That makes so much sense. I have a friend who is a therapist and her take on it was the opposite, saying the solo work is kind of the easy work. She said when she's working with clients solo things move pretty quickly and then when it feels like they are done, she warns them that in a relationship issues are going to come up again because it's not until we are in a relationship and we have someone holding a mirror up to us that we are really challenged. On our own, we can make whatever decisions we want and it doesn't really affect anyone. It's the compromise, the sacrifice, the looking at yourself and behaviors in relationship that is the real intense work. In a relationship is also the time when you have to figure out how to communicate your own needs, to balance out your needs with someone else, to navigate and negotiate with two people with two different sets of feelings, wants and needs.
So, that's a major source of my confusion, because both perspectives make a lot of sense to me.