How To Revitalize Your Relationship

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Couples fall in love.  And if they love each other enough…  and if the psychological timing is right for both,  they will stay.  Maybe even make a commitment to make a future together.

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Aah! The magic!

Regardless of who you are, or your partner is, life together will inevitably create a predictable routine. With a rhythm in place, safety and comfort are born.

Eventually however, people fall into two traps (at least):

  • We filter our communication to avoid discomfort, and
  • We lose the exquisite feelings of the initial sense of love and wonder.

The Avoidance of Discomfort

I have a theory  that part of the magic of beginner’s love is the result of endorphins,  those magical brain-drugs that, in part, provide a block to our pain – In this case, to our emotional  and  historical pain.  With these lovely Blocks in place,  we feel invincible!  We become compassionate listeners,  creative lovers,  and have little or no anxiety about the usual worries –  like fear of rejection.  We are – truly – the Best We Can Be. 

But eventually our brain goes back to normal. We become sensitive to our old, unresolved wounds, and begin defending ourselves in the ways we did before. Most of us become extra aware of our partner’s responses to us, and subconsciously, build old familiar walls of self-protection.

Losing The Sense of Wonder and Vitality in Your Relationship

When we develop routines, the ability to see things as they are in the moment is sacrificed. In relationships, this can be deadly. Routines offer predictability, but when it comes to real people, we lose so much of who the other is when we mistakenly think We Know!

If you don’t believe me, answer the following questions.

  1. Have I changed, or evolved, in any way, during the last year?  Consider your opinions: views about the world, the universe; your neighbors, friends,  colleagues,  family members. Consider your desires. Your fears. Your dreams. Of course you have!
  2. How has your partner evolved during the last year regarding the same considerations?

When you become aware of what factors might be attributing to the loss of satisfaction in your relationship, you can look for solutions.

Ideas To Get The Spark Back

When you and your partner first got together, you had no problem listening and talking for hours.

  1. Invite your partner to talk about his/herself for 1/2 hour. Then switch.

When you were first together, you thought about your partner all the time.

2. Make a list of “gifts” for your partner, and give one each day. Gifts can be acts of caring (cup of jo, massage, love notes, spontaneous “love” texts, gifts of food or drink, holding hands), dates (tickets to an event or to go to dinner), and favors (cleaning, gardening, sexual adventurousness).

Ideas To Open Communication Again

I cannot emphasize enough – Being honest and open is the only way to grow and evolve in your relationship. If you feel a lack of spontaneity in your relationship, it’s probably because you have created defenses (walls), supposedly for protection. Most of our defenses were created unconsciously, much earlier in life. They have become automatic and largely un-articulated.

1.  Journal 

Become aware of how your mind works by writing your description of recent uncomfortable events with your partner. Write freely and quickly. Now set it aside for a while. Go back and read it when you can be objective, and notice any underlying beliefs in your story.

Next, ask yourself if you can recall feeling anything similar in your past (the younger, the more fruitful the realization).

2.  Talk To Your Partner About Your Insights 

Finally, consider sharing your insight with your partner to open up communication. Try to use “I” statements so your partner feels less defensive.

Example: 

“The other day … when you didn’t call me on my birthday…  I was amazed at how sad I felt!  My mind went to places like ‘s/he doesn’t care about me…  and ‘what do I need to do to be cherished?’ .  Then I remembered that my reaction was from and old wound.  You see, when I was little….” 

By sharing your process, you take responsibility for keeping the story alive. You acknowledge YOU, and in doing so, you become aware of what you want to be different. You empower yourself by accepting yourself!

 

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Finding the SELF through Folklore

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“Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them.” ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Clarissa Pinkola Estés wrote the bestseller “Women Who Run With the Wolves” , a collection of folktales interpreted from a woman’s perspective, revealing the archetypal wild woman. With her easy-to-grasp writing style of a storyteller, she appeals to women who want to find more meaning in life. Her interpretations help us find such meaning by getting us in touch forgotten qualities, she says, that have been dangerously tamed by a society that preaches the virtue of being “nice.”

Dr. Estes found the wolf-woman parallel while studying wildlife biology.

“Wolves and women are relational by nature: They are inquiring, possessing great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack.” She also writes: “Yet both have been hounded, harassed and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors.” ~ A Savage Creativity

She defines the wild woman archetype not as uncontrolled behavior but as a kind of savage creativity – the instinctual ability to know what tool to use and when to use it.

“All options are available to women,” she said, and adds, “Everything from quiescence to camouflaging to pulling back the ears, baring the teeth and lunging for the throat.”

Women who have always been taught to be nice do not realize they have these options. She said, “When someone tells them to stay in their place, they sit and stay quiet. But when somebody is cornering you, then the only way out is to come out kicking.”

Yet everything about nature is essentially wild, too.

“We need to see and understand that whatever stands behind nature is what God is. Nature is the manifestation. We see things about nature that are beautiful, like the blue sky, and it fills us with almost a prayerful excitement. When I look at it, I feel still. I have seen this sky every day of my life and I am still in awed by it. That is what the wild is – this intense medicinal beauty. To look at it makes you feel whole. To hear it, if it is ocean or water running in a stream, is to feel made whole again. To see a thunderstorm or a lightning storm is to somehow be energized by it. Even tornadoes and earthquakes– to be rocked to your very foundations by the power made in all these things. This wildness is in every human being, so a man or a woman would essentially be no different from one another at the very elemental core.”

Being in touch with the wild woman archetype is also about getting in touch with one’s soul. Dr. Estes says,

“The soul – just as it is – is complete. It is never doubted, it is never lost. The ego may become injured. The spirit may also become injured, but the soul remains, always. I think the soul is incredibly ineffable and you cannot really talk about it. We make pictures and tell stories, but in reality, we are reaching into a dark bag and trying to describe it in a poetic way – because we can never describe, in common words, what it is that we feel and see.

Little Red Riding Hood by Gustave Doré

Little Red Riding Hood by Gustave Doré

Yet we must have the ability, like all poets, to move through different images as we develop an idea to express the soul. And we also could move away from and develop a new idea, the more clarity we have. Jung did it all the time. If you read Jung’s works you will see him constantly contradicting himself because he is developing as he goes along. So whatever metaphors we use, it will be very interesting to see if we still believe them, or if we have not found better ones, in 10 or 20 years.”

We describe life in metaphors. Find more meaning in your life through folklore!

Stay tuned for YOUR next episode!

Article sources: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/28/weekinreview/conversations-clarissa-pinkola-estes-message-for-all-women-run-free-wild-like.html and http://www.menweb.org/estesiv.htm

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