Love develops its strength through crises, says couple therapist Oskar Holzberg. But why do some couples stay together and others break down because of it?
"Stay or go?"That is the background music that accompanies our relationships as persistently as the doodling in the supermarket accompanies our purchases. The reasons are understandable. The generations living before us have left us with a tricky model of love relationships. Passion and security should go hand in hand. Wildly romantic feelings and sexual desire on the one hand and common household budget, emotional security and erotic loyalty on the other. We have to bring that under one roof, speak to one person.
But that's not all. This hat should also be particularly chic. Because we are damn demanding. We are spoiled by wealth and surrounded by great products. Our love relationship should also be of top quality. Which leads to the fact that we keep asking ourselves whether what we experience as a couple is enough for us.
We are now less afraid that our love relationship will fall into a crisis than that we are relieved if we do not doubt our partnership for a while. Our partnerships threaten to become more and more consumer goods and we are consumers who are constantly looking for better offers.
Between tinder dates, the longing for real closeness
But something seems to keep us from just continuing to tinder. But to stay even when there is a hell of a lot to be said for leaving. Influential American psychotherapist Al Pesso had an answer to this question. He did not consider caring, attachment, or empathic understanding to be our first and foremost psychological need. For him, our need for a place came first: Somewhere between people and things we need a very real place to survive, which is safe through relationships with our fellow human beings. And at the same time a psychological space that exists because we are important to others and others to us.
We find this place at the side of our love partner. Together we create our "ecological niche", as couples therapist Jürg Willi calls it. Of course, that's not our first place. As soon as we were born, we needed our parents to give us a place in their lives. And as soon as we conquered more of the world, we looked for a place again. Among the daycare kids, at school, in the sports club, in our clique. As a couple, we then move in together, have children, celebrate with our families, form a circle of friends and earn money to maintain our niche. In it we create our common living environment from values and rituals.
But unfortunately the foundation of our niche is shaky. Because everything is based on our feelings for one another. Our place is only safe as long as our love lasts. If we split up, most of my life is also threatened. My house, my family, my ideas, my security.
Stupidly, we're so damned often about to lose our place. Then when our love relationship feels more and more empty. Or like a tiring guerrilla war. When the loved one loved others or forgets our birthday. Then we have to decide if he's still Mr. Right for us. And whether there is still the right place for us at his side.
Is there a right way?
Sometimes we choose our loved one even though we have to sell our house because of their debts. Although our life has become a dark place since our child crashed. Although we have to give up our careers, our friends, our city, to follow him into the desert to his job in Dubai.
But we keep our place at least as often. And quite unromantically accept that our love relationship consists more and more of relationship and less and less of love. We say goodbye to sex life. We renounce the closeness we long for. We accept that he has become a stranger to us. We give up before his triathlon training, before he runs away when we need him. We don't want to give up the colorful family life, and don't expect the children to separate.
We then tell ourselves that a relationship cannot fulfill everything, that no partner can meet all of our needs. And doesn't our postmodern understanding of love say that sooner or later we would end up with another partner again at exactly the same point, in the same unsatisfactory emotional mess? We become modest in love and give up the longing for the great, because our commonality enables us to enjoy nice trips, reputation in the place, mutual friends and our lifestyle.
No, we don't have an ideal relationship. But our life seems worth living to us. And that's why we stay together anyway. We experience love as a force. But we only notice a force when it meets an opposing force. We only feel the strength of our biceps when we lift something heavy. The power of romantic love grows against the banality of everyday life, against reason and the warnings of all doubters. As Romeo and Juliet we tackle it with love and enforce pure love.
Emerge stronger from crises
The mature love then develops its strength through crises. When trust is gone through cheating, when it turns out that your own child is not your own child at all. If the career should never be more important than the relationship and now it determines life. Then, in a paradoxical way, love regains its real strength. Your power to dissolve boundaries. To be limitless, to open hearts and feelings that threaten to close. Then when there is a lot in us that speaks for going and our friends speak for it, and we still remain a couple.
Having passed crises together strengthens us as a couple. We now have the confidence to be able to cope with difficult situations. We fought and that motivates us because we don't want to have worked so hard for nothing. But is that still love? Or are we just trying to avoid losses? A tendency that psychologists like Daniel Kahneman have discovered. And that leads to people holding stocks that are falling for far too long. Do we persist in our falling relationships because we cannot give up? Or do even darker forces hold us tight? Are we repeating the horrors of our past without seeing ourselves surrender to them again? The unreliability of our partner, where we already had a father we could never rely on. The partner who does not allow us to participate in his life, which makes us feel as excluded again as among our siblings.
Love is a choice
No one can tell us exactly where the line runs where staying together is no longer good for us. We have to find out for ourselves over and over again. One can never get over the pain of being betrayed. Maybe because she's been betrayed too many times. The other can forgive. But is it really strong? Or has she just learned not to take her own feelings so seriously? We can draw the line where what we experience harms us. In the case of violence, intimidation, drug addiction, or only when double standards are always used. That sounds clear. But we have to find the limit from our experience. And how do we know if our back is really aching from crouching endlessly in front of the screen? Or not because of all the feelings we hold back in our love relationship?
Love is a choice when we commit. And love remains a decision until the separation. We can never know if we are making the right decision, but we can feel when it is no longer right for us. When our inner dialogues don't end. When our doubts grow stronger Do we still have good times together? We often need others to clarify our feelings. Good friends, therapists who do not give us their opinion but help us to find our own.
There are many reasons not to give up your place at the side of your lover. Some are good. Some determined by fear. Some even harm us. But lovers are ultimately always "nevertheless" together. Even though you're not my dream type, even though I've already had better sex, even though your sloppiness annoys me insanely, even though you're constantly broke, even though my girlfriend understands me better than you, even though your family is terrible. We stay together. Still, it's love. And yes, even: although it is no longer love.
Oskar Holzberg is a couples therapist and writes the column “Questions of love” in every BRIGITTE. So there's no question that he's the perfect writer for this piece.
© Ilona Habben
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