This crazy little thing called love

When you fall in love you feel wonderful! You may think you have found your other half, someone who really makes you feel good. It’s as though you feel complete at last:  smarter, funnier, sexier, happier… and you feel safe.

So why is it that months or years later, you can find yourself thinking that things aren’t so good or that the other person has changed? Often it’s when you move in together that things can start to go downhill. You discover that your partner has qualities that you don’t like and that they are not quite the person you thought they were. The differences seem to magnify over time, then resentments set in and begin to niggle away and the arguments soon start.

What has gone wrong?

You may think you had complete freedom of choice when you fell in love, but it’s likely that your unconscious had its own agenda. The psyche is constantly trying to repair the damage done in childhood from your unmet needs and so it looks for a partner who can give us what our parents could not. It looks for someone who embodies all their positive and negative qualities in an attempt to create experiences which will heal the hurts we have carried for many years, even since birth.

So if you are a risk-taker you may seek someone who is more solid; if you find it hard to show affection you may adore someone who showers you with hugs and kisses; if you are shy you may be drawn to someone who is more sociable, etc, etc. To begin with we enjoy these differences. However, eventually our own traits – risk-taking, affection-avoiding, shyness – rise up in protest. We find we are uncomfortable with the differences and criticise our partners for being too sensible, too touchy-feely, too gregarious… too this, too that.

It’s important to understand and accept that such conflict is bound to happen in close relationships. Indeed, this is healthy as it is a sign that the psyche is trying to get its needs met and become whole. So the first stage of a relationship – romantic love – is supposed to end. And the second stage – the power struggle – is about learning to accept and adapt to the reality of your partnership. Many couples’ problems are rooted in the ‘power struggle stage’ typified by arguments, crossed wires and tears because each person has a strong sense of self. The couple may start to avoid certain subjects – or each other, or else they try to manipulate events and their partner in order to get their own needs met. To get through the stage successfully, each partner must understand and accept the reality of the other person and that it will never be the same as our own – to accept them and love them as they truly are, rather than as idealised extensions or reflections of ourselves.

Couples counselling can be of enormous help when partners get stuck in this stage.