I'm guessing that when you fell in love with your sweetheart, your relationship felt like
a series of magical moments.....
....each moment punctuated by your heart pounding and a nervous excitement that set your spirit soaring and your stomach is doing flip-flops and having butterfly feelings, just at the thought of seeing or hearing him or her....And, I'm guessing your felt alive and wanted to share every waking moment with your lover, right???
Do your remember those moments??
And then.....something happened....
Somewhere between 2 months and 2 years into your relationship, the intoxicating feeling of being in love begin to fade....
....and are slowly being replaced with a primal panic feeling inside as it dawns on you that you are feeling trapped or abandoned by the very person you thought would make you happy and look after our heart.
At this point in the relationship, if you don't decide to run away and try to find a new relationship, you attempt to get your needs met by trying to change your partner to be more like you.... and more like when you first met.
Or, you'll try to punish them for not being who you thought they were. And, of course, they are doing the same thing to you and before you know it, you start to feel like you can't be yourself around your partner anymore.
You both feel like you are walking on eggshells around each other, feeling scared, misunderstood and not knowing what to do to change it.
After a while of this power struggle, even the smallest disagreements get blown out of proportion leaving you feeling alone, abandoned and totally disconnected from the one person you love the most.
And...once you feel disconnected, you most likely become needy and demanding, desperately trying to reconnect with your lover....
.....or perhaps you become withdrawn and distant, shutting down to protect yourself and taking time alone to process how you are feeling.
Whatever it may be, your relationship no longer feels safe.
Curious???...Does this sorta...kinda sound familiar???
If you can relate to any of what I have just described....you are normal....I'll repeat
myself
....You are normal and it is AOK that you are fighting...
Honestly!!
To some degree you have lost YOUrself in your relationship while falling in love and
have become dependent on your partner. That is not actually a "bad" thing and is a necessary part of the bonding process that happens when we fall in love.
And....it is not a sustainable way to live, so nature forces you to energetically separate and establish a new, more healthy shared power between you.
If you succeed, you graduate with flying colors to the next stage of relationship-mature love. If you don't you most likely break up.
Paradoxically, it takes falling out of love to spark the next stage of your growth, both individually and as a couple.
Honestly if you are both willing to grow, you can get beyond the tug of war and learn how to share power between you in a fluid and productive way. Only then can you move beyond the Power Struggle stage of relationship into a deeper and more mature love that can be even more passionate, exciting and connected than what you have experienced in the Romance Stage.
I'm guessing that you are wondering how to overcome the Power Struggle stage and move into Mature Love....
* The first step
on any healing journey is being honest with YOUrself and acknowledging that you have a problem and clearly defining what that problem is.
* The surface problem
is that you are no longer able to sustain a stable intimate connection between you and your partner and that nothing you try is making it better.
* The deeper problem
both of you face is that you are triggering each other's deepest attachment fears---and I am guessing they are the fear of being rejected or aband
oned, or the fear of being trapped, controlled or smothered.
Curious??? Are you willing to acknowledge that you have a problem you don't know how to solve?
If you are, then you have taken the first step towards healing your relationship.
The next steps in your journey will involve learning:
- Counter-intuitive communication skills that I'm assuming you taught at school, so that you can share your heart openly without rubbing each other's emotional raw spots
- How to safely connect with each other in a way that makes you feel close
- How to end recurring conflict, so that you are not repeating the same old destructive relationship patterns over and over
- How to heal and forgive past wounds so that trust is restored between you
- How to understand and appreciate each other's differences so that both of you can be yourselves with each other and live an authentic life together, without needing to change to please your partner or keep the peace
If what you've read above resonates with you, and you're ready to take steps to healing your relationship check out our
Connecting to Us Couples Retreat,
designed to
create a
deeper connection, intimate communication, , honest sharing, enha
nce trust
and so much more....
Sending you Love and many Blessings, Joanie
