Disagreements and arguments happen in every family, because each partner arrived from a world of their own, with its traditions, its ways of relating and its signs of love. So a couple always goes through a stage of adjusting and wearing in, and maybe more than one, and that is unavoidable. But there are two opposite forces that lead to the loss of interest and love, which means to deepening quarrels and in the end to separation.
When habit sets in
English has an expression that is hard to translate word for word: familiarity breeds contempt.
Why does this happen? When we get used to a partner, we start treating both him and our relationship as something that simply goes without saying. We forget that you cannot step into the same river twice, we forget the freshness of the moment and the hunger to study the other person that were there at the beginning.
The price is devaluation: of the person next to you, of the love that brought you together, of everything you built together, of the experience you lived through. The list can go on endlessly.
When we stop valuing something, we stop investing our attention, our care, our energy and our love into it. That is how a couple steps onto the fast road to destroying the relationship, and it all starts with conflicts that turn into scenes and fights.
Two worlds drifting apart
The second trap is the opposite of the first. The couple live in worlds so different that they are hard to join at all, and gradually the man and the woman unlearn how to understand each other.
At the very beginning, when being in love was fresh, the partners were open, they listened to each other, they wanted to learn. Say he is a scientist and she teaches at a kindergarten, two completely different fields. And how much there is to find out about the person you love, about what happens in his life.
But then the couple sinks into routine, into the household, into repeating duties. Each lives in their own familiar world, the interest in exchanging stories fades, the ability to hear each other goes blurry. You stop understanding your partner, recognising him, discovering new sides of him. And you either devalue yourself, playing down your own achievements next to the person you love, or on the contrary you stop respecting his choices.
This happens especially sharply when children arrive and one of you, more often the man, has to earn more, while his chosen one concentrates on the children, often combining that with work as well. From inside each of their worlds it seems that they are doing more for the family and getting more tired. Misunderstanding leads to claims, to devaluation and loss of interest, to irritation and discontent that spill into enormous rows.
Keeping it new
So that habit does not take power, it helps to remember that the most valuable thing a person has is love. Love is a living being, it needs care and warmth. It is like a small child: it brings a great deal of joy, and it asks for attention. Love does not live in memories of the past or fantasies about the future, it exists only here and now.
To protect love means to value every moment spent together and to stop living out of habit. Add some newness. Promise yourself to look for something new in the person you love every day, try to see him with a fresh eye, as if for the first time. Be curious about each other, uncover the sides you have not met yet, live through what the world gives you together.
Invent new tasks and challenges for yourselves, new adventures, any of them, even the smallest. Start cooking one unusual dish together on Sundays, take dance lessons, ride bicycles in the summer or go climbing. There is a great deal in the world you have not explored that you can do as two, and much of it does not cost a lot of money.
The daily sharing
Against the second trap there is one precise practice, and it is the best recipe I know. It matters to learn to hear and to listen, to be curious about each other and to understand. Simply make it a rule to share something you consider important every day.
1. Sit down together and set a timer for three minutes. 2. For three minutes one partner speaks about whatever they want to share. The other stays silent and listens. 3. Then the other way round. Two rounds of this.
Do not interrupt, do not comment, just listen, take it in, update your picture and your understanding of what your partner is living.
Three minutes a day sounds far too modest for a task of this size, and that is exactly where the power of the practice lies: three minutes is something you can keep doing every day, and the two worlds come closer precisely from that dailiness.
To resolve conflicts peacefully and constructively, it matters to value and love each other, and then compromises and solutions are found easily. Protect your love, it will carry you through all of life's turns lightly and with joy, next to the person your heart holds dear.
And if you want to speak with the person close to you in a way that is heard, and to find words for what you feel, take Peruquois's course Calling True Love to Your Life, you will find it on the website under Courses.
Peruquois
A top World Music performer in Australia, musician, composer, author and facilitator of self-development trainings for women.
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