sum of the partners' odds is less than or equal to 1.31, then the couple can exist and will be a couple in every sense. But if the sum is more than 1.31, then the partners become so free that the couple loses its meaning as a couple. People simply don’t hang out together, don’t live together, don’t sleep in the same bed, and may not even date! Now, if, for example, a famous traveler has a freedom coefficient of 1, then for his wife it should not be more than 0.3. This means that she can, as a last resort, go to visit relatives in another city, and then only for a short time. What happens if this woman's sense of freedom begins to grow? What if she also wants to go to conquer Everest or the Atlantic Ocean? Of course, even a grandmother can look after the children. But will children recognize their parents? And the spouses themselves risk not meeting until old age, traveling around cities and villages. In my opinion, in this case, the only thing left for the couple to do is formal registration. Assuming that the averageIf the level of the freedom coefficient is close to 0.5 - 0.6, then such people live next to us. They have a roof over their heads, they have a permanent job, they go on vacation, sometimes even abroad. They are partly free and partly tied - to their place of residence, partner, pets, gardens or dachas. In a word, ordinary people. Often, they seek to reduce their personal coefficient, for example, by purchasing their own real estate, mortgages, debts and loans. It is from such ordinary people that the families inhabiting the cities and villages of our planet are mainly formed. Let's add up their coefficients and get an average pair. However, I would venture to suggest that for the population the average coefficient will still be less than 0.5-0.6. I think this figure is something around 0.3. Perhaps a little more in big cities - up to 0.4. That's why we have a lot of families. People live in pairs, and all sorts of unusual marriages, such as guest marriages, are a curiosity for our people, the meaning of which is not very clear to many. But imagine that for some reason the coefficient of human freedom suddenly begins to increase. War, love or psychotherapy have their decisive effect. At the same time, the amount of freedom of the couple will automatically change. And if suddenly this number reaches a critical level of 1.31, then the partners will not just separate, they will simply stop being together. A paradox arises. If the freedom coefficient of one partner increases, then the coefficient of the second partner must either remain at the same level or decrease. Someone becomes more free, while at the same time another must increase his own dependence. Let's face it, this is an unpleasant fact. And it causes a lot of controversy among my students, friends, and colleagues. Psychotherapists generally consider themselves free rather than unfree. Therefore, the prospect of connecting their lives with a more dependent person does not make many of my colleagues very happy, if, of course, my theory is basically correct. Another danger that awaits people with a growing freedom coefficient (including psychotherapists!) is turning into a Man of the World, abandoning home and family, and eternal wanderings around the planet. It’s scary... Therefore, a person comes up with different ways to “ground”, “stick” to a place, home, partner, work. A person becomes overgrown with things, pets, houseplants, a garden, a summer cottage, social activities at his place of residence, and so on and so forth and so on... When you are at least connected with something or strongly attached to someone, you are no longer so free . One couple I know well, when I asked why they didn’t have pets, unanimously answered that they travel a lot and a cat or dog would noticeably limit their freedom: “Can you imagine, every time we would have to look for where to place him during our trips?” ! And we don’t even have anyone to ask to water the flowers!” What do you think, are you a free person? What is your freedom factor? The first thing that comes to mind when I start thinking about this question is freedom of movement. How freely can I move around? In your city? In your country? Around the world? Well yes, I can! I have a general passport and even a new foreign passport - biometric! This means I can take a bus around Europe! Or fly to London for a week to ride around the city on a double-decker bus, go to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, or walk around Hyde Park. I can even go to the Maldives - a place of earthly heavenly pleasure! Oh, how long have I been dreaming about these trips! And I haven’t been able to put them into practice for just as long. Why? I myself cannot accurately answer this question. I myself don’t understand what’s stopping me, what’s keeping me at home. A lack of money? No. Busy at work? No. Fear of crossing the border? Apparently not either. After all, I have already been abroad. So??? I don’t know... At the same time, here in Moscow I seem to feel absolutely free. I can go to any place in my car and be there for as long as I want. I'm not bound by a schedulepublic transport. It seems that I am not bound by anything external. It seems... And internal??? It seems to me that I know the feeling of inner freedom. I consider myself quite free, first of all, from various kinds of addictions. I don't smoke, I can refuse a glass of wine. I learned not to eat after six in the evening and calmly face the feeling of hunger. I can turn off the TV, get off the Internet. I can put off buying what is most valuable to me—books. I learned to save money. In general, it seems to me that internally I have become a rather free woman. But! Most of my life I live in one city and I don’t really want to move anywhere from it. And this is already rigidity, rigid attachment to one place... So am I free or dependent? When I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book “Legitimate Marriage” about the travels that the main character undertook, about the many months spent away from home, even next to her loved one, I try with horror to imagine similar situations in my life. No, this is simply impossible with me! How can I travel for so long if my furry pets - eight cats and three dogs - are waiting for me at home every evening??? And who will water my whole rack of violets? But the heroine of this very interesting book endured all this only for one thing - to finally find a common home with her loved one in her country. Remember what Piglet said to Winnie the Pooh when they were going to visit? “I’m completely free until Friday!” I haven't been able to say that for several years! Two years of life devoted to self-organization finally bore fruit. My schedule has settled down, and if I don’t plan a vacation in advance, it won’t happen. How timely I realized this! My work schedule is drawn up six months in advance. Sometimes this upsets me, and in two opposite ways. Both because there is no opportunity to respond to a spontaneous meeting with friends, and because plans are strictly scheduled for only six months. I know psychotherapists whose schedules are drawn up for a year or two, sometimes even five years in advance. And as a rule, these are groups in different cities and countries, trips around the country and abroad. I envy this tough addiction. I WANT TO BE SO DEPENDENT. But at the same time I WISH TO BE FREE. I think that similar thoughts and feelings are familiar to people in many other professions. So what is my personal freedom quotient? What is your personal freedom quotient? Let's answer these questions. At least to ourselves. And further! I once imagined how I would build an ideal relationship with some colleague from another city or even country. I thought how wonderful it would be to fall in love, for example, with a psychotherapist, an Australian citizen, meet twice a year, live together for two months, either with me in Russia or with him in Australia. The rest of the time, each of us would enjoy our high level of freedom coefficient. But how long could this last? Probably one day we would want to live together. And then either I or he would have to sacrifice either our freedom, or simply break off the relationship... So what is the sum of my and my partner’s freedom coefficients today? How much more is left for our total to reach 1.31? Is there still room for me or him to grow? And what happens when we reach the limit? Will any of us be able to stop growing?.. For the sake of our relationship? I still have more questions than answers. My “theory of freedom” is still alive at the stage of development of ideas. Of course, it still takes a lot of time to prove one or another of its positions. If it works out. But now I understand that the more free we become, the more dependent we become. This is paradoxical. And this is equally repeated both on the intrapsychic (intrapersonal) plane and on the interpsychic (interpersonal) plane. Directly according to the cultural-historical theory of Lev Semenovich Vygotsky! The world we live in is polar. Elderly travelers, who have circled the Earth more than once or twice, are returning home. And someone young takes their place, suddenly breaking away from their lives???