There’s a line from Jerry Maguire that became incredibly famous.
At the end of the movie (spoiler alert) Tom Cruise (playing Jerry Maguire) finds his wife (Renée Zellweger) and tries to win her back with a big speech. At the end of his message he said these now famous words, “You complete me!”.
In the aftermath of the movie, that phrase became a romantic moniker. People started looking for someone who “completes” them or talking about their loved one as someone who “completes’ them as if it’s what love looks like. But, if you really understand what love is, it’s not love.
When Tom Cruise says, “You complete me,” he is not expressing the fullness of love. He’s revealing a dependent part that looks more like Gollum from the Lord of the Rings than it does Humphry Bogart saying goodbye to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca.
Tom Cruise says, “You complete me”, Gollum says, “My precious” but they both communicate the same dependent defense.
It’s this expression of incompleteness that is oriented toward another person, another source, another anchor while at the same time, losing a sense of personal agency. Dependency is not love. Dependency is not trust. Dependency is not interdependence.
It is a loss of agency.
Agency is what makes you human
The thing that makes you human, that makes you free, that sets you apart from the animals, is your freedom to choose. Your dignity, given to you by God, being made in his image, is this free flowing act of will. And we call this act agency.
Dependency means parts of you aren’t free. They have a sense of chronic deference, a fear of separation if they move too far away from the person they’ve given allegiance to, or the person they see as the source of truth that they can stay safe in following.
So there’s the need to stay close. Because proximity feels like survival. And then identity gets structured around the other person.
The dependent part begins to think: “My sense of self comes from being with you and what you think.”
It’s almost like the dependent person loses sight of what they really like, what they really want, what they dreamt about as a little boy or a little girl. Their desires, their wishes, their sense of self becomes modified and formed around the other person.
And this is where marriage becomes a place where dependency can quietly get baptized as virtue.
The spiritual danger: justifying a loss of authority
Here’s the danger: It’s really dangerous when there is a spiritual justification for giving up agency.
And this is why I find it really important to correct the more Protestant approach to marriage where “the husband is the one who makes all the decisions ultimately as the head of the relationship.”
I’m going to say this plainly:
That’s not actually true. It’s actually not Catholic. It’s actually not holy. It’s actually not healthy. And it’s totally against the sacrament of marriage.
It makes no sense if you have a sacramental view of marriage.
And I know this ruffles feathers. I know this is controversial. But I sit in the sessions of therapy with the people who are wounded by this miseducation, these ideas have real effect. Real people are suffering real pain because of misleading teaching.
We have this biblical imagery: the husband as head.
Fine.
But what does subject mean? What does it mean when St. Paul says to be subject to your spouse?
He says: “Spouses be subject to one another.” Ephesians 5:21
That includes the husband being subject to his wife. So, if the husband is the head, and if the head is supposed to be subject also to the wife, therefore being the head does not equal making all the decisions.
Being the head means being the final decision maker in corporate America. But we’re not talking about corporate America. We’re talking about marriage and marriage is a sacrament of mutual self-gift.
Head and heart: mutual, reciprocal submission
If we’re going to use “head” as an analogy, then let’s talk about the body.
The person has a head and a heart. Well, which is more important to live: a head or a heart?
The answer is neither. The answer is they are both equally important.
So we have to change what we understand the head to mean.
If you want to be a flourishing, healthy, and holy human, the head and heart need to be subject to one another. They need to be equally important and symbiotic in relationship.
That’s how a healthy marriage works.
The husband and wife are mutually subject to one another. They work together. It isn’t one being subject to the other in perpetuity.
Why this teaching feeds dependency
At the deepest level, the dependent part is afraid of non-existence. It needs another person’s validation for existence.
It’s like: “If I don’t have you, I will die. If I don’t have you, I will cease to exist.”
That’s not merely fear of being alone. Dependency is not a fear of being alone. It’s a fear of not existing alone.
Now imagine that fear gets reinforced not just psychologically, but spiritually, through a misapplied theology of authority.
That’s when the whole thing becomes devastating. Because now the loss of agency isn’t just tolerated. It’s blessed. It’s praised. It’s framed as holiness.
And that’s not holiness. That’s not Catholic. That’s not love.
Dependency isn’t cured by erasing desire
Here’s the plot twist:
We are all actually dependent. We are built completely dependent. Dependency patterns aren’t coming up with some novel structure out of nowhere. It’s a distortion of something we should all feel.
We are little children.
And the answer isn’t eradicating need. The answer is reformulating need. Redirecting need. Reframing need. This is not an intellectual exercise. This can only be done in relationship where there is healthy security and safety. And as agency is restored, people become who they really are created to become in God’s image.
And then they become more themselves than they ever were before.
Conclusion: What Jerry Maguire Gets Right and What He Misses
Jerry Maguire wasn’t wrong to feel incomplete. He was wrong about where that incompleteness should be resolved.
The problem with “You complete me” isn’t that it names a need, it’s that it places the burden of completion on another human person. That’s the move from love into dependency. It quietly hands over agency. It asks another person to stabilize your existence, define your identity, and carry a responsibility they were never meant to bear.
Real love doesn’t complete you by replacing you. Real love calls you into who you are.
In a healthy marriage, your spouse doesn’t become your missing piece. They become a companion who walks alongside you as you learn to stand, choose, and love freely. Dependence rightly ordered toward God, not displaced onto one another.
Ironically, Jerry Maguire’s story only works if he stops needing Dorothy to complete him and starts choosing to love her freely, from a place of agency rather than fear.
That’s the difference between romance that feels intoxicating and love that actually lasts.
Not you complete me but I choose you freely.
P.S. If any of this is drawing anything up for you, I want you to reach out.
If you’re struggling or suffering, don’t do it in isolation. These things are serious issues and we’re here for you.
Reach out for a free consultation at catholicpsych.com/mentorship, talk to one of our consultants, and we will give you direction, even if it’s not working with us in mentorship.