"How To Keep Love" (continuation Of The Article "Making Love")

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

How to keep love

(continuation of the article "Making love)

This article is not an instruction for use, this is knowledge that I want to share and which, I hope, will help expand the picture of the world of those interested in the reasons for non-developing relationships

Navigating the article

Love crises:

- the parable of the Skeleton Woman;

- phases of love development;

Resources of love.

Psychotherapy for dysfunctional relationships.

Love crises

Like everything in this world has phases of development, the relationship between a man and a woman also develops in the order we have not established. Through relationship crises, partners learn to build those relationships. Learn to make love.

“Wolves, unlike humans, do not perceive the ups and downs of life, energy, strength, nutrition or chance as some kind of extraordinary event or punishment. For them, the ups and downs are just a given and the wolves pass them as smoothly and painlessly as possible”*.

Each crisis in a relationship is the end of one stage and an opportunity to move to the next stage, the next level. But in order to move on, the past must die. We need to face what we fear most in the world, death, in this context - symbolic death, but because it is symbolic, it does not cease to be experienced almost as painfully as real, real death.

In wise parables, love is rarely a romantic meeting between two lovers. An example is the parable "Woman Skeleton". “This is a tale of love in the icy north. This tale describes the stages that the soul must go through in order to learn to love.”*

I will give a very succinct retelling of the tale, which is described in the book by K. Estess "Running with Wolves."

The father got very angry with his daughter for something and threw her off a cliff into the sea. In the sea, she fell to the very bottom, and over time her body was gnawed to the bone by fish and sea inhabitants, only one skeleton remained. One Fisherman went for the catch and, having thrown a fishing rod, hooked on the rib of the Skeleton Woman with a hook. He decided that he had caught a huge fish and began to pull the rod. Having pulled out his catch, he was very frightened, and, throwing the fishing rod, began to row with all his might to the shore. But the Skeleton got caught on the side of the boat, and it looked like he was chasing Fisherman. Having swam to the coast, Rybak, not letting go of the fishing rod and not looking back, ran home in horror and brought the catch to his dwelling. He ran into the house and when he started a fire, in the flaming Skeleton Woman, he saw something that aroused his sympathy. He began to carefully untangle the fishing line, unhooked the hook and began to line up the bones of the Skeleton, spread them out as they should be, because they all rolled out, twisted and turned into a pile of bones during the flight. He wrapped the Skeleton Woman in a blanket and left it near a warm fire. The fisherman went to bed. Skeleton Woman greedily began to eat the remains of the food she found, and after eating, she glanced at the sleeping fisherman. She saw a tear come out of his eye. Skeleton Woman clung to a tear and began to drink. After getting drunk, she went to bed with Rybak and, clinging to his body, pulled out her heart. She made a tambourine out of her heart and began to play it. And the longer she played, the more her bones became overgrown with muscles and skin, forming a body. She has a beautiful female body that can warm, which can give birth and feed. Then she put her heart back in place and Rybak woke up. They lived happily ever after, they say that they went to the place where the Skeleton Woman used to lie at the bottom and never knew either need or hunger again.

What is it about? Using the example of the tale of Skeleton Woman, I will try to demonstrate the phases of the development of love relationships, correlating them with real, not fabulous.

Phase 1 - partner idealization … Acquaintance and recognition in another of your internal object (more about what an internal object is in the previous article "Making love"). This phase lasts for about a year. It is characterized by fusion, symbiosis. The motto is to live one life. A crisis begins when one of the partners feels satiated.

The first stage of love in a fairy tale is an accidentally found treasure that looks like one wants to run away from it (in our culture, this is a fairy tale about the Frog Princess).

A fisherman in a fairy tale, having caught something with a bait, fantasizes about how huge this fish is, how lucky he is and now only satiety and contentment awaits him. He idealizes his catch.

He does not yet know what he needs to go through in order for this catch to really become valuable to him.

Most of the people this is how they imagine their ideal relationship - to find a prettier, smarter, richer, more successful partner, and that's it: life is a success! He (she) will delight me all my life to the envy of everyone.

Phase 2. Over time, the emotional saturation of relations decreases, differences in interests, values, and life orientations come to the surface. One moves away, the other pursues, controls, devalues. Devaluation is due to fear of loss. So that it doesn't hurt so much to part. After all, partners often think that if there is a cooling off, this means the end of the relationship. They try to prevent a break by clinging to the partner and thereby further alienating him.

In the fairy tale, this stage is described, when the fisherman sees the Skeleton and runs from him with all his might, and the Skeleton Woman drags after him, glad that she was pulled out. It is the inability to endure the sight of the Skeleton Woman and free her from the bonds that becomes the collapse of many love relationships.

“But in love, literally everything crumbles to dust. Everything *.

What does the Skeleton symbolize?

Skeleton Woman is the most unattractive in a partner that sooner or later we will face. These are also our illusions, expectations, the desire to see only a beautiful, greedy desire to get the best that will feed us all our life.

To see your chosen one, without idealizations and illusions, as he really is is not an easy test.

“Show courage and know love. To love is to stay together. It means moving from a fantasy world to a world where love can be cherished - face to face bone to bone - with devotion. To love means to stay, when everything in you screams - run! *

One of the stages in a psychological consultation for a couple is to clarify the values and life priorities of each. Effective methods are NLP techniques that help to identify limiting beliefs, unconscious expectations. With positive dynamics, an understanding arises that each of the partners has its own values, its own beliefs that protect these values. Together, beliefs and values form an individual picture of the world, which will be more or less different from the partner's picture of the world. There is no one who is right and one who is wrong, there are two people who need to come to an agreement. In consultation, this process of finding a compromise is assisted by a psychologist by asking the "right" questions and expanding everyone's picture of the world. Symbolic-dramatic motives (an article on the symbol-drama method) help to understand the ways of solving the problem in a short time. To clarify the values and goals of a partner, I use such motives as “animal, plant, stone”, “gift”, “cafe”, “two banks”. We do the same work with a client in individual contact on issues of relationships with the opposite sex, regardless of whether there is a relationship at the moment or not. If they were, then the person worries: why did not they take shape? If they weren't there at all, then why? What's wrong? What can you do to avoid repeating mistakes? What is the cause of the dysfunction?

Phase 3 - Power Struggle … Illusions about the ideal are debunked, and attention is focused on the differences, shortcomings of each other. Conflicts and claims to each other are becoming more frequent. Attempts to shift the responsibility for the breakdown in the relationship onto the partner. This is where the biggest chance of rupture is. Parting and the search for a new ideal may follow. But, there is a high probability that an unresolved conflict will repeat in a new relationship.

In stuck therapy, at this stage we work with aggression. We use the motives “smuggling”, “bank robbery”, “forest edge”, “animals that visit each other”, etc.

This period teaches partners to hear each other, talk about what they want to change in the relationship. Find a compromise.

Much has already been lived, partners are already familiar with different sides of each other, which is a real foundation for strengthening relations.

“Pulling out the catch, we see that this catch is not at all what we imagined it to be. It is a treasure that we have unfortunately been taught to fear. This is the unsightly essence of the Other. Without embellishment. Therefore, we try to run away or throw away our find, or embellish it and make it something that it is not. But nothing comes of it. In the end, we will all have to kiss the bogeyman while staying in the relationship.”*

At this time, you need to withstand, withstand the discomfort from the inconvenience of talking about what is not pleasant, listening and not sinking into guilt, resentment, but taking what was said into consideration as information. We all know how to smooth out the conflict, because at the beginning of the relationship we did just that. And they did it without difficulty.

This is followed by the 4th phase of recovery and the rejection of competition

Partners focus on future joint prospects, consciously show gratitude, love, respect for each other. They are together not because they are afraid of loneliness, but because they feel good together. Everyone understands their contribution to the relationship and makes it with pleasure.

The stage of compassion, unraveling the skeleton.

“Unravel. Understand. To touch something unpleasant, scary, unattractive. Don't turn away from him. We want to see how it all looks as a whole. We want to touch the ugly in ourselves and in others.

What does ugly mean?

Ugly is our inability to love and abuse of love. Our infidelity is unattractive, our feeling of spiritual isolation is unattractive, our psychological quirks, oddities, misunderstandings and immature fantasies are ugly."

Now they are not afraid of each other's aggression. In every conflict, it is helpful to ask yourself questions:

“What should I give more death today to give birth to more life? What must die? After all, I know this, but I do not dare to let everything take its course. What must die in me so that I can love? What benefit does the power of the ugly bring to me today? What should die today? What should live? What kind of life am I afraid of being born? If not now, then when? *

In a relationship, it is important to try not to harm the other and also to be able to repair any harm or damage that has been done to you.

The 5th phase of "Friendship" comes into the relationship

In true friendship there is the highest degree of closeness of people, confidence in the support of a friend.

It is important to note that if in love and falling in love attraction can be one-sided, then friendship presupposes interpersonal attraction. The manifestation of friendly feelings on both sides, as well as the satisfaction of emotional needs, is of a more conscious, pragmatic nature, in comparison with love.

M. Argyll notes three reasons for establishing friendly relations:

1) the need for material assistance and information, although friends provide it to a lesser extent than family or colleagues;

2) the need for social support in the form of advice, sympathy, confidential communication (for some married women, friends in this regard are more important than husbands);

3) joint activities, common games, community of interests. **

People are often friends, different in temperament and mental disposition. An open, impulsive person can befriend a shy and phlegmatic person. Such relationships provide an opportunity for everyone to express themselves with minimal competition. Friends are united by the presence of common views, values, opinions.

Friends trust each other.

In the fairy tale, the next stage is manifested in the fact that the fisherman falls asleep in the company of the Skeleton Woman.

"Falling asleep in an innocent dream" is the next stage.

Such a lover sleeps a sleep of wisdom, not a sleep of caution. There is true caution when danger is near, and unjustified caution that is rooted in old wounds. This latter makes men and women to be touchy and indifferent, even when they would like to show love and tenderness. Those who fear that they will be led or cornered, or those who loudly declare their desire to be free over and over again are the people who let gold slip through their fingers.

At this stage of innocence, the fisherman returns to the state of a young soul, because in a dream he does not know the fear and memories of who he was yesterday or earlier. In a dream, he does not seek to take someone's place or position. In a dream, he is experiencing a renewal.

His trust is not a consequence of the fact that the beloved does not intend to hurt him. He believes that any wound inflicted on him will heal, that for the old life. A new one will follow.

Where one ends, another begins - this is the meaning that must be trusted. *

6 Phase of love presupposes the refusal of each partner from his parental scenario and the ability to see in his beloved not an object that can be manipulated and used, but a subject with the same rights as himself, having his own beliefs, ideas and will.

Taking a position in which we feel like a valuable subject, a person who can live a full life separately from another, but stay with a partner, because this is our joint free choice, we do not verbally invite a loved one to be there without losing ourselves as a person.

Drop a tear.

With the same inevitability with which a woman's skeleton appeared on the surface, this tear now comes to the surface. This is a feeling lurking in a man. She is a command to love oneself and another. Now, having thrown off all the thorns and thorns of the world of reality, the man attracts the Skeleton Woman to his bed and lets her drink her deepest feeling. In this incarnation, he can quench the thirst of another.

Tears not only express feelings, but they are also lenses through which we gain a new vision, a new point of view. *

Taking a position is when we create something of value that you believe in yourself, and what your loved one will believe in. This is an interest in something, the creation of a new project, business, creativity. Mutual support in the implementation of projects, confidence in their value and importance, sincere interest - this is what the “Heart-tambourine” phase of love means. The tambourine in the parable is made from the heart. Symbolically, this can mean trusting your most intimate Other.

Energy, feelings of closeness, loneliness, desire, boredom - all these increase and decrease in relatively compact cycles. The desire for closeness and separateness comes and runs. The nature of Life-Death-Life teaches us not only to dance - it teaches that the disease must be treated by the opposite, because the cure for boredom is a new action, for loneliness - closeness, and for feelings of constraint - loneliness. *

Without accepting this order of life, we can go astray. During the period when it is necessary to create, we will "drain" energy in unrestrained fun, immeasurable waste of money, in pursuit of unjustified risk, dangerous sexual adventures. All this will be immeasurable, excessive, beyond measure - because all these actions do not lead to the satisfaction of the need for creation, self-realization. In this case, we are left with a sense of injustice, disappointment, a sense of wasted time and that chances have been missed. From time to time, we have a feeling of subtle dissatisfaction, tension, stress, which must be used in the direction we need - to achieve our goals, implement the planned projects.

This is how a love relationship should develop - each of the partners transforms the other. The strength and energy of everyone is untangled, it is one for two. She gives him knowledge of the most complex rhythms and emotions. That you can only imagine. Who knows what they will hunt together? We only know. That they will be full for the rest of their days. *

Psychotherapy for relationship crises

Psychotherapy for relationship problems is possible both as couple therapy and in individual therapy.

As mentioned above, if at one or another transitional stage of the relationship, one of the partners falls into his past trauma (the types of trauma are described in the article "Types of trauma, what to do"), then individual therapy for one partner and support for the other is recommended.

In couple therapy, we determine at what stage the relationship is stuck and work with those disagreements that exist: whether it be aggression, value system, common goals, trust, acceptance of the other, etc.

Resources of love

Problems and conflicts are resolved through negotiations, taking into account the position of the partner and their interests.

We are learning to be together. A good skill for getting out of a problem situation is to ask yourself: What am I learning by solving this problem? Why, why is this happening to me now?

In times of crisis, it is necessary to strengthen our own stress-resistance resources. Indeed, under stress, there is not only regression of relations, but also personal regression of each of the partners. The ability to cope with stress provides a basic state of support from which to make certain decisions. Appreciate difficulties and overcome them.

In the Effective Stress Management group, we learn to be aware of, name, speak our feelings and express our emotions, which is a necessary skill for constructive conflict resolution. The ability to respond to affects in a socially acceptable way will save you both from destructive conflicts and from psychosomatic diseases. Relaxation and self-care skills are good prevention of stressful situations and breakdown in relationships.

For couples consultations, couple therapy, it is necessary that both partners are in approximately the same resource state without failures in trauma. If one "failed", then we work with him as in trauma, and the other is recommended emotionally supportive therapy for this period.

Used Books:

*TO. Estes "Running with the Wolves"

** E. P. Ilyin "Emotions and Feelings"

S. Dimitrova "Towards Love"