The Cost of Being the Dependable One

When being the dependable one becomes a quiet form of loneliness.

I recently came across the psychology term “hyper-responsibility“. It frequently evolves in childhood, maybe because a ‘little adult’ grew up too fast when they should have been enjoying their childhood.

These people are often the pillars, the dependable ones you can rely on, who track what others are up to, who calmly fix something that’s broken, who offer help to anyone they see as needing assistance.

I know I am often seen as dependable, I know I am resilient, self-managing, self-starting and independent. It took decades to learn that despite all this, I was lonely.

Maybe it’s because I am kind of a faux first child - there’s a substantial age difference between my older brother and me, and given he was often away at boarding school and university, not to mention he being left behind in England when we moved to Australia, I, by default, became the eldest child.

There’s a relational vacuum between you and others, because you seem so competent at managing your own life and supporting those around you, others tend to assume everything is fine with you. They assume you are fine because you appear to be fine.

You are caught in the competence trap. When you are rewarded for your reliability, you quickly learn that your value is conditional. You start to believe that if you ever stopped being the person who has it all together, people would leave. You stop being a person with needs and start being a service provider.

Some of us geeky types like to joke that we are the family’s IT support 24/7. Over time, this can start to grate when those calling on you for help get to the point where they seem not even to bother working it out for themselves; they just hit you up.

Living in the competency trap is exhausting. In her work on the mental load, French author Emma Clit explains that this burden is not just about chores, but about “managing the entire emotional and logistical infrastructure of the household”, leaving the person carrying it “invisible, unheard, and unsupported.”

But what happens when this all becomes too much? Those of us known for our dependability will often hide the cracks behind a positive facade. We worry that showing fragility or vulnerability will be a betrayal of our role, we are scared to burden others, forgetting that a healthy relationship is based on honesty and transparency - being authentically us.

A strong connection requires a certain amount of bumps; we need to be courageous and be unreliable, and let someone else take the lead for a moment. If everyone thinks we are perpetually strong and resilient, we are not being honest, and they will never truly know the real us.

Here’s the thought that’s occupied me - given all of this, when you are the person everyone leans on, who are you when you are not being useful? Is it actually that being useful has become your purpose? If this is the case, then maybe you need to fess up, stop being the pillar of reliability and ask someone else to step up to the plate from time to time.