When Love’s Promise is Derailed
How Did We Get Here?
When couples comes to see me, sharing the pain and hurt of what has befallen them along with their dreams of shared love, among the most common questions I hear are, “How did we get here?” and “Where did we go so wrong?” The deep pain that spills over and fills the widening emotional gap between them , the same space that used to lovingly bind them together, is confusing, terrifying, betraying, and often angering.
When couples seek to repair their relationship, they bring two powerful beliefs into the process. On the one hand, they bring deep, sometimes desperate hope for things between them to get better, to be more like they once were. Opposing this hope is a firm doubt or skepticism that is just as deep. If a relationship is to be healed, both of these opposing forces must be honored and respected. In fact, unless both forces are channeled into the healing process, reconciliation is unlikely to be successful.
What is a Couple in Love?
It was not long ago that couples were contractually created out of the need to forge political alliances, establish property rights, conclude treaties of tribal convenience, but not out of any consideration of love and romance. Singer Tina Turner’s song lyric asks: “What’s love got to do with it?” She goes on to ask, “Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” Good questions both. Despite the statistics about how many relationships tragically end, and how often people find heartbreak and the shattering of dreams, we continue to seek loving, intimate partners.
What are the reasons we seek couplehood despite the obvious risks? Understanding the reasons and putting them to work in repairing the relationship is at the core of what my work with couples involves. The roots of couplehood are found in our biology. We come into the world nearly totally dependent upon the care and attention of someone else. This dependence on others for our very survival literally shapes how our brains grow and how our nerves wire together. The types of relationships we experience early in life mold the types of relationships we come to expect. Later, when we begin to seek a life partner, those early experiences channel what we seek and what we seek to avoid. It is humbling to recognize how many forces shape our love choices, which are influencing us completing outside our conscious awareness.
The basis of couplehood is found in what scientists call attachment patterns, which persist throughout our lives. They don’t fundamentally change. They are moldable, however. That is where the opposing forces of desire and fear, of seeking and avoiding, and of approaching and defending come in. Emotional health depends upon the balance that is found between these opposing forces. In other words, rather than seek hope and dispel doubt, relationship repair involves weaving hope and doubt together in ways that builds trust, allows for the emergence of vulnerability and insecurity in an accepting and loving environment, and enables authentic emotional intimacy to grow.
So, returning to the original question: What is a couple in love?
In essence, a couple is a living experiment in connection and in truth seeking. In his book, In Praise of Love, author Alain Badiou said, love is “a new experience of truth about what it is to be two and not one.” Love is the unique experience of seeing oneself and the world through the eyes of another. Therefore, love is ultimately about difference. Early on, those very differences are the essence of what makes us feel attractive and alive, what leaves us feeling that the way we are unique is affirmed and validated by the other. We feel seen, accepted, and embraced by the “other.”
And, later, through the emergence of more differences as our lives unfold, some couples lose the bond. The connection frays. That is when I hear -
We’ve grown apart,
We have different values,
We just don’t see things the same way anymore,
and more…
couples become disconnected, alone, and devalued for who they are. The Other who once saw and accepted you now becomes the Other who rejects and diminishes you. The essence of the couples work I do involves pursuing a meaningful and heartfelt choice: We either pursue the work of becoming a couple who can again retain their individuality while being a “two-some,” or we work to respectfully help each individual to disconnect, to free up each individual to re-establish their separateness as they pursue new possibilities for their future lives rather than remain stuck in the disappointments over what could have or should have been in their earlier life.
Couples Work Operates in the Emotional Trenches
I recognize that for the people with whom I work, whether as individuals or couples, we are venturing into emotional trenches. The work is hard, raw, and sometimes painful. But the work is also energizing. In the worlds of chemistry and physics, powerful transformative energy exists in the bonds of connection that shape the universe. In couples, the energy that is released through the work we do is channeled into powerful healing and the repair of the couple, or that is invested in liberating each individual. The point is that regardless of the outcome, new possibilities, new paths, and new “truths” can be discovered.
Here’s to new discoveries!