I came across a post by Justin Scott today called “Prosthetic Relationships – When love becomes infrastructure” (April 30, 2026), and it honestly hit harder than I expected. I wanted to share the core idea here because I think a lot of people can relate.
The concept is simple:
Some relationships don’t start as love.
They start as relief.
Relief from your thoughts.
Relief from stress.
Relief from feeling lost, anxious, or disconnected.
And because that relief feels so strong, we label it as:
“the deepest connection I’ve ever had.”
But what if it wasn’t just love…
what if it was also function?
What that means
In some relationships, the other person slowly becomes responsible for things like:
Your emotional stability
Your confidence
Your daily structure
Your sense of direction
Even your identity
Not because they’re manipulating you, but because they fit perfectly into what you were missing.
So your brain goes:
“This is my person.”
But it’s not always distinguishing between:
“They truly see me”
and
“They’re holding together parts of me I never built myself”
Why breakups feel like collapse
If you’ve ever felt like your entire life fell apart after a breakup, this explains a lot.
It’s not just that you lost them.
You lost:
Your routine
Your emotional baseline
The version of yourself you were with them
The future you had built in your head
So it feels irreplaceable.
Like you lost “the one.”
But maybe what you actually lost was
the structure your life was leaning on.
Why we keep repeating it
You don’t just miss them
You miss how you functioned with them
So you look for someone new…
who gives you that same feeling again.
Different person. Same role.
The hard truth
People don’t stay in bad relationships because they’re weak.
They stay because the relationship is doing real work in their life.
Leaving doesn’t just mean losing a partner.
It means losing stability you don’t know how to replace yet.
What “healthy love” looks like
Not perfection. Not total independence.
But something like:
“I can carry myself… and I want to build something with you.”
Instead of:
“I can’t hold myself together without you.”
The question that stuck with me
If there’s someone you feel like you “can’t live without,” ask yourself:
What did they make possible in me that I can’t access on my own yet?
Because sometimes…
you’re not trying to get them back.
You’re trying to get yourself back.