Finding Your Way Back To Each Other
No matter how much partners love each other, over the course of time, they can lose track of each other. By this I mean – you can lose touch with the deeper parts of the other person. This can happen gradually over years as you fall into your own increasingly separate routines, and your paths meander off in their own directions, and you find that you aren’t sharing as much of your inner life with your partner as you used to and they aren’t sharing as much of theirs. Or it can happen more suddenly, as with a loss or a trauma that one of you goes through or you go through together, and you find that instead of leaning into each other and holding each other in your sorrow or anger, one or both of you turn away.
This doesn’t mean that you love each other any less. In fact you may find yourself very in touch with your love. Or you may feel the love harder to access. But either way, you’re having trouble finding your way back together. You may yearn to feel deeply in tune with each other again – to be vulnerable with each other again – but there is a maze between you that you don’t know how to navigate. There are patterns that emerge between you that take you away from each other rather than back together. There may be ways in which you or your partner feel hurt, injuries that have opened up over time that have gone so long unsaid or unresolved that you have no idea how to find the words now to express how you feel, or how to feel heard, or how to hear.
You may feel the distance from your partner in many different ways. Maybe it’s an acute pain; a dull ache. You long to feel close again. Or maybe in the busyness of your days you don’t really notice the distance except in particular moments when you glance up at your partner and they look stranger to you, harder to know. Maybe you feel less able to connect physically. Or it’s become harder to laugh together; you are less apt to feel adventurous, serendipitous, as if you are stuck in a routine that feels dry. Or you may no longer feel the impulse to call or text your partner for support when something difficult happens at work, or to celebrate a success, or just to say Hi when there’s a bored afternoon stretch and they pop up in your mind and you miss them.
You may feel like you’re connecting in terms of the logistical details of life – dealing with shopping, chores, bills, getting the dog walked, the kids to school – but the deeper parts of you feel more apart.
Of course there is always waxing and waning in relationships, ways in which we feel closer sometimes and more distanced at others. That’s part of the breathing rhythm of relationships. But at times distance can become more the norm, and even when we realize this and want to become closer again it can be difficult to do.
Couples therapy is a wonderful support in helping you find each other again, helping you get back in tune with each other in deeper and more intimate ways. In the safe and caring environment of our work together, we can begin to see finally and to untangle the ways in which you have been stuck — and the ways in which you have been reaching for each other or wanted to reach, the ways in which you have felt hurt or alone and have longed to be loved and held. Part of this is getting in touch with each of you in a deep way and allowing you to be able to open that inner part of you again — and to feel safe and nourished again in the company of your partner’s love and care.
If you would like support finding your way back to each other again, I invite you to give me a call at (510) 500-9722 so that we can talk about how couples therapy can help.