Good relationship
Do you just have to do some things?
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Is love the answer to all questions? Not quite. It also provides quite a few. Psychologist and couples therapist Oskar Holzberg answers them all.
Why do so many people ask what they “need” in relationships? That’s a question I ask myself – because it shines through many questions.
We don’t have to do anything at all!
At some point I have to – no, I don’t have to, I WANT to get rid of it: I am always amazed at how the questions that reach me are asked. It is incredibly often asked what “one” “must” or “should” do in a relationship. “Does my partner need to know everything about my past?” “Should you get yourself up for sex?” “Do you have to try everything to save a relationship?”
Oskar Holzberg, 67, has been advising couples in his Hamburg practice for over 20 years and has been married for over 30 years. His current book is called “Neue Schlüsselsätze der Liebe” (240 pages, 11 euros, DuMont).
© Ilona Habben
The immediate answer to this is poignantly simple: we don’t have to do anything in relationships. We are free. We can shape our life together as it suits us, as long as violence and humiliation are not involved. As a couple, we can’t speak seriously to each other even once and still get along great, even if we never find out whether we actually understand each other. We can have sex every morning or we can not even touch when we say goodbye. Everything goes. Love relationships today are exclusively a matter of negotiation between partners. Nobody else determines and nobody knows where to go – not the family, not the church, not the state. Not even the internet or the couples therapist. And certainly not the avid writer of the couples column you are reading.
However, the question of what must and should in relationships shows how insecure we are in our relationship life. And how we long to do everything right in order to have a (love) life that is as perfect as possible. Because the downside of our freedom is that we are entirely responsible for whether we succeed in love or, possibly again and again, fail because of it. Nobody can tell us how we are guaranteed to love properly. But what is relationship-damaging and non-partnership, how we inevitably drive a love relationship to the wall, we already understand. Just as each and every one of us immediately understands why we shouldn’t drive drunk under any circumstances, but with this knowledge alone we cannot safely drive a car.
Instructions for perfect love relationships?
The instructions for use for love relationships do not exist. Just a collection of care tips. We are looking for love and are capable of love. There are many ideas and experiences about it. But no exact instructions that we can call up on the smartphone. We have to live from within and decide what is good for us, what we want, how it feels right for us. Even if the uncertainty is hard to bear, endless questions but no reliable answers.
I already realize how contradicting I am right now. I answer one question of love after another and then announce that there are no right answers? But just because there is no right answer does not mean that there is no answer at all. We have to keep finding answers to the questions that life and love ask us. Because we cannot not behave. But that’s the only must and the only certainty we have in love.
Would you like to read more about the topic and exchange ideas with other women? Then have a look at the “Relationship in everyday life forum” BRIGITTE community past!
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