The love story of Lucía and Alex exemplifies the process of a couple in search of harmony. The couple is our temple that we must build and take care of day by day.
Lucía and Alex come to couples therapy because they are about to break up their relationship, no more and no less than fifteen years together, eight dating and seven married. Lucía is 32 years old and Alex is 34.
When they met, Lucía was a young girl, she was barely 17 years old. She met Alex at a party in her parents’ town, where he had gone to spend a few days at a good friend’s house. Then they met and fell in love, filtering each other’s image. of the other checking it and comparing it with the ideal pattern that they had in their mind as a woman and a man, and Chas the spark flew, that’s how the flirting began, their hearts raced and then the rest came.
The therapist explains to them that his way of working with couples consists of having some sessions with her, to clarify the dynamics of the relationship, and depending on this and if he considers it necessary, advise each member of the relationship to do individual therapy, each one with a different therapist; so that everyone can work on their wounds, holes or conflicts.
In reality, three therapists are needed to work with a couple, one for the relationship and the other two for each member of the couple.
In this way, Lucía begins to go to individual therapy with another therapist, apart from the couple’s sessions.
Then a process of self-discovery begins where she begins to understand that her relationship problems also largely have to do with her and her life process, her biography, her childhood, her way of seeing life and facing problems.
As the individual sessions pass, Lucía expresses what her life process has been like since she met Alex, and together with the therapist they put words to it.
It talks about a first moment of falling in love, then the choice phase, the commitment and the delivery phase. The therapist recommends that in the next couples therapy session she express to Alex what she feels or has felt in each of these phases, or what the ideal is to which she aspires in them.
So when they arrive at the session, Lucía takes Alex’s hand and speaks to him:
At first, when I was in love, I saw in you my desires, my expectations, the desire for something to cover, fill and complete what was not completed in my emotional past. Later I chose you and I began to see better who you were, you no longer moved me as much, but enough to choose you and continue a common path in some direction (or not, and in that case leave). Then I got engaged to you, so our love, our bond, and what we have created together had more strength and weight than our previous partners and our family of origin. And now I want to surrender, to continue loving you and what leads you, regardless of where your own path takes you, and also regardless of where my own path takes me.
The weeks and sessions passed, Lucía and Alex began to look at each other differently from how they began the therapy, they looked at each other, as equals, with their eyes they said:
Don’t walk ahead of me, I may not follow you. Don’t walk behind me, I may not guide you. Walk next to me and be my friend. Don’t walk above me, I might lose sight of you, and don’t walk under me, because I might step on you; Let’s walk together, side by side.
For Lucía and Alex, therapy allows them to really see themselves as they are and also allows them to see what the person next to them is like, in a more real and complete way, it allows us to realize that perhaps the other person is much more than we believe and We want, above all, that despite being so different, we can be in contact, and in the process they discover that when they are no longer afraid of being what they are, they can see each other and receive each other just as they are.
After a few months of therapy, in one of the sessions Lucía reads the following poem to Alex:
Yeah I you want, you want me whole, not by areas of light or shadow… If you love me, love me black and white, and gray, green, and blonde, and brunette… love me day love me night… And early morning at the open window!… If you love me, don’t cut me off: Love me all… Or don’t love me! (Sweet Maria Loynaz – Cuban poet).
In the next session, Alex brings a writing that he reads in the form of tantra:
“You are me, and I am you.
Is it not evident that we are interspersed?
You grow the flower that is in you,
So that I can be beautiful.
I transform the waste that is in me,
So that you don’t have to suffer.
I support you;
You support me.
I am in this world to offer you peace;
You are in this world to bring me joy.”
(Thich Nhat Hanh)
The following week the therapist begins the session by reading them a story about Nasrudin, a mythical character from the popular Sufi tradition, a kind of antihero of Islam, whose stories serve to illustrate or introduce Sufi teachings, it is assumed that he lived on the Anatolian Peninsula. in an indeterminate time between the 13th and 15th centuries.
The perfect woman Nasrudin was talking with a friend. – So, you never thought about getting married? “Yes I thought,” answered Nasrudin. -In my youth, I decided to look for the perfect woman. I crossed the desert, arrived in Damascus, and met a very spiritual and beautiful woman; but she knew nothing of the things of this world. I continued traveling, and went to Isfahan; There I found a woman who knew the realm of matter and that of spirit, but she was not pretty. Then I decided to go to Cairo, where I had dinner at the house of a pretty girl, religious, and knowledgeable about material reality. -And why didn’t you marry her? – Ah, my companion! Unfortunately she also wanted a perfect man.
The therapist, after reflecting and consulting in supervision, had a session with the couple and spoke to them that if they want to continue walking together in life, they should not forget that there are some conditions to pay attention to: Be easy, your relationship has to flow without too much effort, their two Natures do not have to be too incompatible or different, be true companions, friends who do not wear out and who understand each other, have complete trust in the other, have a spontaneous desire for the other to be well above our fears and shortcomings, and finally a balance in giving and taking, the respectful dance of giving and taking in the couple nourishes and strengthens, and distances from their interpersonal sanctuary both the temptations of sacrifice and pseudo-sanctity as well as those of vampirism and dependence.
After this session it is time to talk about what the psychologist calls love revenge, that is, during the moments in relationship there are two necessary elements, that of positive exchange, whose formula is: you give me something, I return that to you. something and a little more, and in this way the bond becomes stronger and stronger. And in the negative exchange, the formula is: you harm me and I give you something back, making it hurt, but a little less, this is revenge with love.
Love grows, at least a little, where there are people who are assumed to be imperfect who made mistakes and can bear it with dignity and repair it in a constructive way.
The therapist had a conversation with Alex, who advised him to take a family constellation workshop that a colleague of his was organizing the following weekend, which would be very good for his own knowledge and growth as a couple.
Alex spent an intense weekend full of emotions and surprises that he discovered were inside him and he had no idea. It was an experience of looking at the network of links in a broad sense, both the past issues that give you strength and prosperity that sustain you or issues that were not resolved and weaken you and how to solve them. This is how they dealt with the most important events of his family system, sexuality and unions, death and farewell to him. It is how he began to find meaning in the dynamics of the heart and the deep movements inside him, which do not depend solely on his will nor do they always have a rational explanation.
Alex was struck by a quote from Bert. Hellinger, “The best marriage, the best union, occurs when the mother’s daughter and the father’s son marry”, which made him meditate on his position in the relationship, and the role of Lucía, wondering if she would be the daughter of the mother, or rather it would be dad’s daughter.
His work in the constellation workshop was directed from the first moment he said: “I am a posthumous son, I have no father, he died before I was born,” to which the workshop therapist expressed that he saw his father intensely in him, and exploring, he discovered that the mother felt such deep love and respect for the father that it reached the son and flowed into him through her. The mother, with her love, made the father be present for the son.
Alex was deeply moved by this revelation, which led him to take this matter to couples therapy. This personal discovery, together with Lucía’s growth in her individual sessions, greatly facilitated the union and prosperity of the bond that had been damaged after years of relationship.
Thus, with the help of the therapist and time, all the voids and shadows worked, giving shape and light to a path along which to continue walking together.
