An impassioned plea against hasty separations.
There’s no question that a breakup is part of a relationship. Because every relationship has a beginning and an end and because every couple experiences separations even in the smallest and everyday ways.
But when the small becomes too big and the everyday becomes the exception, they come to our practice, the women and men in need, and say and ask: “It can’t go on like this! But how then?”
SEPARATION FROM THE STATE – NOT FROM THE PARTNER
The only problem is that even after 40, many people confuse something when they talk about separation. Because they actually want to separate themselves from a conflict-ridden state, not from their partner.
Which is understandable, because the former lightness of being has become a ton of load. So just get rid of it so that I can be carefree and happy again…
However, it is precisely this misunderstanding, this confusion, that leads to couples simply separating too early. Because there are solutions. Provided, of course, that the crises are not about abuse or violence.
My wife Birgitt Hölzel and I work week after week on such solutions in our Munich practice Liebling + Schatz, as consultants from couple to couple. At first, it is often only small steps that make a lot of work for the couples. Because it’s about precise exploration and about making what separates you visible in the first place. As a result, it is often about something completely different.
DISTANCE AND TIME FOR NEW CLOSENESS
Our inquiries about what stands between the partners relieves the couple, because they have already done everything possible to avoid the separation. Because it’s exhausted and desperate. Because it seeks understanding, in itself and in us. Because first of all, there has to be space and distance so that everyone can find something about themselves again. Because in this existential crisis, everyone has to learn to take care of themselves. Because the attempt at a new beginning usually also means the end of a long power struggle; and with it the farewell to needs, desires and ideals.
And the stupid thing is that this confrontation with the partnership also means work and attention, but it is a huge opportunity to give the relationship a new direction together. Without separation, with maturation. Because there is life after the “dead point”. Because we can change conditions, but not people.
What would be the alternative? Even though it may seem strange to many of us in these oh-so-easily consumable times of Tinder, Parship & Co, future relationships are often just re-enactments of the old ones. In other words, old wine in new bottles.
It’s also exhausting and annoying to question your own communication and conflict patterns. Which is why, after exhausting, costly separations with new partners, we automatically end up back at the same point. In quarrels, conflicts and conditions that are unbearable. Or business as usual. Drama without end, lowest common denominator…
THE STAGES OF A RELATIONSHIP
Just to give you the background: We systemic therapists divide relationships into four phases, and you can really rely on them. Because they recur again and again: at the beginning being in love, the hormonal state of emergency, then getting to know friends, relatives, first quirks and habits. Finally, the re-education phase, in which we want to change the partner; even if we hardly succeed. And finally, the attempt to consolidate and secure what is left. These phases come and go, one way or another.
In Germany, however, 41 percent of all marriages end in divorce after an average of 15 years. Which is a pity, because we are convinced that it is often enough worthwhile to stay together. There is by no means always something “better” to come. And love doesn’t always have to be symbiotic.
(c) kelly-sikkema-530092-unsplash
