Meet ‘Amelia’ and ‘John’:
Amelia feels like she’s living in a waiting room.
She’s waiting. She’s waiting for Jonathan to do things she’d like him to do. A waiting room is a nowhere place, neither actively on the way nor having arrived. In a relationship, it’s an unsettled place, an emotional, probably anxious, resentful state. In a word….destructive, rather than helpful and nurturing.
Amelia is often on tenterhooks. It’s stressful, it’s passive and she’s put Jonathan in a place of being the one who has to “do something”. That has an energy of blame and criticism about it. She’s in the habit of never initiating, which is what happens when you’re waiting.
In our couple sessions, this came out a lot, particularly around sex (which is a common waiting room place with a lot of couples). Amelia says “he never wants to have sex with me and never comes and kisses me. He never puts his arms around me, he never, he never, he never…”
She continues: “Maybe he never fancies me; maybe he doesn’t love me anymore”. She rolls this ball on and on so it goes from being ‘in the waiting room’ to ‘he doesn’t love me anymore’ then on to “I’m not attractive, I better get to the gym, I better do this and that to change myself”
It’s very painful because even though she’s the one who’s in the waiting room, they are both involved here of course as there are always two people in a relationship.
What is Jonathan’s role in this? What part should he play? Maybe he’s just got into a habit of not initiating anything and not taking things forward. Maybe he’s scared or lost his confidence. Maybe he didn’t have any confidence in the beginning. Perhaps some of the things that she says have a grain of truth in them, that he has lost interest a bit and perhaps that’s because she’s always got expectations of him. Is he distracted with his work or has he forgotten how to really see her and look at her and connect with her?
Being in the waiting room is a toxic dance that they are both colluding in and probably not really talking much about, other than when the resentments get expressed angrily by Amelia. Then Jonathan feels attacked and gets defensive. Is any of this familiar?
The really sad thing that can happen here and was beginning to happen to Amelia and Jonathan is she became so fed up that she shut down even to the point of rejecting Jonathan when he did give her a spontaneous hug or kiss. Of course, he then felt rejected and shut down as well….end result….intimacy on its way out of their relationship.
Jonathan got resentful also and turned away because when he got told ‘you don’t do this, you don’t do that, it’s hard to hear without feeling ‘picked on’. He’d heard a lot of that as a child and it triggered his inner little boy who crept away to read by himself as a self-protection mode.
It wasn’t easy either for Amelia stuck in the waiting room. She got so used to being there with the build-up of resentments, thinking “Well I’m not going to start this. He has to come to me, I’m not going to be the one that always initiates everything”.
So what is the key to this? The big key to maintaining loving relationships in so many areas is to meet one another. But how? Meeting in a loving way requires certain criteria and one of those, importantly, is to feel safe.
How can Amelia find a way to step toward Jonathan and allow herself to be vulnerable?
It takes something special, a type of self-awareness, to be able to say to yourself ‘this isn’t right, it isn’t doing well because I’m in this passive position. I feel angry and resentful and I’m constantly waiting but nothing is happening. Maybe the way I’m being is having an impact on my partner?’
It’s important to feel that you will be heard if you say something about how YOU are feeling, like “I feel really sad that you don’t seem to come towards me very much” or “I feel sad because we’re not hugging each other anymore”. This is so much better than saying ‘YOU don’t do this, you don’t do that”.
Sentences that start with ‘You never’ or ‘You [anything]” are very unhelpful. Starting with yourself: “I’m feeling sad/not very loved etc because” are much better. Then the receiver is hearing “Oh, my partner is feeling really sad” and they will stay with that for a bit and maybe say “I didn’t realise you were feeling like this. Let’s talk about how we can do something about this or “How can I support you?”
When Amelia began to talk to Jonathan about her feelings, everything changed.
He had been so wrapped up in his work and being a good husband and dad who provides and pays the mortgage that he’s lost the plot with physically being close to Amelia and expressing love.
Gradually, this couple, who were devastated by their lack of intimacy when they came to me, got braver and closer and were able to talk together about how this wasteland had happened to them. They started to notice their shutdowns and rejections of one another and were able to PAUSE and actually reach out to one another instead. They learned how to create a safe, non-blaming framework for communication.
They were able to talk about their triggers from childhood. It turned out that Amelia’s Mum had been very inconsistent in showing Amelia that she was loved. She often got rejected and also shut herself down as a protective mechanism.
A huge bonus came out of sharing this together in that both of them developed loving empathy for one another and got to know each more deeply.
Talking more about how life was when they were young brought them closer and more protective of one another. This gave a sweet and deep dimension to their love.
FOR YOU AS A COUPLE: What are the things in your relationship that you are not talking about? Do you feel like you are waiting for your partner to do or say something?
If you would like to be guided through how to have these conversations and take your relationship to the next level, do get in touch today. When it comes to keeping a relationship loving and happy for the long term, prevention is much better than cure.
Start today with friendly and heart-led guidance:
07947 581765
priya@priyatourkow.com
With love and kindness,
Priya ♥