Proximity does not negate anger, anger, fear and other «bad» emotions that can be directed at a partner. The ability to endure them and keep in touch is a sign of a deep and sincere relationship, says psychologist Ilya Latypov.
Intimacy is what, in the end, we strive to establish with significant people, trying to step over loneliness … But it often happens that, striving for intimacy, we manage to miss the opportunity to meet …
Intimacy is an experience that becomes possible through a direct and open exchange of emotions. Exactly the interchange: I share something very exciting for me — and I get a RESPONSE experience for all this. Intimacy is a dialogical process, it is impossible when everyone is waiting for their turn to spit out feelings, not reacting in any way to the experiences of the other or devaluing them (“Come on!”, “Don’t be hysterical!”). The experience of intimacy is that I accept and sometimes even endure the partner’s emotionality and feel that he / she can withstand my self-disclosure. I do not interrupt the feelings of the other, I interact with them, respond to them, I do not try to block with my “But I have …”.
- Why do they choose to be alone?
Proximity does not negate anger, anger, fear and other «bad» emotions that can be directed at a partner. The ability to endure them and keep in touch is, in my opinion, a sign of a much deeper and more sincere relationship than eternal sweet love without the slightest anger.
If I can’t express all my feelings to my partner, I’m not free, and we can talk about addiction, not intimacy. I begin to partially invent a partner for myself instead of listening to him. How else? Our psyche does not tolerate emptiness, it fills the unspoken, hidden experiences of another person with its content. Alien. In the same way, the other fills with his own conjectures the voids formed where I kept silent or lied about myself. Only if I express myself as I am now, at this moment, what I feel and what I think — only then can I hope that people will appear in my life again and again who can accept me as I am. I am. Hear my feelings and respond with my feelings… Alas, there is no guarantee — they may not hear, and not answer, or even reject.
I can stay detached, be in «safe mode». There is such a convenient position — you listen to another, analyze something there, talk about the results of the analysis, but you yourself do not get emotionally involved. You control the expression of feelings, do not let them «too» break through. It’s safer this way, but it eliminates the possibility of a genuine meeting. Other people may try over and over again to take this defensive wall, their despair from impotence to break through to live (not rehearsed) reactions develops into anger and, as a result, into alienation … “Tell me how you feel? I don’t understand what’s happening to you, and I don’t think you care what happens to me!» The detached one is protected from all these turbulent emotions, he does not pay for intimacy, because it is not there … Keeping my inner balance, I lose people, and, after them, the balance begins to crumble.
- How to get over a breakup
The price of intimacy is sadness at parting. Breakups—short-term, long-term, or permanent—are inevitable because we also need the opportunity to be alone—if only to truly appreciate the closeness. The very word «proximity» already contains the concept of distance between two people. Sadness at parting always arises when we learn something valuable, very important and significant, with which (or whom) there is no desire to part. Sadness is the truest experience of value. “If you don’t know sadness, there was nothing of value in your life,” says psychotherapist, head of the Moscow Gestalt Institute Daniil Khlomov.
If we part with people without regret and sadness — what was then in these relationships, since it is so easy to refuse them? Yes, there was nothing, so, foam on the surface … Or another option: we are sad to leave, but we must «control ourselves.» Don’t show how much we’re hurting right now. But then, it turns out, we say: «I’m trying my best to show that what was between us is not very valuable to me.»
Returning home after a month of absence, I feel sad — there are many people left behind, old and new acquaintances. Someone flashed in a series of faces, leaving no trace, someone lingered in the memory and soul. I’m missing someone. I didn’t manage to say goodbye to someone, and I feel incomplete. Someone did not say what he wanted to say. With someone I hope to meet again, and this makes the sadness not so strong. Sad, which means that something very valuable happened and is happening in my life.