Perfect couples don’t exist

When a new couple is created, each of the parties contributes to the relationship his backpack full of experiences, learning, conditioning and patterns.

In a first stage, the relationship is adjusted to find a certain balance between the parties. If the backpacks of both people manage to find meeting points, the couple will consolidate and evolve in a healthy way.

Howeverif this connection is not achieved, in general, this couple will break and each of the parties will look for another person with whom they can forge a healthy and balanced relationship.

what happiness hides

Sometimes, despite the differences, these couples do not break up. and they remain together for years showing, facing the outside, a perfect union.

Although, in truth, if we look closely, Beneath the supposed calm of the surface, we ran into deep turbulence subterranean that, sooner or later, end up affecting one of the members of the couple.

These types of couples seem to complement each other, but in reality, they work under toxic dynamics in which one fills the gaps or needs of the other and vice versa. These types of relationships tend to maintain a very unstable balance, at the cost of the health of one of its members.

Consider, for example, how someone with an authoritative and energetic personality may be attractive or, even, dazzling for a person accustomed to letting himself be carried away by someone with a strong character. In turn, the first You will feel comfortable being admired and having someone follow you without resistance.

Under a romantic (and tricky) vision of love, one could come to think that these two people complement each other. However, reality, much harsher and harsher, shows us an unhealthy relationship and unbalanced.

Sooner or later, imbalances will take their toll and they will end up making one of the parties sick, normally, to which he submits and hides so that the other shines.

Malena and her supposed “empty nest syndrome”

A typical case of an unbalanced couple that I have consulted on many occasions is that of a woman who around 55-60 years of age, whose children have already grown and have left home to live independently.

The woman goes to therapy with depressive symptoms: she has no energy, she can’t find anything that motivates her and, little by little, she withdraws into her home. We might think that she suffers from the typical “empty nest syndrome” and that she feels sad and discouraged because her goal of raising her children has been left behind, but the issue is rather more complex.

I particularly remember the case of Malena, who came to the first contact meeting accompanied by her husband, a well-to-do man, in a suit and willing to do everything possible to help his wife.

In fact, on that first date, he spoke more than her, explaining to me everything that was happening to Malena and finishing her partner’s sentences, almost without letting her express how she felt.

I started working with Malena, now without her husband present at the sessions, and we gradually discovered how, while her husband was developing his professional career, she had been abandoning all her hobbies and illusions for being in charge of raising the children and taking care of the home.

Malena had studied Teaching, but was barely able to practice her profession, since she married very young and her husband did not want her to work outside the home. The children arrived immediately and Malena no longer found time to resume her work.

Throughout the sessions, Malena gradually regained confidence and began to feed the hobbies that had been repressed during their marriage. Malena, she recovered the desire to do things, to go out and, even, her skin improved, reflecting her inner well-being.

Feeling more secure began to express what he wanted to do at all times, although sometimes it did not coincide with what her husband had planned.

At this point, I remember that I received a call from Malena’s husband, worried about the evolution of his wife. He knew that the therapy was confidential and that I could not tell him anything about what we worked on in the sessions, but She told me that she felt strange.

As he told me verbatim: “She’s very protesting, she complains about everything, nothing suits her.” It became clear to me that the husband I wasn’t used to this new Malena who spoke and thought.

Heal emotional shortcomings

This is one of those examples that I mentioned at the beginning of the article, in which an apparently perfect couple remains in an unstable equilibrium that undermines the health of one of its members.

The solution, at least, for those who go to therapy is work to heal your emotional shortcomings and, in this way, recover strength and self-esteem.

Courageous people, like Malena, who immerse themselves in this inner work, realize that they no longer need the other to meet their needs and, finally, they decide to end a relationship that slows them down and prevents them from developing their own lives.