Choosing a Loving Relationship

Mechanical Interactions

Estimated reading time: 2 min, 40 sec.

Often our interactions are mechanical. We follow recurring patterns that we think are the only possible ones because we have not learned to act in an other way.

For this reason, we should work on the internal patterns we create in our emotional life. Instead of judging them, we should identify, observe, and understand them.

We need to experience them because it is only through the experience that we will change something. Then it will be possible to evaluate the results gathered so far and decide what to let go of and what to keep and perpetuate.

There is nothing wrong with that.

The primary goal of introspective psychology is neither to change oneself, nor to change external situations.

The goal of introspective researchers is to understand things through experience, to accept them, and integrate them into their inner world.

We then live with OPEN EYES, without judging, condemning or censoring, but with EXPERIENCE, with awareness.

In previous relationships, I may have had the unconscious goal of having a certain experience. Perhaps I wanted to better understand my inner workings and patterns. If I haven’t completed my experience yet, I need to complete it. Maybe with another person.

So, I change partners just to recreate the kind of relationship I had before. And this will repeat itself until I understand how to change things, and “manage the couple”.

How to Manage a Relationship

What governs our choices is not bad luck or fate. It is rather an unconscious need to understand some mind games and learn to manage our lives. We could learn how to manage a relationship, and take the responsibility for our actions instead of remaining a powerless victim.

To achieve this result, we should find and examine the mechanisms of suffering experienced in the past.

We should remain free of judgment; we should avoid things like labeling, making adjustments or suppressing emotions.

We should examine our deepest choices — the fundamental ones — with the objectivity of a scientist analyzing a phenomenon to understand it in all its complexity.

Only if we remain open, free from rational adjustments, we can benefit from the experience.

We can live the experience as a movie we have already seen, and observe it from a different perspective, that of non-identification.

Such a work makes us relive strong and unpleasant emotions that we would never want to relive again. However, this is useful and functional for healing.

The moment we revisit our internal conflicts without identifying with them, we have begun the path of integrating ourselves.

Emotional Integration

Although the solution seems simple, few people choose the path of emotional integration.

And why is that? Who does not want to have a healthy and harmonious couple’s relationship?

Who doesn’t understand that to open a new chapter, it is necessary to have learned the previous one?

If we take responsibility and recognize and understand the bad habits of the past, we can change them. These habits have complicated our life as a couple in the past and have caused misunderstandings and suffering.

But all is well!

When you start a new relationship, the last thing you want to do is work on yourself. But this is the best situation to dismantle old mechanisms and turn to health and harmony.

People don’t see the need. They conclude that the previous failure was the partner’s fault. He/she was the wrong one, so now that they have a new partner, they have solved the problem.

If we believe the words of our inner movie“… and they lived happily ever after”,we don’t care for emotional integration with our partner. So, we lose sight of reality, and forget to manage our relationship; we then risk the death of the couple.

Antonella Giannini