Don’t fall out of love

The most common complaint couples come to me with is they have fallen out of love with their partner. The same person they were madly in love with and couldn’t imagine their world without has become a stranger or a burden. Love has flown out of the window. It’s a big challenge when a partner feels he/she is out of love and yet can’t put their finger on ‘why’.

How do you address such a clear yet ambiguous problem? At the outset, many couples feel their relationship is fine since they never argue. But internally they are bored and feel their marriage has become dull. A marriage with no arguments may seem ideal but is disadvantaged.  When couples don’t argue, they don’t bring in the energy to communicate and thus lose the connect with each other. No energy is akin to no polarity and hence no attraction.  Unknowingly many couples create subtleties through their energy that push them to kill their love, trust and passion for each other, without realizing it.

Falling in and out of love is as much about a person’s connection with themselves as it is with their partner. Individuals create the connection through different behavioural patterns practised during their growing up years. The basic pattern is always about avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. When the same patterns continue to function, a relationship is hampered. These patterns have lost their relevance – how can the same patterns in a changed environment, phase and time work?  A person who has grown up in an autocratic family will always get defensive at the drop of a hat since that is the only way he protected himself in childhood. Like in the past, the same behaviour of getting fiercely defensive on the slightest trigger of any probable danger continues to be resorted to. In the process of trying to avoid pain, more pain is inflicted to the partner. Involuntary differences are thus created.

One basic rule of any intimate relationship is that one cannot protect oneself and expect love to stay alive at the same time. Focus on your threat – is it imagined or real? If it is real, it’s not worth being in your marriage. But sometimes, childhood experiences misperceive a threat even when it is not. Change your complex behavioural patterns to change yourself, your partner and your relationship.