To love does not mean to find perfection, but to forgive terrible defects. Those who delude themselves are disappointed. But this concept is overlooked by those who are intoxicated by the idyll of passion. All too often, love is confused with the initial passion, and when fire gives way to the relentless pace of coexistence, people think love is ending. It’s just a misunderstanding.
How to save a relationship?
In the beginning, there is the falling in love full of desires, needs, and impulses. The desire to spend all the time with the other half, but these perceptions, beautiful and necessary to the couple’s experience. They are not those that can create a deep love that lasts. The magic of passion makes us see a thousand merits in the other and tiny, negligible defects. Although the enchanting qualities we see may exist, they are the product of selective perception.
They operated by rationality obscured by desires that discard negative traits. It is precisely for this error of assessment that the infatuations remain indelible in our memories. This explains why the love stories lived briefly and intensely stay immaculate for a lifetime, not having been oxidized by the collapse of idealization.
After that period of sentimental kidnapping, people usually try to realize their love with marriage (or cohabitation). But this constraint opens the curtain on new interactions. Life forces us to exhibit specific characteristics that had been hidden or set aside during the conquest phase. Each shows new facets of self and opens wide eyes on the less pleasant attributes of the partner.
The first problems are triggered because everyone has needs, needs, habits, emotional reactions, and beliefs that do not coincide with that of the spouse. These are schemes that few will sacrifice on the altar of coexistence. The two will engage in a tough struggle to see their rights and ideas triumph.
Resistance
We resist the pressures we receive because we do not want to change points of view and behaviors. It is the stalemate phase where no one gives up or retreats because the other is considered unjustified and wrong.
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This involves quarrels, arguments, tensions, misunderstandings, to the point of repressing one’s anger and desire to rebel. Each focuses no longer on those splendid qualities of falling in love. It is on horrible defects that one would like to annihilate with the flamethrower. Also, it is probable that these defects really exist, but it is still a question of selective and distorted perception of suffering. At this stage, people discover everything they don’t like about each other. Never point the light on their own faults and their personal inadequate communication and behavioral modalities.
Rejection
It refuses to accept and share not only what it does not like, but also beautiful things. The refusal has a viral character. If it is not blocked, it multiplies with the mechanism of generalization and absolutes until there remains only a single, gigantic and insuperable obstacle too great to be tolerated or forgiven.
Resentment
Resistance, Repression, and rejection are the antechamber of resentment. The problem with resentment is that it cannot find peace until justice is done. This is how the closing games begin, intimacy is used as a weapon, ways are sought to injure, offend and lower the dignity of the partner, touch goes to the sea while language becomes more hostile when not offensive. Slowly, the games become heavier. The low blows increase, the respect, the esteem, and the trust fail: the foundations of the couple relationship are affected!
You need not be visionaries to predict the outcome of such a relationship over long distances. Love turns into hatred, anger, coldness, total detachment, desire to get rid of the other, repulsion, lack of contact, and no sharing. If there are children, the example that parents give in terms of love is absolutely inadequate, generating confusion, suffering. And a great misunderstanding about how the couple’s relationship should be managed.
From this brief description, it is already possible to isolate the key points on which to leverage at the time of the crisis. What is the moment of the crisis? When we try to achieve a certain result (the imposition of a habit, a way of thinking, a behavior …)and the other half is contrary.
Don’t hinder the partner’s ideas
Try to understand their motivations and talk about them to find that compromise that seems to satisfy both in part. Everyone must examine conscience trying to identify if their claims are not exaggerated. Perhaps based on educational or cultural premises that could be wrong.
However, the first step to overcome is that of resistance. The couple must be reasonable in the discussion and the final decisions. To be right at the expense of family harmony is a Pyrrhic victory! Fighting for the reason is not necessary. The aim should not be to win, prevail, or take the lead, but to create a climate of understanding and sharing whose outcome is a sense of greater unity.
Marriage is a two-way journey that does not presuppose the struggle for power. Therefore, it would be useful not to concentrate on the faults of others we consider annoying and to introduce a lighter and more constructive approach. The solution is never in the tug of war but in the negotiation. Knowing how to communicate your thoughts well and welcome those of your partner is an inevitable step to achieve couple harmony.
These aspects are inseparable and indispensable! Torque problems never derive from character traits. There is no incompatibility of characters, but the incompatibility of actions. They are actions that disturb and create pain and are always actions that heal wounds.
Signs of 3R
We must pay attention to the first signs of resistance, Repression, and rejection. How to take these signals and act in time? It is enough to observe if the relationship is peppered with one or more of these 16 symptoms:
- Loss of attraction to the partner
- Increased nervousness, irritability, and aggression
- Daily stress crosses the threshold of the house and takes possession of discussions
- Litigations of different intensity and for trivial facts
- Mutisms and silences replace dialogue and smiles
- Jealousy and suspicion
- Possessiveness
- Domination of one over the other
- Repeated criticism and lack of compliments or praise
- Moodiness, changeable mood
- Lack of availability to the needs of the other
- Apathy
- The job comes first and occupies the conversations
- Removal of responsibilities or family cooperation
- Appearance and progressive increase of indelicate, offensive words.
- Pride
The second necessary step is to intervene when the aforementioned signals appear promptly. As soon as we see, some of them appear, it is necessary to refuse to proceed in that direction. There are many chances that those who felt intolerant set up good reasons to justify their reactions. Remember that it is not a question of reasons but a goal to be achieved. If you want the reason, you will get the tension. If you wish to harmony, change your ways of doing and thinking.
If you continue to do what you are doing, you will continue to receive what you are receiving. The magic lies in accepting to intervene on oneself and not try to change the other: Focus on the most appropriate action and not on the mistakes of the other. Then we must give space to the loving and productive dialogue to get different attitudes from the other. Good couple life.
