Love is the answer to all questions? Not quite. It also makes quite a few. Psychologist and couple therapist Oskar Holzberg answers them all.
"I just can't stop my carousel of thought. It keeps spinning. And it's the same question over and over again: why, why, why?" Vera shakes her head in amazement. "Why did Wolfgang just withdraw? Our meetings were harmonious. We had fun. We already had vacation plans together. Was I too direct, too researched? Why is he suddenly not interested in me at all? Why didn't he say anything?"
Inside and outside no longer match
When Vera talks about her relationship with Wolfgang, you can see that it wasn't nearly as intense as the feelings of loss she is experiencing now. Vera is no longer 18. Vera is 81. She knows very well that she has met a man who is very afraid of binding relationships. But still she can't get away from him. She still hopes that the cell phone will ring and Wolfgang will answer again.
When we feel close and connected to someone who eludes us, we are confused. Inside and outside no longer match. As if we were putting on our favorite sweater, which is suddenly so huge that it slides off our shoulders and finds itself as a pile of wool at our feet. As if we were in a nightmare. We feel how important the other is to us. We feel our love, our longing, this intense connection between us. We're not imagining that. It cannot be that we have the most intense feelings about someone, and he simply does not return them (anymore). We cannot understand what we feel. And we don't feel what we understand.
Few other feelings are as strong as our feelings of attachment. The falling in love when we bind, the pain of separation and heartache when we lose a bond. Nature does not want us to lose a love bond again. And nature, that's us. Separation hurts if we just think about it. That is why we continue to hope, even though we have long been the only one who still cares about the relationship. We are alone, but we do not want to admit that the farewell has already started.
Hope and loosen up
We hope not to have to mourn. Every grief process typically starts like this. We deny what is happening and hope instead. Only then do we get angry, wallow in the past as if we were allowed to redesign it, then allow the grief and finally acknowledge that it is over. We cannot just skip the phases of a mourning process. But we can be aware that we are in this process.
Mourning and loosening up doesn't just happen. It is an active process. In everything we fantasize, think and do, we can be guided by whether it really helps us in our separation process. Basically, hoping not to be able to give up tells us that we have already lost it.
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