The Bigger Picture: There is a common fantasy in this society that we fall in love with someone who is a perfect match for us, and the struggle ends. We live happily ever after.
We have a refuge, a sanctuary, from the harshness of our world that doesn't truly understand us. We know we will always see each other as the most wonderful people. No matter what great adversities lay ahead, our day-to-day moments are easier, happier, because we are together.
Love, it seems, is what gets us through anything. Yet, long-term, committed relationships are among the most challenging experiences of our lives, with most not surviving these days.
How could this be so? Perhaps there is an error in our thinking.
There is a key element to our closest relationships. These are the relationships in which we show ourselves the most - sometimes involuntarily. They touch us deeply, and so we share of ourselves deeply. As we do this, we also stumble upon those places where we struggle the most. Whether we wish it or not, confusion and heartbreak are stirred. No wonder these relationships can become so hard.
Unfortunately, most of us feel there is a something deep inside us that is fundamentally flawed. We desperately hide this from anyone who knows us, forming habits that keep us cautious and isolated.
Despite the enormous energy this takes, we feel that if anyone accidentally uncovered this piece, they could never love us. How could anyone survive a life like that? In response, we impose limits on how far we will open our hearts, how much we will risk and how deeply we will believe in ourselves.
Incredibly, this awful cavern inside us is not real. We were not born with it and it reflects no fact about us. It is something left over - a series of hurts and struggles internalised leaving us feeling awful when in truth we are not.
Those painful hurts from our past that continue to lurk in our lives consistently mask what is real about us, shaping our world until they are healed. Precisely because these hurts are not true or permanent, our mind works intelligently to find moments to heal them. This process of healing involves two key factors.
First, we must be in touch with them - feeling them in a physical way (laughing, crying, shaking, sweating, yawning). Second, a real, profound contradiction to the hurt must be present. If the hurt tells us no one loves us, and someone appears to do just that, we (unawarely) embark on a path to show them exactly how we feel in hopes that they might love us through the healing.
It is so against our nature to stay limited and fearful that we will do anything to try to heal our struggles. This can drive us to be a little outrageous. When someone comes into our life who loves us, nearly against our own will, we begin showing them our deepest hurts. Given that they will inevitably do the same, it is no wonder we find ourselves tearing apart the very person we love and want the most.
Hold no illusions: It is not love that binds a relationship together, making it last forever. It is emotional and interpersonal skills. If you want your intimate relationship to survive through the hard times, you have to collect these skills. Love is not the structure, but the reason. Love is what inspires us to face into our deepest fears and work hard to be a better person.
But love itself does not bind us together. For this we must make a conscious decision. It takes a lot of work for a deep, meaningful relationship to survive. However, its rewards are unparalleled in life. To succeed, however, both partners must engage with the task - challenging themselves, shifting on their struggles and allowing for growth.
The joy of life grows from such challenge. There is no room here for suppressing yourself or giving up on your battles. Rather, there must be a vision for two people who are different from each other, fighting for the other. We must pull for rather than fight against one another.
To do this we must be individuals with integrity and honesty, who will look for the humanity in our partner even when they are amid their worst nightmare. We must believe that people are intelligent, loving and inherently good; and we must be willing to see this in our partner even when we are having a very hard time, or they are.
We must know our partner is not the cause of our struggles, and so realise that blaming or attacking them is destructive. Finally, we must be fully committed to eliminating our struggles. This is possible, particularly when we are loved.
When we fight against our core struggle, inevitably old feelings of humiliation, or worse annihilation, surface. When we know someone is watching us, this can seem unbearable. However, when that person also believes in us, is committed to us, and is also facing their own pains, it is possible that what we experience is not humiliating, but actually, the greatest love of all. That is worth hanging in for.
Shalini Sinha practises life coaching and the Bowen Technique in her clinic, Forward Movement, in Dublin.