"We want to keep growing and developing but there's also another side of us that wants to make sure that we don't die and you can call it the self-protective side... to not die is basically to not suffer what feels to us like unacceptable losses.

...if in fact the contract became a kind of prison where you will only be included, will only be respected, will only be loved, only be protected if you basically will remain the person that you were.

Then the social environment is more captivating, and it's more constricting. That kind of situation makes the prospect of honoring the first endeavor, honoring your own growth, a much much more risky and costly feeling endeavor because it can feel like in order to honor the forward motion of my own growth I have to actually give up abandon or be cast out from what has been a precious social context." - Kegan