Tie two boats together and neither one is anchored. They don't hold each other steady — they drift together, just slower.
When our sense of being enough rests on someone else's verdict, we have handed them a job no person can carry. Researchers find that when standing depends on approval, ordinary disagreements turn into referendums on whether we matter. Anxiety goes up. The relationship gets more fragile rather than less.
The other person feels it too. Being someone's entire evidence that they are worth something is a weight, and it usually arrives dressed as a compliment.
What love actually asks for is two people who can each hold their own ground, and who then choose to tie up alongside anyway. The choosing is the part that means anything, and it only exists where leaving was survivable.
Drop the anchor first. Then throw the rope.