What if only I was ready/willing to work on our relationship?

One of the most often recurring questions for people who work through irritation is: “How can I get my partner not available or ambivalent to open up and discuss our relationship? And if they were not ready?”?

Clara was hammering this apparently insoluble problem in her relationship with Juan.

“I understand, I understand!” He exclaimed a session one day. She and her therapist, dr. H, they had spent months explore why intimacy He was missing from their relationship: the intention was sure he wanted. He was finally willing to consider the possibility that Juan’s “non-prescription” had a two-sides meaning. “I guess you’re right: I lived in irrigation.”

“Uh, you? Only You? “Dr. H. asked

“Okay, Okay, we are.”

After a weighted break, Clara, obviously sad, continued: “But if I’m ready, and Juan is not, then, then – then – Us They are not ready. “Another pause.” I just wish there was something I could do. We could be so good together. It seems insane that I – no, cannot make it work. But we have difficulty having a conversation for adults on Just – Us.

“I gave him a copy of the book on irritation. He read some pages and then suddenly he had something else to do. And since then, every time I lift him, he says he has nothing to do with us.”

If you are trying alone to save your relationship, you are probably what, in terms of irrelevance, is called a Artist. The solution can reside in the enrollment of your partner in an open communication process that exposes your routine of songs and dances and develops in what the authors call health care.

However, your desire to “make it happen” will probably not be enough to enlist an ambivalent partner. But if you hit at the right time, your partner could be able to recognize the problem, allowing a new shared perception of the distance between you on the surface, even if only for a moment. In this case, you must be sure that this is really what you want: a paradox of irrelevance is that the elusiveness of our partner is often what incites our desire. But if you stop lowering, running or hiding, we could discover that intimacy scares us as much as our partner, exposing what Jessica Benjamin (2007) calls “complementarity”. So we expose how difficult it is to admit our vulnerability to ourselves too: what could be called “irrelevance with oneself“.

“Okay, what now?” Clara continues. “Juan seems unaware of the DeadSpace among us. If I lift it, he says:” Things are fine, what is the problem? “The conversation stops, a wall goes up and I’m back on the wrong side. I’m just making fun of myself? If you don’t even recognize the problem, where is there for me to go?”

Dr. H stopped before answering. “It is difficult to know without feeling what Juan has to say. But from what you describe, the distance can be painful for him as for you. If he does not speak of separation, he could still want to connect with you, but you perceive that talking about this will have to talk about his vulnerability, something of us does not like to do.”

“Yes, I see it. Well, if we both are afraid, how do we start?”

“Well,” said dr. H, “You have already come across the first step of work through irritation: you discovered its existence. And you could be able to start the change process using certain tools that you can ask Juan to use with you. Sometimes they work immediately, but they work immediately, but usually people have to get used to before they can get used to it before you really work. Could be Work.

“It does not require a 100% buy-in from both partners, not initially anyway. But only deciding to try the tools can create a new one opening This allows you to listen to you and listen to you in a way that can change everything – and I mean everything – about your relationship. “

The process to which DR H is reported is called 40-20-40. The 40-20-40 creates a non-judgmental space in which couples can build compassionate empathy and mutual understanding by sharing their feelings and experience without Fear of criticism, fault or retaliation. The way it works is described Here.

By practicing couples 40-20-40 (nobody gets it “right”, above all not: in fact, doing it “wrong” is a vital part of the process) and even the people invested in the transition of irrelevance in the mental health of relationships. Relationship health allows us to share our relationship experience in deeply intimate terms. Reflecting on the process, raise questions such as:

How is it to form the experience of sharing your heart and mind, in that way you behave and refer in the presence of those who count more? How is it to discover that there could be a hope of relating in a totally different way from what you know and to get out of the isolation prison?

How is it finally being able to listen to completely? Appreciate what someone really becomes more and more precious to offer?

How is someone else, your partner, who cross this? How is it experiencing the vulnerability of another in the face of emotional risk and investments, as you become more important, yourself?

How is it to perceive your most requested emotional investment by another-land in another person?

How is it starting to feel at ease, even authorized, the uncomfortable experience of your vulnerability while you start seeing how richer you can become more intimacy while reciprocity develops?

After the discussion of these questions and others, with Clara, dr. H asked her: “Do you think your connection with Juan could be worth it? How would you deliberately feel trying to get to know each other better than you ever did?”

“Well,” said Clara replied, “he is frightening. But I still remember the Juan I fell in love with; and he AND Still here. I don’t think I would be here if I wanted to move away for ten years together as if it were just a big mistake. Maybe we can really find ourselves. “

Reference

Benjamin, J. (2007). Intersubjectivity, third parties and mutual recognition. A speech held at the Institute for Contemporary PsychoanalysisLos Angeles, ca.

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