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No one dies of love

“No one dies of love”

Love has the ability to kidnap our mind whether it is happy or unhappy.

If love works, we can torment ourselves about:

  • How long will it last?
  • Is (will) my partner (be) faithful?
  • Does he really like me?
  • Am I out of his league (beauty, culture, intelligence)?

And if things don’t work out, the repercussions on our life can be devastating; if we fight continuously, we can, for example, not have the strength to do the things that our daily life requires of us or do them but with an enormous effort.

When we are broken up with, strong feelings of shame usually come to light, as if the whole world has told us that we are wrong and that we are not worth enough.

Usually we torment ourselves with a thousand hypotheses about how we could have behaved to make things go differently; sometimes a strong anger, dictated by the frustration of having undergone that choice, grips us; the pain, at certain times, can be so strong that it takes your breath away.

Whether your love is happy, but for fear of losing it you do not enjoy it, or whether it is unhappy or even ended abruptly, here are some tips not to “die”:

  • The pains of love must be lamented, but excessive lamentation can exacerbate your negative mood, making you feel pain even when you could have thought of something else; give your friends and family a chance to distract you. Even the closest friend could get tired of absorbing these outbursts over time, don’t overdo it; let alone the person who barely knows you, to whom you confide your amorous torments (when things don’t work out, we also behave like this, “You don’t die of love”, but for a while it’s easy to lose the ability to discern what is appropriate and what is not).
  • If your life is full because:
    • You play a sport;
    • You have friends to go out with;
    • You have one or more pets to look after;
    • Dedicate some time of your day to reading;
    • Take care of yourself;
    • You have some fixed and reassuring habits such as going for a run every morning, or scheduled appointments with your family of origin…

then it is almost impossible that you will find yourself obsessing over love either for fear that it will end or because it is over. More scopes will keep you afloat.

It is when life is empty, when our whole identity coincides with that love story, that we run the most risks; because the story is compromised or over, we too fall.

“You don’t die of love”, especially if you don’t live only as a function of love.

Overcoming betrayal

Betrayal is one of the most traumatic events for a couple.

Exclusivity is one of the foundations of a winning love relationship, unless there are other agreements between the partners, such as in “open couples”. The important thing in these cases is that these decisions are shared and not suffered.

There are rare couples who survive a betrayal or who, if they stay together, then find their balance.
There are people who, in order to feel alive, must constantly have adrenaline rushes, called “sensation seekers”. They often engage in extreme sports and in everything that makes them feel strong sensations, they love the risk and can feel suffocated if they find themselves in an “ordinary” life; who has this characteristic is easy to use the betrayal to achieve this “thrill”.

The less courageous, on the other hand, can limit themselves to virtual betrayals, chats with old flames, sites with webcams, to “communicate” with strangers. Also, in this case, if the betrayal comes to light, the couple suffers an earthquake and risks crumbling.

You can betray because you feel neglected. In this regard, it is useful to underline how much we fall in love with the love we see reflected in the eyes of the partner. If it is missing, we can end up looking elsewhere for someone who makes us feel important. Knowing that the partner “is there”, seeing that he/she/they devote time to us, our need to feel appreciated is a universal need: the partner should be our first fan!

One can betray because love or harmony has ended; in this case, “rebuilding the relationship” will be a titanic undertaking. But, if under the ashes of a love that “seems” exhausted there is actually a small flame, this can be fed by an expert technician who will suggest various moves; brief strategic therapy in this regard has many resources to propose, the couple will be faced with a challenging but not impossible task.

If in the past there was a strong intimacy and transport, it will take little to awaken the “epidermal memory”, that is, that sensation on the skin that the other triggered.

In principle it is better to keep silent about the betrayal, in fact confessing it is a more selfish act than it would seem; common sense often overestimates the importance of sincerity. Those who confess will feel relieved (initially), those who suffer will be torn apart, the relationship will therefore be in serious danger. Better to keep the burden to yourself and commit to ensuring that it was, and remains, only a “parenthesis”, if what is important to us is the health of the couple.

Literally forgiving means “letting go”, a mental attitude that is more difficult to achieve but more productive; then get to no longer take it into consideration, pretend it didn’t happen, “bite the bullet”. If this is always present, it will be very easy to establish recriminations, spite, emotional and physical distances, which will worsen the situation.

The therapist can facilitate this process, for example by using the “add to reduce” stratagem. Helping the couple to create new memories of new and positive experiences to do together, which gradually obscure what we want to drop into oblivion; obviously, before this, it will be essential to work to understand what to do differently to prevent it from happening again.

Couple – Arguing strategically

In couples’ therapy, you have to pay attention to what type of couple you are dealing with. In some cases, making peace between them could be counterproductive, for some of them quarrels are the “engine”.

The important thing is to argue strategically:

In general, it would be better not to avoid quarrels; the integrity of a couple is threatened more by indifference. In fact, their health can be measured by the number of conflicts faced and resolved. Sometimes you decide not to fight because of a passive resignation, because you don’t feel able to face the situation, or because of the very dangerous tendency to accumulate anger within yourself, and then maybe you end up exploding in a bad way. If there is an elephant in the center of the room, we must talk about it, certainly not ignore it. Indifference works in the short term, but in the long run it is counterproductive.

We should not fear the suffering deriving from quarrels (“suffering has the task of awakening us” – J. Morrison), to make us understand what to change, to make us active and not to take the relationship for granted.

Always arguing about the same thing is unproductive and generates boredom. This can be a wake-up call to contact a professional, especially if the content of the quarrel concerns an important issue, such as mutual respect, sexuality or the education of children.

It is important to focus on the present and not on the past; this can no longer be changed, a time machine would be needed but unfortunately it does not exist… Reviving the past can only be a source of discontent; our memory tells us so many lies, so both of us will even have different memories of the experience and this may generate further problems.

Never fight in the bedroom. This must remain a place dedicated to pleasure and rest; if the fight starts there, force yourself to change rooms. Changing the scenario could also change the dynamics of the quarrel itself, but I don’t anticipate anything … you will find out for yourself.

If we want to get some benefit from a fight it is very important to try not to scream; in every type of “communication” the “way” in which things are said is very important, more than the content. By exacerbating the tones, the other person can withdraw and if this happens it does not matter that what we are saying is true, she will never admit it.

If possible, at the end of an argument, calm down, do something pleasant together. This will create the conditions for the quarrel to be perceived as a more or less positive parenthesis but which does not in itself define the relationship.

“Anything that can do very well, in an overdose, turns into a poison” – Hippocrates

jealousy rimini

Jealousy!

– You know that feeling that rises when you see him talking to someone else?

– Yes, jealousy!

– No, murder.

Often, in my studio, we talk about love: love suffered, lost, unattainable… but the most frequent issue, which can cause deep pain to the individual and can undermine even the most stable love, is certainly jealousy.

The most insidious is the one that is born and grows nourished by the imagination, without there being neither past wrongs, nor objective signs of danger that could make us fear.

There are those who do not tolerate that their partner may find other people attractive; those who fear possible betrayal and therefore obsessively check words, phones, wallets; those who subject the partner to real “interrogations”; those who follow their partners.

gelosia rimini

If you too are full-time investigators, because of the “Green-eyed monster”, the question I have for you is: “The moment you check, just as you rummage through pockets, computers, drawers, are you calm or do you feel a sense of activation, of anxiety, as if you have already found something compromising?”. The message we send ourselves while we look for clues is that “Something is there! you don’t look for something that doesn’t exist ”! We therefore submit to unnecessary suffering.

One of the “deadly” traps of jealousy is asking questions that cannot be answered, trapping oneself in endless reasoning:

– Will my partner betray me?

– What strategies can I adopt to be sure that it will not happen?

The future should be known. So how to keep suspicion at bay? How can you not ruin the couple?

Constantly talking about your fears with your partner, investigating, scenes, complaining, pointing out, are not good for the couple. The climate becomes heavy and, in the end,  we tend to flee from what is heavy, perhaps to go elsewhere…! And here we are in front of a resounding “self-fulfilling prophecy”.

Our goal must not be to pursue the absolute certainty that our loved one is in good faith, but the health of the couple and therefore ours. There are no recipes that make us immune; absurdly we could be betrayed and left even by granting the partner all the freedom of the world. It is worth trusting to enjoy the “journey”, to live our love story peacefully and then whatever will be…

This healthy fatalism and lightness are not always reachable independently, in some cases help is needed, to get rid of fears and find a smile again.