{"id":362,"date":"2018-10-31T16:24:06","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T15:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mentalia.pl\/english\/?p=362"},"modified":"2020-04-21T10:19:51","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T08:19:51","slug":"the-way-home-how-to-fall-in-love-with-your-partner-once-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mentalia.pl\/english\/blog\/2018\/10\/31\/the-way-home-how-to-fall-in-love-with-your-partner-once-again\/","title":{"rendered":"The way home… how to fall in love with your partner once again."},"content":{"rendered":"
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The way home… how to fall in love with your partner once again.<\/h1><\/div>\r\n\r\n\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\t\t
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We have come a long way from a still popular belief that love is a random mystery which<\/strong>\u00a0shows up and then vanishes beyond our control. When it ends, we become helpless and we<\/strong>\u00a0cannot reignite our love or consciously keep it up. Nowadays, we already know how to define<\/strong>\u00a0the shape of love.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr Sue Johnson mentioned the study<\/a> which shows that in EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy –\u00a0therapy for couples that focuses on emotions) therapists and researchers finally managed to define\u00a0the shape of love just as people have learnt how to define the structure of water, crystal or DNA. In our\u00a0most precious relationships, we don\u2019t have to just surrender to incoming and departing feeling of love.\u00a0We learn that we actually can create strong bonds that are based on a sense of emotional security.<\/p>\n

Sonia and Dawid 1 came to my office fearing the inevitable breakup. They could feel that they were\u00a0drifting apart. Dawid said: \u201cI can feel how Sonia is closing up to me and we begin to have less and less\u00a0contact with each other. Sometimes, when I go back home after work, I want to turn back my car and\u00a0drive ahead instead of going back to a home that feels so cold. I don\u2019t know why do I come back. I feel\u00a0lonely and angry at this whole situation.\u201d \u201cThis is correct,\u201d said Sonia, \u201c I think that I am the problem.\u00a0Dawid constantly complains that I can\u2019t open up. He\u2019s disappointed that I\u2019m unable to talk to him. Just\u00a0as I am. I\u2019m also disappointed that there\u2019s this blockade in me. I can\u2019t open up. Sometimes I think that\u00a0it would be better if we broke up.\u201d<\/p>\n

After only 6 weeks, Sonia and Dawid looked at each other\u00a0differently. Their emotional scheme and communication formula have changed. They could see how\u00a0they bring mutual reactions of the fight and escape and how each one of them got stuck in defence\u00a0and distance. Dawid noticed that when he complains, criticizes Sonia or accuses her of not wanting to\u00a0talk to him, she doesn\u2019t hear him asking her to share her emotions with him nor that he wants to be\u00a0closer to her so he can support her. In those moments, Sonia thinks that she can\u2019t do anything\u00a0correctly and make Dawid happy. For this reason, she moves away from him, she can\u2019t talk about her\u00a0difficult relationship with her mother because she feels ashamed and doesn\u2019t want to burden Dawid\u00a0with problems that he\u2019s not the cause of. When Sonia is silent, Dawid feels that he can\u2019t reach out to\u00a0her. He does many things to get an answer from her, any answer, but nothing works. Only now they\u00a0can see how they bring mutual reactions of the fight and escape and how each one of them got stuck\u00a0in defence and distance. They can see their usual dance and hear emotional music that leads this\u00a0dance. However, this is just the beginning of the work.<\/p>\n

After a couple of weeks, they begin to do something terrific – they start to build a bond that is full of\u00a0love and sensibility. \u201cDuring those weeks we\u2019ve not only learnt how to solve our problems but we\u2019ve\u00a0also got to a completely new level,\u201d said Sonia. \u201cWe never knew that love can be that way,\u201d Dawid\u00a0added. Sonia figured that Dawid doesn\u2019t expect to learn all the details of her relationship with her mum\u00a0and that he realizes that it must be difficult for her to go back and talk about it. He only wants Sonia to
\ntake a risk and share with him her shame. When she talks about her emotions that have been sparked\u00a0by conflicts with her mum, he feels needed and close to her. This is the only thing that he always\u00a0demanded. When on the first session Sonia shared with Dawid what she feels, the blockade that was\u00a0inside her got looser. She got her problems off of her chest and she no longer felt in the pit of her\u00a0stomach. Instead, she felt lighter, therefore, closer to Dawid. She believed that Dawid won\u2019t push her\u00a0away.<\/p>\n

Regardless of whether you have a hidden feeling of a lack of safety, you\u2019re feeling anxious and always\u00a0worry that you will be left or pushed away, or maybe you\u2019re usually numb and defensively deny the\u00a0need for being close with someone, this process, that we call the Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)<\/a>\u00a0works and leads towards new level of emotional connection. It is called EFT since the biggest change\u00a0that occurs is that people open up themselves emotionally, become more in tune and more responsive\u00a0to the weaknesses and needs of other people. We all know that this is what love is about. It\u2019s about\u00a0being emotionally present.<\/p>\n

When people like Sonia and Dawid become more emotionally open, in tune and deeply responsive,\u00a0they begin to accept and explore their subtle feelings, fears and longings. They start to put all these\u00a0things together in a clear way, they risk opening up and telling the other person about their sensitive\u00a0spots. This is what brings the loved one closer. When people place their vulnerability and their heart in\u00a0someone\u2019s hands, that\u2019s when love is being born.<\/p>\n

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November 2nd 2018<\/span><\/h6>\n
text: Barbara Slawik photo: skylark<\/span><\/h6>\n
* due to the confidentiality principles names or some too specific details have been hidden in order to provide\u00a0patients anonymity<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h6>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The way home… how to fall in love with your partner once again. We have come a long way from a still popular belief that love is a random mystery which\u00a0shows up and then vanishes beyond our control. When it ends, we become helpless and we\u00a0cannot reignite our love or consciously keep it up. Nowadays, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bez-kategorii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mentalia.pl\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mentalia.pl\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mentalia.pl\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mentalia.pl\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mentalia.pl\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mentalia.pl\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490,"href":"https:\/\/mentalia.pl\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions\/490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mentalia.pl\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mentalia.pl\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mentalia.pl\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mentalia.pl\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}