Wie Mara und Leon ihre Beziehung gerettet haben: eine Geschichte aus der Paartherapie Part 1 #156

Hello and welcome to a new parpsychology podcast episode. I talk here on my channel a lot about tips and strategies you can use to lead a nice and healthy relationship. And yet I know how important it is to see these things in the context of real life and how to really deal with the pair in order to get out of difficult situations. For today I want to tell you a story of a pair, a example of a fall with you, so that it can become a little clearer for you, how it can be realistic, to really implement the different tips and strategies. If you like this format, please write it to me at Spotify in the comments, otherwise I can also bring more of these examples in the larger style with me. And if you are already there and liked this episode, of course I am very happy about a five-star rating. Okay, today we are looking at a pair of Mara and Leon, who worked out of a relationship crisis. The two came to me in the practice because they noticed that there was always more fighting and heavy air in their everyday life. Both knew that they did not want to break up, but there was also a lot that happened in the last time. There were always these struggles, there were emotional injuries and here and there also general words. Since the two also have a young son and want to fight for their family, it is important for them to find out and work on a way out of the relationship crisis. When the two sit together on the couch for the first time, you can see the famous gap between the two at the beginning of the sofa. They sit relatively far out, on the sofa edge. And both look excited and maybe a little nervous or a little nervous, turn to me and wait for what will happen next. Leon stands up first. He works in the IT and describes himself as a relatively calm and rational man. When I asked him for his wish for the joint work, he said, "I just want us not to get so often into the hair. I am a harmonious person and sometimes it's too much for me." His partner Mara connects directly to it and gets into the conversation with a foreman. Yes, if it would have been better for both of us at home, then it would have been a lot more harmonious. Mara is directly excited and you can see that these tips that are distributed here in the conversation are relatively common in everyday life. I look at Leon again and you can see directly that his whole body posture changes. He pulls his shoulders a little high and looks like he's licking. From this short episode of both, I can imagine what will happen at home. This dynamic between the two, one person is distributed tip or gets louder and the other person closes himself immediately and then just says nothing. More is one of the most typical in pa-therapy. We also call them the attack-reversing dynamic. And like so many couples who, after a long time of injuries, frustration and bad mood, come to pa-therapy, it is also the first thing they do with guilt to throw themselves. Most of the time this happens because of the desire to be understood and to make it clear what does not work for one person. But of course it happens in the way that the other person does not accept it at all, but just shoots back. Both have been trapped in this pattern for the last few months and he fights. Every little thing leads to a discussion, but most of the time it is a general discussion, i.e. for an injury that has been lying back for a long time. But there is a light-shimmer. The bad mood is also interrupted again and again from nicer phases. Sometimes when the stress from the outside becomes less and they have a little more space to play, the old couple shimmers through the happy and loving relationship. Leon says how important these moments are for him, because normally he hears a lot of criticism from his partner and if there is a word of love, he gives it a lot in general. Mara also appreciates these moments, but she also knows that these are often a bit superficial because the real problems are not addressed. She says, "If it goes to Leon, we can always stay in this superficiality, that we just do everything negative under the carpet and just continue as if it were nothing. But I don't want to live like that. It's important for me to talk about things, but he doesn't agree with it at all. Every time I try to eliminate a problem, we fight. You may already think that the next thing that would happen at this point, is that Leon immediately gets into it and is defending himself, but that doesn't bring us anywhere and that's why I stop the whole thing. It is important to emphasize that both things are extremely important. Every relationship is based on two important columns. The one column of closeness, lightness, joy, is just as important as the other column of open communication, injury and problems can be processed. I will continue to explain. Only if we have a healthy combination of both, can we make the best progress. If we only concentrate on closeness and the beautiful experiences, then we only use symptoms, then the mood may be a little bit better, but what always falls on our feet is still not cleared. On the other hand, if we only take care of the problems, if we are only in the changing mode all the time or in the criticism, we don't have enough motivation, light eyes and the feeling of connection that motivates us to create real change. So we don't have to decide what is the best strategy. Both are not really helpful in their extremes. We need the healthy mixture. What will become very important for Mara and Leon at this point is that they have an emergency strategy so that competitions don't escalate again every time. And in order to control the other column, it is also important to find time and space where you can just be together, but where you also consciously create closeness and connection. I therefore ask the two of you, what moments do you just wish for? What would you feel more connected to right now? Leon will immediately know an answer. I would wish that they would touch me again and again in my everyday life, that we can hug each other. That's how I notice that they are with me, without many words. And Mara says, "For me, it would just be important to see that he really supports me, that he sees what I do and that he packs with me. I don't want to do that anymore." The important point at this point is that, when the pages are like this, we both have to be ready to take a step towards the other person. We wish for something from the other person and he wishes for something from us again. Where couples often make a mistake is to stay in a "pat" situation, that you say, "But you have to show me how much you love me and that you want to change something, otherwise I won't do a finger crumb here." But you just cut yourself into your own flesh. Because if I don't move on the other person, she won't move on me either and my need is not fulfilled at the end of the day. So you have to get out of the "pat" situation really like a team. If I help you, you can also help me. For Mara and Leon, this means very specifically, if Mara now notices, for her it is a big issue, the support and she has to clarify something with her partner, then it is extremely important. But he may need from her side, again and again, a hint that she still loves each other, that there is still something between the two. Neither the one nor the other is more important. Both are important for a functioning partnership, because they should be one of the two important. On the one hand, the close, on the other hand, problems to process. And that is exactly her task for the next time. Try to come across this step, to know, if you could wish for something from me, then it would be XY. And how can I find the motivation to take this step? On the other hand, I have just mentioned it, there needs to be a necessary strategy so that competitions do not escalate. Since the two of them have been in a very short time, from a normal conversation into a fighting conversation, it is important here to take the tempo out and reflect again and again, what we are actually doing. Leon often notices that, even earlier than Mara, that the conversation is moving in a bad direction. Since he is more harmonious than she is, he feels the tension relatively often, and she is also afraid of him. In the past, he would have simply pulled himself back and swung back, which Mara would have only been more involved in. Today there is another strategy for that. Both agree that Leon can say at the moment, "I just feel that I am getting more excited, I can imagine that we are currently taking big steps to a fight." Mara says at the moment, "It could be very difficult for me to really let go of this and respect this border. I know that I like to stick to it in such a conversation, and then really want to have discussed it until the end." But she also says that she is ready to let go of it to see if that could work for the two of them. With this input, we first close the first sitting of the two of them. They take it home, let the whole thing suck, and then have to find out for themselves what works for them individually. Between the two of them, they now try to implement the tasks. The next day there is a situation where the two of them deviate from childhood and Leon then says, "Hey, I think this is a moment, we should take a break." For Mara, this is still very unusual and she is driving him for the first time over his mouth. But Leon remains standing and repeating, "Hey, we agreed on it, here we have to set a point." Mara sees in his eyes how important it is to him and leaves the situation behind. But then something stupid happens. Instead of getting the situation ready again and finding out where she went wrong, she just runs off in the sand. Mara notices that this is not sustainable. With these mixed feelings of "Okay, this has already worked out relatively well, but the problem is still not solved, go now into a difficult situation, namely a family party." Mara has an exciting relationship with Leon's family and sees the whole thing with stomach crumbles. They had already fought a few times in such situations, but it was never really solved there either. Unfortunately, it will come as it had to come, and here they also wait like a burning situation for the two of them, where they don't really act well as a team, but fight each other. Mara repeats, "You don't support me at all, you don't have me on the screen, you only do your own thing." And Leon looks at the page, moves away and leaves the situation. So the two of them are again in their old pattern, but this kind of feedback also belongs to a normal process. In the next session, we will discuss exactly this difficult situation on the family. What is incredibly important at this point is the understanding of each other, clearly to deepen which old injuries have come up again. Why is it so deep when it comes to a separation? Mara takes the first word. She says, "I always find myself in the role of the one who has to carry everything. The child wants something from me, your parents say something and you don't agree with me. This is like our wedding when your mother always gave me these sharp comments and I felt so unloved in your family." Mara gets very wet eyes while she talks. That's why I ask deeper, have you ever talked about what you did with her at that time? Mara only shakes her head and I see how Leon wants to explain himself and his family. But if he reacts to Mara's injury with this, to explain the whole thing, then it will feel like he didn't understand her and would talk a little even if it wasn't his intention. While I say that, Mara nods. And so it is always, I share something from me and then all the reasons come from him that's why my emotions aren't right. Here we have again this tip in Leon's direction, which of course also doesn't do well in the conversation. My focus here is the growing understanding of each other. It's so important to really understand why he does what he does with you, what does that mean to you? That's why I ask Leon, what does it do to you when you hear your partner talk about it? Do you have the feeling that you can go along with her and understand what she means? Leon has to think about these questions for a while. Then he says, "Well, I do see what he does with her. So somewhere it seems important to you to be and of course I know that the situation with our wedding was really not nice with my mother. But I can't really understand why it's still such a big thing for her today. I mean, the whole thing is six years ago. Here comes a very important point with how emotional injuries work. These can also take a very long time. It may well be that the situation at the wedding was a trigger for Mara, and she has always been on her heels, whether her husband has taken her or not. And because she was on her heels, it may well be that even if Leon wasn't 100% on her side and she defended that she did the right thing and strengthened the thoughts again, that he is not on her side, that she is standing there alone. In what the two have now reported, what happened in the household and in the common family life, it can also be that there it blooms again and again. The little everyday things where you have the feeling, hey, do I have to take it alone now? Are you there or are you not there? So the great miracle happens from then on, even if she is already six years old, never enough time and feeling able to really heal. So the whole time, with such a big wound through the area where it always comes in directly, which always hurts and can't be healed properly. Leon looks at his partner incredibly and then asks, but is that so? Did he do it that way back then and does it look like today? Mara thinks about it briefly and then nods. Yes, I think so much of what we are experiencing today goes back to these injuries, now that I think about it. Family festivals are always a difficult situation for me, especially when I have the feeling that you are not quite with me. I've been so stressed out last week and when I'm honest, I almost waited for something like that to happen again. When it was then, everything in me said, yes, typically you knew it was true. That's why I'm so exhausted and I was so angry at the moment. Leon looks at her with big eyes and says, "Yes, and for me it was completely incomprehensible what happened to you. At one point I see you very relaxed with everyone and in the next moment we have this huge fight out of nothing. That really scared me." This kind of situation where you don't understand the behavior of a person, because it can't be interrupted, why the other person is now reacting so strongly to it, they are really difficult in the relationship. And they are in every case a proof that we don't understand something very, very important, namely what's going on underground, what's going on there, what the other person has really moved. These deep information about each other, we have to collect and hold tight, write behind our ears, because they are so incredibly relevant to get out of difficult situations well. Because if they had promised that in a quiet minute, Maras is afraid and is now worried about going to the family, what she wants from him. And Leon is not worried about a conflict between her and her mother, and the fear of how she should react when it gets even more difficult, all this could have changed so much in the preface. The jumping point is here that this happens in peace, with openness and injury. When we are in a fight, these things hit our heads with pressure and anger and with harsh words, then nothing will be pushed through to the other person. But it is so essential that this information is pushed through in a way where you can really process it. After this very intense sitting, both of them go home in a somewhat twisted way. But they have noticed how important it is to really talk deeper about things with each other, and what they have also noticed is that after this sitting, where both of them were very vulnerable and were able to openly show their closeness. At night, they cuddle together again on the sofa and can enjoy the time with each other. They feel the bond of injury here. If we really manage to open ourselves up, to share with each other, then this does not only help us to process our problems, but it also brings us closer together. Here, of course, the process of the two are not over yet, but they have already taken a few very important steps towards change. If you would like to hear the rest of their story, then please write it to me in the comments at Spotify. Then I will make a few twoes for this case example. And if you have very specific questions about the motto "And how did the two of them change?" Or "How did they change?" What is a partherapeutic tip here that fits their situation? Then also write me that super nice in the comments, then I will deal with it in the next episode. I definitely hope that you have been able to take a few things with you today. And it was also a little insight into the partherapeutic process. If you think about a partherapy with me or my team at the start or would like to make a single recommendation, then please take a look at the podcast description. I will link it to the website with all the important information. And if you like this kind of story with psychological knowledge and very specific exercises, then you will also love my book "Getriggert", where I of course wrote that in book form much more sensitive and in detail. I also put the link to my book "Getriggert" in the podcast description. And then we would love to hear you again next Friday, maybe already at part 2 of this case example. Until then, I wish you a wonderful week and a nice day.