Who lives with whom?

“Dreaming about our own family, the calm intimacy of living together, we are looking forward to the moment when we can say not “at my place”, but “at our house”. And we are often disappointed when this “with us” becomes a reality.

“Partners are not Adam and Eve, who had no one and nothing in the past,” says psychologist Lucy Mikaelyan. “Each of us brings our history, our baggage into our common life, literally and figuratively. And when one enters the territory of another, misunderstanding and even irritation may suddenly arise. Can this be avoided?

Mine or ours

“The space a couple lives in reflects the unconscious side of their relationship,” continues Lucy Mikaelian. “Hidden tensions between partners often manifest themselves in the form of increased attention that one or both attach to the territorial issue.”

Without realizing it, they equate possession of physical space with power over the psychological space of another. And sometimes it’s hard for them to figure it out. Like 28-year-old Daria, who shares her recent experiences: “My ex-boyfriend is an athlete. We dated for about a year, then he moved in with me, in an apartment that I rented for several years. I soon became crazy about the many machines he filled this small area with! I kept tripping over them, getting bruised. My patience snapped when I discovered that he had removed the flower pots from the balcony to put another piece of iron there. In the end, four months later, we broke up.

It is hard to believe how precisely the territorial issue reveals our needs and that the relationship of two can depend on what will prevail – the need to dominate the other or the interests of the couple.

“A few years ago, my friend and I bought an apartment,” says 38-year-old Larisa. – I invested most of the money, and it seemed to me that because of this, Sergey did not feel the house was “his”. Therefore, when settling down, I offered to hang on the walls the photos that he took last summer, and I selected the entire interior in accordance with them. He appreciated it, and we didn’t have any tension.” Perhaps Larisa did not really like the photographs themselves, but she took a step towards ensuring that her chosen one was comfortable in their common home.

“He moved in with me just a month ago, and our relationship is already kept on parole,” complains 25-year-old Victoria. Every evening when I come home from work, the first thing I do is grab a broom! The husband is a creative person, works at home and sows chaos around him: clothes, magazines, his correspondence – everything is out of place. It’s hard for me to exist in a mess, so I can only get angry and clean up!”

“Scattering things in plain sight is a good way to remind you of your presence, to force you to be taken into account,” explains transactional analyst Marina Borodenko. – A person prone to disorder often experiences an unconscious fear of being abandoned, it seems to him that he really does not belong here. And he fills the common territory.

No less symbolic is the biased attitude towards order: it speaks of the desire to rule over others, not to recognize that something can get out of your control.

“When a stranger and at the same time a very close person appears in the house, it is important to know that in the first weeks of joint “grinding”, some may need to maintain some of their “home” habits, continues Marina Borodenko. “If the partner does not make the bed, leaves his papers everywhere, listens to loud music or does not wash the dishes immediately after eating, he feels safe, feeling that he is ready to be accepted with all the features and addictions.”

Any attempt to pressure, correct, force to give up what is familiar and beloved (“It was you who could (la) behave this way at home, but here is my house, and be kind (a) …!”), seems to be violence, involuntarily causes protest and aggression.

When everyone has their own “order”

Often the cause of conflicts are things related to the past partners. “Let’s throw out your grandmother’s nightmarish rug” or “I’m allergic to dust, and you dragged half a ton of old magazines” – sometimes partners cling to things that their chosen one carefully keeps. And he is offended.

“Old chest of drawers” ​​is an image of family history, it reminds of the parental family, of the life and relationships that were before, explains Lucy Mikaelyan. “And when a partner suggests: “Throw out the chest of drawers,” there is a feeling that he devalues ​​the life that you led before you met.”

But why are some people so intolerant of each other’s things? “The feeling of discomfort, irritation and prohibitions can cause jealousy for the partner’s past, for those who were significant to him before,” explains family psychotherapist Alexander Chernikov. “By rejecting his lineage, we protect our inner space, and the more insistent, the more we fear becoming vulnerable.”

The question of (not) accepting the things of another tells whether or not my beloved’s lineage has become part of mine.

The transition from the state of “at home” to the state of “with us” is easier if the past of a man and a woman is not striking. Things can be in a common space and not suppress it if they have lost a significant share of their personal belonging. The ideal solution would be when everyone has their own place under one roof, where they can store what belongs only to them.

From our parents, we inherit not only a chest of drawers or a carpet, but also ideas about how space should be distributed between family members, the habit of having a personal place in a common apartment, or, conversely, a desire to live in cramped conditions, but not offended.

“Spouses, as a rule, were brought up in families with different rules, different attitudes towards the arrangement of life together,” Alexander Chernikov continues. – And it turns out, for example, that the wife seeks to isolate herself in a separate room, and when her husband is indignant in response, she thinks that he does not respect her independence. But the fact is that in the wife’s house everyone had their own room (it’s natural for her), and in the family of the husband’s parents, solitude was perceived as an unaffordable luxury.”

Obviously, the misunderstanding in this couple is not due to the rejection of partners and not to the fact that they rushed to decide to live together, but to different family traditions, which manifested themselves in very different attitudes towards their common home.

find balance

You can change the situation if you stop hiding your fears from your partner and together look for a way to exist together. “When two people start living together, the balance of power between their values ​​forces them to negotiate,” comments Alexander Chernikov. “And that’s good, because a couple that has a lot to discuss is a viable couple.”

Dialogue often fails due to the fact that one of the two is not used to taking into account the other person, his desires and needs. “If the conversation reaches an impasse, it is useful to turn to an intermediary (for example, a psychologist) who would help to understand what is really behind the behavior of a partner: dominance, attracting attention, attachment to the past, or something else,” advises Marina Borodenko. “Just don’t contact any of your friends or relatives who are likely to take the position of one of the parties.”

“A house is not created once and for all,” adds Lucy Mikaelyan. “Relationships in a couple are developing, we ourselves are changing, our common space is changing, and all this is the result of the activity of not one person, but both.”

“I dreamed of a beautiful life, instead of understanding the person with whom I lived next to me,” 34-year-old Nina recalls her first marriage. – Despite my second husband’s excessive addiction to rock music, which I know little about, I try to always have a place where he could put new discs and easily find them. I love my husband for who he is, including the fact that he is not at all like me.

“With us” does not always mean serenity and absolute harmony, this is a place for life, quarrels and reconciliations, a place for rapprochement. Accepting the other as he is, bearing responsibility for him, ourselves and our joint future, we create a space that is built not on an immovable foundation, but on mutual concessions, dialogue, the evolution of relationships – in a word, on real life.

Indoor and outdoor space