Love manifests itself in the ability to restore relationships

Relationships are a constant exchange that keeps them alive. What are we exchanging? Someone with finances, someone with emotions, someone creates comfort or provides external protection. But studies show that this is not the most important thing in the life of modern couples, the main thing is emotional comfort.

Emotional exchange, support, emotional warmth are stabilizing factors in a couple’s life. From this it becomes clear why trauma is so devastating, why traumatic events associated with the past have such a dramatic effect on family life, depriving a couple of emotional comfort.

The first meeting

Let’s remember the first moments of love. We see another person and feel that we like him, that there is something special in him, something very valuable. And I aspire to this person, I want to find out, to experience it. Probably, this is the peak of human life, the most exciting moments when we meet and start falling in love, getting closer.

What are we experiencing? We are experiencing the same exchange: in the other there is something that I do not have. Two stretched strings that begin to live in some kind of invisible resonance. At the very first stage of a relationship, a lot of attention is paid to feelings and sensations.

We like to share with each other the pleasant sensations of a delicious meal, dance, intimacy. We get closer in these feelings, tune in to joy, to beauty and want to share this beauty. And that’s what we want from a relationship.

Love at second sight

The art of love is that a couple can restore relationships. People have quarreled, maybe even humiliated each other, but they can apologize and restore relations. This can be called «love at second sight». If, having lived with a person for three years, five years, having raised children, partners can look at each other and see themselves as before, then the couple has a future, she knows the art of love.

The experience experienced by the infant in its first one and a half to two years of life is very important. When a mother looks at a baby, she sees in him a beautiful creature who already knows so much, who is so delightful, who smiles so wonderfully, who tells her so much. There are studies that show that a child will never speak if his mother does not start humming with him with the right intonation. This is a special music that arises between them — and this is a great intimacy.

Babies are happy because of this, and since we were all babies, we are very happy people. In this sense, an acute topic for society is lonely babies. The mother is responsible for expanding the infant’s repertoire of sensations and pleasures that he can experience. And shared pleasure is also one of the foundations that stabilize the relationship of partners.

If a couple has something to laugh at, if they have a similar sense of humor, if they understand each other’s jokes well and laugh at them, then this is the key to a long and stable relationship. That look with which a mother looks at a baby, we, growing up, unconsciously look for in a partner, although sometimes it is very difficult to return to him. If the therapist can provide the couple with access to it, it will be healing for the couple.

A real relationship begins when the two still decide to take this step — to look at each other with the eyes of love again. What actually hinders them? One of the obstacles is trauma.

How do we deal with trauma

Trauma is what prevents you from getting closer. It may be related to very early experiences. For example, if a person did not have this experience of the first two years of life associated with pleasure, with shared intimacy, then it is very difficult for him to get close. He does not have the confidence to take a step towards another.

In the next stage of a relationship, trauma can manifest itself when we react inappropriately to something. For example, a wife makes a simple remark to her husband, and he feels ashamed at that moment. Or feels worthless. It’s an inadequate response — but that’s how he feels.

The third moment in which trauma manifests itself is when for some reason it is difficult for us to correct relationships, it is difficult to go closer again, to catch the eye of love. Trauma is a situation that is experienced as hopeless, which is associated with a threat to either life or significant life values. A person in such a situation can neither run nor fight, he is forced to remain in it.

How can you experience trauma? Usually we try to quickly forget or repress traumatic events. One of the defense mechanisms associated with trauma is called «dissociation», when we do not remember this experience at all, exclude it, do not allow it into consciousness. It’s easier for us to live.

Life is like an elevator

In child therapy, we use the elevator metaphor. When we just rise from the ground, we do not see anything, then some not very beautiful houses, windows, many cars become available. The higher we rise, the more visible the perspective, the roofs of houses, the direction of movement. On the high floors we see the sun, the sky, beautiful buildings — a very beautiful city. It’s a wonderful experience.

The child, who is 3-4 years old, lives on the 3rd-4th floor. He does not see the prospect, for him reality and everyday life are what happens in the next window. If there is shouting all the time, it will hurt him. Actually, this is a metaphor for our life. I think that for some people, trauma can disrupt the movement of the elevator. A person cannot climb high floors to understand that there is a way out of his situation.

A child who has only three floors does not know that it is possible to run away to the fifth floor, that from the fifth floor there will be a completely different view, a completely different solution. He knows that you can run to the second or first floor. Children tend to suffer in silence and do not talk about their suffering. They express it in behavior, in symptoms.

Suppose a child has experienced shame. We have a very strong culture of shame, bringing up shame, punishment, children are often shamed. For some children, this is unbearable. They try to adapt, but an irreparable trace remains inside, a feeling of inferiority, worthlessness, that I am not good, incapable. This is the trauma core.

Who is to blame?

And so we begin to get closer in a relationship. Imagine two 22-story buildings. Everything looks very good on the 22nd floor. «Do you like French literature?» “Oh, I love Françoise Sagan!” We are getting closer very quickly. And this is where things start to resonate.

Surprisingly, life observations show that we are attracted to people who, on the one hand, are different from us, who have something to give us, how to fill and enrich us, and on the other hand, who have experienced a similar traumatic experience. As if some kind of compass tells us: in this person something is the same as mine. And we will understand each other. We, perhaps, will treat each other. This is the secret hope of our self: that here, in this relationship, I can heal something in myself.

Some traumas bring us closer, while others push us away. There are people whom we see and understand: not our person. For example: there is so much pain in him that I definitely can’t stand this pain. In his family, culture, experience, there is so much hard, strict, that it definitely does not suit me. We know this already in the first moments. But let’s say I realized that it’s safe for me to get close to this person, and I take a step towards.

And then life begins as a couple. Life in a couple is in many ways at first a fabric of sensations, experiences, emotions. This stage passes very quickly, and everyday life begins. And here, for example, a woman says to a man: “Well, I was hoping for you …” At this moment, her partner on his “elevator” can fall into the state of a four-year-old child, whom his mother once relied on. For example, she left her younger brother to him, but he failed. The mother was very disappointed and yelled at him a lot.

Thus, a traumatic core was formed in the child: I am a worthless person, you cannot rely on me, I failed, I am weak. We know that trauma is designed in such a way that the whole situation is imprinted and repressed. Since it is not processed by consciousness, any element from this situation (the movement of the eyebrows, intonation, the message itself) becomes a trigger, a stimulus. It acts as a conditioned reflex and can elicit the same response.

A person gets into the time elevator and finds himself on the 4th floor, at his 4 years old. He experiences what he has not experienced for a long time, what he once repressed and then avoided situations all his life, in our case, situations in which he could not cope. And then he suddenly finds himself in one of them.

What is he doing? Of course, he blames his partner. “I am an accomplished, strong, confident man, the head of the company. I have never heard such words from anyone else and have not experienced such feelings. So it’s your fault.» If a struggle begins here for who is right and who is wrong, then this is already the beginning of the destruction of relations.

Establish a dialogue

My experience as a therapist is that it is possible to establish a dialogue where the other is seen again as a whole person. To do this, you need to move away from your partner a step, a certain distance, do not listen to his attacks and arguments. Why is humor so helpful in these situations? Because humor contains a moment of distancing, a way out of the situation. It is necessary not only to move away, but also to go up to the 20th or 40th floor yourself and help your partner to go up to the same floor.

The task of the therapist is only to teach how to conduct a dialogue in a couple. In existential analysis, there is a method of finding a personal position that can be taught not only to an individual, but also to a couple — to take a position in relation to oneself, to explore oneself, to experience oneself. It is worth investing effort and time in this, because otherwise the traumatic circle will very easily capture the couple and begin to destroy it from the inside. You need to give yourself time to stop and sort out all the feelings that have arisen. Analyze, understand and ask for forgiveness.