When I see two people deeply in love, looking adoringly into each other’s eyes, I can’t help wondering when the fighting will break out.
It’s a sad attitude, I know, but anybody who has progressed from infatuation to a long-term relationship will know you can’t have the adoration without the fighting. (I mean honest fighting, not threats, fists or worse).
What’s behind the fighting when it comes is the inescapable fact that the two people in any relationship are two different people and they are going to rub each other up the wrong way. And when that time comes they are going to have to figure out how to be united and separate at the same time.
Kahlil Gibran, the author of The Prophet, put it like this:
“And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
Although this sounds a bit flowery (you wouldn’t believe how much Gibran impressed us in the 1970s) it states the condition in which relationships can start to flourish. Long-term relationships seem to go through three phases. First there’s the infatuation when people do terrible things in their togetherness such as eating food off the same plate (I’m with Gibran on this: “Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.”)
In the next phase, the characteristics that seemed so endearing (“Free spirit, never remembers anything, lives for the now”) become annoying (“Totally inconsiderate, never remembers anything, leaves it all up to me”) and sometimes even enraging. This could be seen as the “Why can’t you be more like me?” phase and I would be surprised if there was a long-term romantic relationship that hasn’t gone through it. How people negotiate this unhappy phase is crucial to the future.
That’s because the third phase can go either way. If it goes one way the partners split up (which might be the right outcome) or one is completely subdued by the other for as long as the relationship lasts. Or they can live in a sort of un-nourishing cold war. If it goes a good way, the partners accept each other’s differences and focus on building the relationship. Of course, firefights break out now and then but they get over them. For those in the conflict phase, acceptance and toleration go an awfully long way and so does cultivating the art of getting over fights reasonably quickly.
For more on this see Maria Popova's article on the Brain Pickings blog at http://bit.ly/mariapopova
On a somewhat related topic, I note that according to Women’s Aid its support line now gets 41 calls a day from women experiencing domestic violence. These include almost 2,000 calls during the night and early morning.
Some of this is due to partners who cannot and will not accept the other partner’s right to what I have been talking about – to be part of an intimate relationship without losing one’s individuality.
Women’s Aid also got almost 300 reports last year of electronic abuse of women. “The most common form of digital abuse we hear about is damaging rumours being spread about women both personally and professionally and having sexually explicit images posted online without consent (“revenge porn”). In other cases, abusive partners or ex-partners have advertised their partners on escort sites without their consent or knowledge.”
This is an attempt to obliterate the identity of the woman and to replace it with one manufactured by the abuser.
And it is many worlds removed from the idea of mutually respectful love described by Gibran and by others who value relationships – even if they are occasionally fractious – between two proud but individual human beings.
We need, though, to stand up for the ideal and not to let it drown in the waves of bullying and abuse that Women’s Aid and those dealing with domestic violence towards men, hear about every day of the week.
Women’s Aid is at womensaid.ie
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@yahoo.com) is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email.