> essentially taking over the role of his mother. I hear this complaint a lot, but the inverse is also true. Many women expect their male partner to take over

> essentially taking over the role of his mother. I hear this complaint a lot, but the inverse is also true. Many women expect their male partner to take over the role of her father. Any relationship that has severely asymmetric exchange of value is ultimately doomed. But it seems reasonable to me that in a healthy relationship, each partner at least partially replaces the role of the other's parent, so long as the exchange is balanced. Relationships of all kinds are ultimately built on value exchange. Parasitic relationships are those in which the value exchange is severely unbalanced. And these kinds of parasitic relations inevitably end, either because the node getting sucked dry realizes it and cuts the bond, or because the parasite eventually sucks its host dry of all potential value and then cuts the bond to look for a new host.