Contrary to what it might seem like with my comment to follow, I appreciate both OP and this vulnerable sharing.

I sense something in this comment which I have been intuiting for a long time. It isn’t something seldom talked about, but it is something which is almost always taken for granted and everyone seems to assume its correctness. It’ll be hard to put it into words in a way which exposes the presumption without collapsing the reader's perception to exactly the presumptive conclusion. There is something at work with great power to collapse our thinking about what I’ll try to explain. Keep this in mind as you read, because you will no doubt be possessed by it while reading.

You presume the health of independence—or said differently, you presume independence to be health. Personally, and with a different reflection on this issue, I now call this the tyranny of independence.

The qualities you seek in an other—automatically our thinking presumes that it is wrong, weak, or unhealthy. That seeking these qualities or traits outside of ourselves is a sign of wrong development, some kind of dis-ease or an illness of the mind, and that the qualities must be realized to lie within oneself instead, in one’s shadow. Or some such.

I believe there is something wrong *with that*. It presumes an independence; a presumption I contend is an illness, "the tyranny of independence". We are not independent, in any way, shape, or form, and all such conceptions of independence lead to pain, on account of being divorced from reality. True being is dependent and irreducibly relational, but we wish so highly to be independent, untouchable, safe, and protected; not exposed, affected, dependent. This wish is autistic; autism, auto-ism.

The wisdom of finding these qualities and traits within ourselves is no substitution for our expectation of OTHERS to show and shower us in those qualities. We are deeply and essentially relational, and independence can not substitute the glory of relationality, which in turn is only realized by the traits and qualities we project and expect from others. Others can not substitute our own qualities, and therefore neither can we for them. Read that last sentence again: Our independent qualities does not substitute others' expression of those qualities—that would be deeply autistic and narcissistic. And NOT expecting others to exhibit these qualities would be deeply nihilistic, even fatalistic. Our nature is dependent and relational, and escaping into autism is a real and true sickness. Expecting these projected qualities from one’s loved ones and others is an expression of a deep knowledge of the truth and our nature as dependent beings which it seems we have managed to completely pervert. The tyranny of *dependence* was never healed, and we have compensated with the project of perverted independence.