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What is the most common problem in a relationship? It is logical to assume that each pair has its own reasons for quarrels and disagreements. However, experts identify seven common “emergency” situations that do not depend on the duration and characteristics of the relationship.
Find the source of problems, find a way to get out of the impasse, save the marriage – with such requests to sexologists, psychologists and psychotherapists, couples on the verge of breaking up daily turn to them. And here’s what’s interesting: almost always they expect to receive specific advice about what their life together should be like. The reason for this, on the one hand, is the lack of guidelines, on the other hand, the desire to minimize personal responsibility in relationships.
What other traps, besides avoiding responsibility, can you fall into living together?
1. Total symbiosis
Paradoxically, the most fragile unions are those that at the beginning of a relationship are an absolute symbiosis, a merger of partners who become everything for each other: lovers, friends, relatives, children.
They behave as if they were alone on a desert island, until the day when something invades their lives that disturbs their exclusive relationship. This may be the birth of a child (how to build a life for three, if before that they lived only for each other?), An interesting project for one of the partners, but most often – a feeling that arose in one of the spouses that he begins to “suffocate”. This is the beginning of a crisis: one partner is disappointed, the other believes that he has been betrayed. In most cases, such couples do not diverge peacefully.
2. Refusing to be different
A loved one is not our copy. A statement that is obvious in theory but not in practice. Often, major conflicts begin with small things that we strive to deny. We cannot accept that a partner does not share our reactions and desires. This surprises and gradually disappoints us in him. “He doesn’t tell me how he feels”, “She doesn’t understand the effort I’m making”, “She doesn’t want sex when I want it” are just some of the complaints that come up during therapy sessions. They talk about how partners refuse to accept the differences between them, and this turns their life together into a battlefield or eternal judgment.
3. Lack of communication
Couples often forget the importance of dialogue in getting to know and understand each other. How to learn about the desires and needs of another? How to make plans together? Just talking. Otherwise, sooner or later we begin to realize that our loved one is not at all what we imagined.
In addition, the lack of communication leads to misunderstandings. “What’s the point of telling him what I want? I already know what he will say.” Convinced that they know each other, the partners find it pointless to talk. They label each other and live next to each other instead of living together.
4. “Therapeutic” couple
In these couples, there is an unspoken and often unconscious agreement on mutual dependence: the dominant partner is called upon to heal the other from depression, alcohol, and professional failures. Acting as a “rescuer”, he wants to feel needed, needed. And this desire for power, on which the novel was built, is gradually coming out.
It happens that the “patient” is cured and no longer needs the “doctor” and evidence of the difficulties experienced. Or he notices that the relationship is built on dependence and subdues him instead of freeing him. A “rebellion” is brewing, and there is very little chance that it will be resolved peacefully.
5. Lack of plans
To move forward, partners must make plans. However, the euphoria from the first stages of the relationship convinces the newlyweds that it is worth “living for today.” As a result, by the time the passions have subsided a little, a hole gapes in the place of the future. Joint life ceases to bring satisfaction, give rise to new desires and energy. And instead of discussing the situation and their expectations, the partners withdraw into themselves and each go their own way, for example, they plunge headlong into work.
At some point, one of the spouses realizes that he is growing only on his own, alone, and decides to end the relationship. An alternative, but no less common scenario: both partners resign themselves to “loneliness together” and do not change anything.
6. Rejection of change
People change not only physically, but also psychologically. Even strong couples run the risk of falling into crisis over time if they don’t learn to accept and adapt to new realities.
Changes almost never go hand in hand, and it can be quite difficult to realize the changes that have taken place with a partner. It is even more difficult to give up the belief that people do not change and the partner is what he has always been. We cannot get rid of plans and illusions in any way, which means we do not accept him as he has become.
7. Laziness and fatalism
“We love each other – so everything should be fine”, “If something went wrong, then it was not love”, “If we do not fit each other in bed, then we are not created for life together” . Many are sure that everything should go well from the very beginning, and even with the slightest problem in a relationship, they decide that they are simply “not meant to be together.” Illusions formed during the period of falling in love prevent the participants of the couple from managing that phase of the relationship in which passion weakens and can potentially develop into another, more mature feeling.
Such partners are used to waiting for instant results, getting “everything at once”, without making any special efforts, switching from one relationship to another, satisfying desires as soon as they appear. They forget that relationships and even intimate life take time.
There are three of you
Many couples think that having a baby can magically solve all their problems. On the contrary: often it becomes the last straw and only exacerbates the existing crisis. Little communication? It will get even smaller. Complete fusion and harmony? The child will destroy it, and because of this, one of the partners will have the feeling that he was “stolen” a place in the heart of a loved one. No joint plans for the future? The child will become the center of interests of one parent, and the second will be left “with nothing.”
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In order to get out of the trap of crisis, lack of communication, struggle for power, lack of plans, it is important to embark on the path of self-knowledge – by contacting an expert or starting an independent analysis. “I’m not saying that each of us urgently needs psychotherapy,” explains sexologist and psychotherapist Massimo Cher. “However, it is really important to look at yourself from the outside. It will help you see the relationship in a new light and get rid of the ghosts of the past, whether it’s parents or previous romances.”
And, of course, the best defense against traps is to be aware of them and try not to get caught.