Love, Relationships, Limerence & Affair Recovery
Health & Fitness:Sexuality
We use this term because for many relationships where one or both partners wish to go their separate ways, all rational thinking and sense goes out of the window!!
The reality is that understanding the dynamics involved between two people that then leads to a separation are complex and deep. Too often what brings a couple to this decision is a catalogue of wrongs and resentments on both sides, which have built up over many years. Combine this with the lack of communication and we mean honest heart felt communication leads the relationship down a dark and bumpy road where divorce is seen as the only option.
Human relationships are complicated. Two people come together, fall “in love” and live happily ever after is a myth often churned out by Disney, Hollywood and slushy novels. In truth the path to real lasting love is very different and the sad thing is we are not taught this at home or at school during our formative years.
When two people come together what they do not realise is that they bring with them into the relationship all their own personal history, childhood trauma and attachment styles from infancy. All that has influenced and moulded them from that child into the adult is then played out in any relationship they may form with another and vice versa.
The problem with this is that it is often after many years of raising a family, working, building a home together that the problems arise. What started out as a relationship full of hope, aspiration, love and commitment over time turns into one of anger, frustration, resentment and regret. It is at this point when many couples seek external help through therapists often coming as a last resort feeling and thinking that divorce is the only outcome.
The perception of marriage is where two people come together and form a single unit. Wrong! You are still individuals and the ideal is where you are inter-dependent within the relationship, neither co- dependent or independent. Yet the idea that a couple can still have their own space and time for themselves is much frowned upon in some circles, seen as selfish and self absorbed.
When couples come for therapy it is when they have reached crisis point in their relationship, they no longer see or hear each other, usually absorbed in their own pain and hurt. Feeling suffocated, neglected or betrayed are common and neither have the ability or clarity to think with any sense. Sometimes at this point the only way to allow each to see more clearly is for both to agree to a separation.
This may sound drastic however the benefits are many. When in crisis as humans we regress to our formative years of childhood and often project all our unresolved pain onto our other half. We look to them to fix and make better our pain, in other words we want them to be everything our parents were not. This is an impossible task because they are not our parents and expecting them to be anything other than who they are is unrealistic.
When a couple are caught in the cycle of pain and hurt towards each other this spills out to those around them such as their children, friends and family members. The relational space between them becomes toxic and the only way to clear that and find some sense is to part for a while.
This allows the space and clarity to return to each party where with help from a professional therapist both can then explore why they came to that point and what each one really wants. It becomes a time for thinking and understanding what has been going on, and to allow the anger and hurt to dissipate in the therapeutic space rather than spilling out all over the place.
Separation does not mean divorce, it is just time away from each other to explore the options they have. Whether they want to work at the relationship or if in fact both feel they want to end the relationship. What a separation does is to give time to making the best choice for the
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