Often when couples fight there is a whole swirl of emotions from each partner. And if it is a big argument then there might be a lot of distance between the two as each person soothes their hurt feelings.
It sometimes takes days or weeks for some couples to come back together again, and when they do it’s likely they don’t talk about what happened that tore them apart in the first place.
As a couple’s therapist I find it so reassuring that almost each couple I help has two different types of people in the relationship. One person is expressive and forthcoming and the other one is silent and isolates.
In the beginning of any relationship these traits are not seen. We are all so busy just finding our person that we are entranced with them and they are for the moment, perfect.
But after a several months we all start to see that what we thought about them is not exactly who they are. You see what we do is put them into our minds as the perfect person. We fit them into what we have been wishing and waiting for.
Many of us in our lives end up in situations that we hadn’t expected. We find ourselves just planted in a life and we might even wonder, “How did I get here?”
This is not uncommon, especially in relationships. We enter the relationship with the highest of expectations. And it might sound like, “I love this person. They love me. We are so happy. I have never felt like this before.”
This is a wonderful feeling. The problem comes when it changes and then we wonder what we were thinking. “Was it really so great I didn’t notice things about my mate that I should have seen? Did I miss some of these important cues?”
All of us have the capacity to love our partners. And there are times when we do and feel so close to them. There are also times when we can’t feel any further away because we got our feelings hurt.
Many of us in relationships vacillate between loving our mate and wishing they were different because the part that we don’t like keeps grating on us.
This is pretty common. Many of us wish we could design our partner to be just what we want so we can be completely comfortable. Some of us don’t even want to hear what they have to say because our needs are not getting met.
Sometimes when I work with couples, I see something that is hard to see. Two people who love each other who can’t hear each other. This often happens when there are two strong willed people in the relationship.
I know I am very strong willed. When I met my husband-to-be, I had been working on myself in my own personal counseling and I was pretty sure I was ready to meet my soulmate. And I did.