Dependence is often seen—rightly—as an undesirable state. To be dependent on something means that its absence causes suffering. If you’re dependent on a drug, a substance, or even a person, then your well-being is no longer entirely within your own control. You are not free. From this perspective, avoiding dependence becomes not just practical, but ethical: it is a step toward greater autonomy.

The Illusion of Romantic Dependence

Yet in some contexts, dependence is idealized. Popular culture, for instance, romanticizes the idea of being unable to live without someone else—as if love were more authentic when it involves emotional or existential dependence. On closer inspection, however, this ideal can become problematic. Would it not be more empowering, more resilient, and perhaps even more loving, to be able to say: I can live well without you—but I choose to live with you?

True strength in a relationship may lie not in mutual dependence, but in mutual independence paired with voluntary commitment. Dependence can make us vulnerable not only to loss but to manipulation or abuse. A stronger model of love and friendship is one where individuals are whole on their own—and choose connection freely.

The Stoic Ideal: Benefiting Without Needing

This idea resonates with a key insight from Stoic philosophy, particularly the writings of Seneca. The Stoics speak of “independence from fortune”—the ability to remain content regardless of external circumstances. But Seneca’s view is more subtle than a mere call for emotional detachment. He doesn’t say we should reject fortune; rather, we should enjoy good fortune without becoming dependent on it.

Health, wealth, and relationships are good things—we can enjoy them. But we should not stake our inner peace on their presence. If we lose them, we should not collapse. This is more than indifference; it’s a kind of psychological asymmetry: we benefit when things go well but are not destroyed when they don’t.

From Stoicism to Antifragility

A similar insight is developed in a different context by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, particularly in his concept of antifragility. Where the Stoics spoke about the soul, Taleb speaks about systems—financial, social, or personal. Antifragility is more than resilience (resisting shocks); it’s about gaining from disorder.

Taleb gives the example of investing: if you place most of your money in very safe assets and a small portion in highly volatile, high-risk investments, you may be positioned to benefit disproportionately from rare but powerful events. Most of the time, the risky part might fail. But in the rare cases it succeeds, the upside can be large enough to outweigh the many small losses. This is possible because of fat tails in market distributions—a concept developed by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot. In such distributions, extreme events have a higher probability and greater impact than traditional models assume.

This strategy—sometimes called a barbell strategy—mirrors the Stoic principle: be robust against downside while remaining open to upside. You are not only independent of bad fortune—you benefit from volatility. That is antifragility.

A Way of Living

In everyday life, we can apply this logic beyond philosophy and finance. For example:

  • If your happiness depends entirely on your job, you are vulnerable. But if you cultivate varied interests and supportive relationships, you are more resilient—or even antifragile.
  • If you invest emotionally only in things you can control, while remaining open to the benefits of what you cannot, you gain peace without stagnation.

We might say, then, that the ideal is not just to avoid dependence, but to build lives and systems that gain from stress and change—to become not fragile, not even merely robust, but antifragile.