It’s a paradoxical fact that when we’re in a connected and intimate relationship, any buried or unresolved emotional issues we might have will come up to the surface. And the ‘better’ a relationship is (in terms of mutual honesty and openness), at some stage the worse it will feel. Sharing intimacy, vulnerability, and trust with another person opens any doors that we have tightly on our emotional sludge. But that unresolved stuff holds us back, and limits our ability to risk accepting joy and love – risky because if we let them in there’s the possible pain of losing them again – and letting it out is an essential step to healing and letting it go. It’s one of the great benefits of being close to someone – but it can be painful.
Well-known GMP writer Jed Diamond describes five stages of love in any relationship. The first two are to do with the ‘honeymoon period’ – the first flush of hormonal and emotional mutual attraction, followed by making and starting new plans for a shared life. The third stage is when it can feel like things are coming unstuck, as previously unnoticed and annoying aspects of the other person’s attitudes and behaviour start to manifest themselves, in the form of disillusionment and conflicts – sometimes over inexplicable things. I think it also has a lot to do with those buried wounds starting to surface.
According to Jed, it’s at this point when many relationships end, with both partners in a state of disillusionment and disappointment. If there’s not been much real connection and honesty, then moving on maybe the best thing for both people to do. But where a deeper kind of connection has been growing, Jed believes that this feeling of disillusionment is an unavoidable transition to a stronger sense of connection in stage four, and working together in some deeper way in Stage Five. I think he’s right, and it feels like Stage Three is exactly where I am with my marriage right now.
This helps me to feel that I understand what’s happening to us, and why – and to see this process as a difficult but necessary terrain that we have to cross if we want to go forward together; a kind of adventure like going through a dark forest on a mountainside we have to go through to get to the summit, where we will enjoy some beautiful views and feel a deeper sense of connection with our true selves and with each other.
It’s felt like we’ve been slowly but surely drifting apart during the past six months, each of us unconsciously building up a reservoir of disappointments and fears we had about the relationship, but not wanting to say anything in case it made things worse. All the restrictions of living together under lockdown haven’t helped, nor have the stresses of relating to my teenaged stepson. But when we got married two years ago, in my mind that meant not giving up on our relationship without a hell of a fight, even if things got hard.
For a while, in looking for ways to improve things between us, I think I overcomplicated things by reading whatever I could find about relationships and trying to analyse and understand what was going us so that I could ‘fix’ it (in a stereotypically male way ?). But all this did was put my wife on the defensive, as she felt I was suggesting she was falling short in some way from the ideal standards of openness and communication that were being recommended, and that I was judging her for that. Which was not the case at all. (Mostly!
It felt like we needed a lot of mutual listening, and patience – as both of us were struggling to even understand our own feelings sometimes, and I knew we needed to try something different. That’s when I came across the idea of setting time aside each for a weekly meeting (the Gottman Institute calls it a ‘State of the Union’ meeting) where we could create a safe space to share what was going on for us – in both practical and emotional terms. We promised not to blame or criticise, but to validate and appreciate each other as well as sharing painful feelings, and listen carefully without reacting defensively, even if it was painful sometimes.
I found the best way to do this was by always using ‘I statements’ rather than accusations, and to express what we were feeling as a revealing of our own pain, rather than explaining what we thought was wrong with the other person and how they’ve hurt us. Also to ask for and give forgiveness, and share remorse at any thoughtlessness or misunderstanding.
This process reminded me again how hard it is to really ‘get’ how another person sees the world, especially when it’s different from our own second-nature assumptions about ‘the way things are’. It takes time and practice, but I think it’s an essential part of the ground in which love can thrive. The sense of release we experienced from telling and hearing our truths – sensitively, but with no holding back – brought a rekindling of our emotional connection that had been missing in recent weeks. It emerged that what both of us were feeling had more to do with our fear that we were disappointing the other than feeling disappointed with them. Our feelings of anger and irritation were mostly to do with covering up these deeper feelings; and by taking time to connect with and share what those were, we were able to repair and rebuild the sense of shared openness and trust.
And this is where the gardening part comes in. A relationship really is like anything else that’s alive and growing. You can’t just ignore it and hope for the best – It needs to be looked after and nourished. And as much as a plant needs enough sunlight and water, a relationship needs trust and connection; so it’s essential to make time for those things, otherwise, it may survive but it will never thrive.
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