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3. ‘To Exist Is to Be Different:’ The Challenge of Loving Without Losing Oneself

When the illusion of adaptation begins to crack, an existential crisis arises. It is then that the desire to be oneself is reborn. Through the trials of a relationship and the temptation of conformity, what’s truly at stake is the ability to accept both oneself and the other – in their difference.  

When differentiation hasn’t occurred during key developmental stages, it eventually resurfaces as an existential crisis. Whether in adulthood, through burnout, sudden depression or emotional turmoil at a life crossroads, it often reflects a deep need to become something other than what one has turned into. Far from being solely negative, these crises are painful yet potentially redemptive opportunities to challenge excessive adaptations, false selves and accumulated conformity. It’s as though, in the depths of anxiety and doubt, the individual hears again the inner call: “To exist is to be different.” Different from what? Different from the person shaped by betraying one’s inner self, from the expectations that bind, even from the image one thought necessary to project. The existential crisis confronts the individual with a sense of emptiness or absurdity – a sign that the role being played no longer aligns with their deeper aspirations. This is when true identity transformation can occur.

Rather than fleeing the existential crisis, we should see it as a moment of subjective truth. It is often through it that authentic difference becomes accessible. These late rebirths are in fact the emergence of the unique self within us – indestructible, always seeking expression. Because the subject’s deepest desire never disappears; in its essence, it is enduring. Sooner or later, this core desire – to be oneself, different and unique – demands recognition. The existential crisis is often the moment when pretending becomes impossible, when that desire returns like an unstoppable ghost, pushing the individual out of their “comfort zone,” – that is, out of alienating identifications. We should thus see these periods of questioning as necessary – and potentially creative – transitions toward greater authenticity.

It is within romantic relationships that the issue of difference perhaps emerges most acutely. If there’s one realm where otherness can be a source of both enrichment and conflict, it’s the couple. To truly love the other is to accept them in their difference – not to mold them in one’s image. At the beginning of a love story, the spontaneous tendency is often idealization: each projects fantasies onto the other, and identifies with those projections. Two people believe they are one, sharing everything, fusing in a common wave. Yet, this fusion is an illusion: it aligns with what Freud called narcissistic love, where one loves the other for the flattering or reassuring image they reflect back. Authentic love, by contrast, requires recognizing the other as a distinct being, with their own inner world, their own mysteries and divergences. To love someone in their difference is, first of all, to let go of the desire to possess or change them. It demands emotional maturity – the ability to accept that the loved one won’t fulfill all our expectations, that they may think differently, have other tastes and desires, and that despite – or rather, because of – that, we continue to love them.

Many couples stumble over this. When the initial narcissistic passion fades, there is a strong temptation to reject the other’s difference, feeling it as betrayal. We wish they would remain the idealized image we once had of them. That’s when a slow erosion begins: criticisms, demands for change, reproaches for no longer being “the same.” Such behavior reveals an inability to tolerate the partner’s real otherness. But trying to mold the other into one’s own image is the opposite of love – it’s a power struggle, a form of self-assertion at the other’s expense. For a relationship to endure and flourish, each partner must preserve their own identity within the relationship. In a beautiful passage on marriage, Khalil Gibran advises, “And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.” Respecting the beloved’s difference means leaving them a private space, not blending everything or demanding total sharing. This requires deep trust: one does not need the other to be a mirror image to feel secure in love. On the contrary, there is joy in loving someone different, in being surprised by their otherness. Love then becomes a meeting of two universes, not a fusion of the same.

While difference is essential to individual fulfillment, it faces powerful opposing forces in society. Our modern world tends to smother uniqueness in favor of conformity and consumerism. From school onwards, children are taught to fit the mold, to lose themselves in imposed norms. Later, mass culture, advertising and social media continue this subtle pressure to be like everyone else. Originality is marketed on the surface only to sell the same standardized products to all, reinforcing sameness and consumer docility.

A precursor to this critique can be found paradoxically in the 16th century, in the writings of Étienne de La Boétie. In Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, La Boétie wondered why people so readily submit to a tyrant, even when they outnumber him. Among the causes of this voluntary servitude, he identified the rulers’ use of distraction to dull awareness. One such strategy was to entertain the people – to offer them bread and circuses, numbing their critical faculties. “Theatres, games, farces, spectacles… and other such drugs were the ancient people’s bait for servitude, the compensation for their stolen freedom, the instruments of tyranny,” he wrote. This sentence resonates strongly today. Replace “spectacles and medals” with television, video games, social media and Black Friday sales, and you have the portrait of the modern citizen distracted to the extreme. La Boétie foresaw that uniformity achieved through easy pleasure is more effective than coercion in keeping individuals in a state of soft submission. Today’s tyrant may no longer be an absolute monarch, but rather the Market, Fashion or Dominant Opinion – yet the result is the same: individuality is dulled by an overwhelming flood of distractions and consumer goods.

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‘To Exist Is to Be Different:’ The Birth of Individuality