How to Love and Let Go in Relationship, Without Losing a Thing.
By: Sylvia Clare Msc. Psychol
Tags: Intimacy, Connection, Life, Love, Relationships

We all want to love and be loved.

Humans are hardwired for community, for connection with our pack, our family, our tribe. Collaboration with community is how we originally survived as a species.

Yet we now live in a world where isolation is reaching extreme levels and causing damage to so many. Our human reaction is to cling to whoever, or sometimes whatever we do have in our life so we are not alone any more, or to find a substitute, usually chemical, to take the sense of existential isolation away.

But that clinging can stifle the very intimacy we so desire and long for. It will often create a co-dependent relationship.That is less emotionally healthy than is ideal, and it can create heartbreak or abusive situations too, because we are there from need and not choice.

We also all need space, some more than others, but that is where we go to self-evaluate and regroup our own energies. Some people are afraid of space, but they still need it, as I shall make clear.

It is a paradox, a contradiction, to desire intimacy and distance at the same time, and the struggle between these two ‘needs’ can lead to a lot of misunderstandings and confusions, and sometimes heartache and loss and relationship breakdown. Dating ‘rules’ don’t necessarily work as we are all different, and it is also game playing.

We do all have free space inside our own heads. No one is party to all of our thoughts, that is the ultimate existential freedom we all have, but we usually find that is not enough.

WE NEED SPACE TO GET TO KNOW OURSELVES FIRST OF ALL.

But do we?

That is the crux of the matter. Yes we do. Do you take the time to know yourself inside your own mind? Ask yourself — how much do you need space and how much do you want to simply escape the noise inside your own head?

That inner noise will be a cacophony of our insecurities, fears and anxieties, and we are projecting all of that onto our significant other to protect us from it.

They cannot do this. They cannot see or hear it. It is our own noise, not theirs, they have their own to contend with.

We are creating an impossible burden for them to carry for us and probably we have not even told them about it or asked if they mind.

And they are probably doing the same thing to us too!

We just have an unconscious expectation that this time ‘love’ will fix it all for us, ‘they’ will fix it all for us, and when that doesn’t happen we feel let down and disappointed and sometimes fall out of love. It is our expectations that break the relationship, not their inability to meet them.

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

We all need space in our lives and in our heads. For me mindfulness has been my life saver but it’s not for everyone and there are other options available. It doesn’t matter which practice you embrace but just do it. Create and use your space wisely and allow your significant other, or your friends or child, the same.

Learn to create space in your own mind and unpick the threads of your neediness before it places its stranglehold on someone else and suffocates the love out of them.

Recognise your own agendas and inner unspoken fears and anxieties and take responsibility for them yourself. Get external help if you need to. Invest in your own healing so that you can build a love that will last.

When my husband/soulmate and I first met we were both defensively independent and thought the other one had it all sorted. How wrong we were! It makes us both laugh now.

But we were good at giving and taking space because we’d both learned to live alone as adults, even if we had children to look after.

I never once asked my husband to make up for what had happened in my history and he never expected me to either. We agreed right at the outset, no expectations and no projections. We gave each other the space to show us who they were, and that included vulnerability and the power of vulnerability to create intimacy and real connection.

But it takes huge courage to be vulnerable openly to someone else,(see Brene Brown) so people tend to hide it and just expect the other to somehow make us feel safe within the relationships.

No NO NO that will not ever work.

We both understood that and never let that develop in our relationship. However, when after ten years together I had a PTSD break down that took us both by surprise and lasted for over six years in total, he was able to hold me and the space around me so that I could surrender to the illness and let it take its own course, using my mindfulness insights to stop me losing my complete sanity. I know fully that without both David and Mindfulness I would not have made it through that emotional holocaust. But I did not expect him to hold it. That lack of expectation gave him the freedom to choose to hold it for me and that is the huge difference in our love; deep intimacy and compassion, but plenty of space and freedom.

That breakdown showed us the depth of our relationship and made us so much stronger as a couple than we already were.

If I had clung and expected him to fix me it would have broken us up instead.

He gave me the space and solitude to struggle with the demons from my abusive childhood and I gave him the space and solitude to cope.

“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.” Rainer Maria Rilke

I also like this quote from one of my formative prophets of the spiritual journey

Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Kahlil Gibran

Even David and I are sometimes surprised by how deeply we are connected, how close we are and how completely non-invasive that feels nowadays.

That allows us both the greatest freedom too. There are still very few assumptions in our relationship, and very few expectations. If he or I do or do not do something that needs doing, we both know that eventually one or other of us will do it, and if it is me this time - it will be him next time. But we never need to make a big deal over it, there is no reluctance to do anything, no expectations for love to be demonstrated through action but a knowing that it is. No demands that place a burden and create reluctance to get all the jobs done.

Perhaps we are lucky in that we both had to live independently as single parents before we met, so were both used to doing everything and juggling all the balls at once alone. So no one had to learn how to do this or that, though we have taught each other a great deal over the two plus decades now of course.

Ten years ago I took up bee-keeping as part of my recovery from my breakdown. I did it alone. David helped me when I needed an extra pair of hands but it was my bag, my choice and I was not to burden him with the responsibilities — so I never did. This year he asked me to teach him about bee keeping, so I gave him the chance to do some of the actions I was doing in my hive colony check this week. We have a super of honey ( about 25 lbs) to take off ready too and he helped me with the sticky messy job of that, not just holding when I asked him but actually foreseeing what I was doing and joining in co-operatively.

I totally loved sharing it all with him.

There was no intrusion for either of us, just working in harmony and helping each other get what was needed done. When I am really busy he will hold the space and when he is, I do the same. And when we both are too busy we do the essentials and leave the rest for a day or two until we have the space and inspiration to do a big kitchen clean up or tidy up or laundry/bed changing binge, and we both are free to work on our creative projects as and when we need or want to.

We both spend lots of time in different rooms and in silence with each other in the same room or in the car or wherever. It is all completely comfortable because we both like the space to be silent, to be companionably alone, to have solitude, to have companionship within that silence and to enjoy just being with each other.

We have let go of other past hurts and fears and defenses because we know there is nothing to defend against — the expectations never existed between us. But O Boy can we both feel it when with others.

Space and freedom genuinely do create a deeper intimacy, not less. Pulling our significant or even a friend or child too hard to make them feel closer can make them feel constricted but allowing them to move closer gradually neither invades us nor makes demands on them that will backfire.

Space, solitude, and silence really do increase intimacy over time.