PhronesisRelational over-functioning — the chronic pattern of taking over others' responsibilities, decisions, and practical functioning in relationships, producing a systematic expansion of one's own responsibilities and a corresponding contraction of others' — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_ROF in the landscape of shared agency. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as shared agency: the relational configuration in which both parties are appropriately responsible for their own functioning, decisions, and contributions — with genuine mutual support that does not substitute for the other's agency.
W_ROF is rigorously distinguished from appropriate help during genuine incapacity, healthy support in asymmetric moments, and genuine leadership in appropriate contexts. Three interlocking mechanisms maintain the basin: anxiety absorption through action (the over-functioner cannot tolerate watching another person struggle or manage poorly; the anxiety is regulated by taking over; D(ξ) is generated by the perceived incompetence or struggle of the other), the under-functioning induction (relational over-functioning produces its complement — as the over-functioner absorbs more responsibility, the other progressively loses practice and confidence, inducing the helplessness the over-functioner was organized to prevent), and resentment accumulation (over-functioning is exhausting; the over-functioner feels taken for granted while continuing to take over because any reduction feels like abandonment; the resentment signals the wrong attractor but cannot be processed without confronting the pattern).
The Competence Paradox is central: relational over-functioning reliably produces the incompetence and dependency it is organized to prevent — by continuously absorbing the other's functional domain, the over-functioner produces a progressively less capable partner, a more exhausted self, and a relationship organized around asymmetric dependency. Nine formal propositions characterize the shared agency ground state, the competence-expansion wrong attractor, the three maintenance mechanisms, the competence paradox, developmental roots in parentification and anxious attachment, and return paths through Harriet Lerner's over/under-functioner work, tolerating others' struggle, explicit responsibility redistribution, and Bowen differentiation.