How Can I Truly Love Someone Warts N All When I Do This?

Question: I've noticed something about myself that I don't understand. My longest relationship lasted 21 years and the shortest, just two months. I have been with my present partner for two years. Since the age of nine I've had strong feelings for one person or another. I recently discovered that there is a part of me that does not want to have such feelings. In fact, strong feelings do not make me happy and my preference is to be free of intense emotional attachment. This crazy dynamic plays out in my relationships: when I'm in a space where the relationship doesn't matter so much in the overall scheme of things, I feel relieved and yes, happy. This space doesn't come around as often as I would like. Consequently, I am on this mission to minimise my feelings. One way I do this is to collect reasons why my partner is not the right person for me, hoping that in time my collection will outweigh my feelings and I will be able to detach and move on. How can I truly love someone "warts n' all" when I do this?

Answer (1) I've been wondering what I could say to you that would be helpful, as my task as a psychotherapist is not to give explanations, but to point you in a direction that is likely to help you change unwanted patterns so that you can live your life more fully.

I could ask you to consider precisely what feelings you think you're on a mission to minimise, and were you happy in your 21-year relationship, who ended it and how and why did it end ? - but I think that this approach will be of limited benefit to you and, as you appear to be very perceptive and analytic, you may well have considered these questions already.

In my view, the course of action that is most likely to benefit you is to commit to ongoing psychotherapy sessions, and to work through these issues with your therapist. I think that it is difficult, though not necessarily impossible, to find a way through on your own, particularly as your issue is about relationships. When we're wounded in relationship, we generally need to heal in relationship, and this is what successful psychotherapy does. Of course it is important that you work this through with a therapist who is experienced in working with relationship issues.

Meantime, or if you do not wish to commit to psychotherapy, I suggest that you continue to observe your responses - feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations - without trying to understand them and work things out. Simply observe without interpreting, and see what you discover over a period of time.

Another possible strategy would be for you to paint or draw your feelings, again, at this stage, without attempting to interpret them.

There is nothing wrong with understanding and interpreting, of course, but as you seem to be very good at doing this already, I am suggesting a different approach that you may find useful. I hope this helps.

Answer provided by Donald Marmara, Somatic Psychotherapist

Answer (2) It sounds to me that there is essentially a conflict of two drives here. There is a wish to intensely attach to someone, but for unclear reasons this is fraught with anxiety for you. On the other hand, the wish to be free from the anxiety, has become equated with being free of the relationship/attachment. Relief from the difficulty as I see it, is to work out what the anxiety is about, so that you no longer need to throw the baby out with the bath water, in order to feel relaxed. It is the very intensity of feelings within a relationship that adds enjoyment, spice and meaning to it but in your case, it seems to produce a negative reaction. I suggest this needs to be understood so that you can learn to control it, rather than the other way around.

Answer provided by David White, Psychotherapist