What is your role in a relationship?
Most of the time we take on multiple roles. For example: wife, mother, friend, etc. These roles can and must change in a split second according to life's demands, and healthy relationships come down to how we maneuver through these roles.
Roles navigate us through daily living by "requiring" certain specificity when we commit to them. As a therapist, I see the strain on the relationships where a role has been taken on inappropriately. The best way to describe this is to use myself as an example. In a therapy session, I take on the obvious therapist role; this requires professionalism, collaboration, and empathy for my client. I never want to switch over to the "Friend" role with any of my clients because this can cause confusion and cross boundaries. A person would not be coming to a professional for help if they could just get what they "needed" from a friend. A client may not always have immediate access to me as their "Therapist" as they would a "Friend". This is not a limitation, in fact is an important part of the therapist client relationship. It empowers the client to independently think through and process the situation and then be able to come back and collaborate ideas at their next session.
In couples therapy I hear about inappropriate "self-assignment" of roles and sometimes have had it modeled in session as well. There are times when instead of working together for example as husband and wife on an issue, there is husband and mother, or husband and child working against each other. This often time happens when there is Emotions in the room, and there is no real hearing of the other person any more.
This is not to imply that we must always be and act a certain way, it is merely a suggestion to be more aware of oneself. How do you interact in your relationships, and how do you allow your relationships to interact with you?