#1: A slow death.

How two people can accidentally shrink each other into shutdown.

It’s not always easy to see what’s going wrong in a relationship while you’re in it. You can see some of the things going wrong— often the obvious, surface things— but the dynamics under those problems are not always clear until long after the clouds have parted, the emotions have settled, new lessons about life have been learned, and hindsight is 20/20.

I say we had a slow death, but in a way, we were never truly born.

I met my partner at a time when I was fed up with my previous patterns. I could see them, and now I wanted them to end. I wanted to throw out all of my usual criteria and tendencies, and make a choice based on something else— something healthier than passion and attraction. What if, for once, I tried dating someone who is kind, available, and just wants to date me— nothing complicated about it? As soon as I made this decision for myself, I turned around— and there he was. Kind. Available. And he wanted to date me— nothing complicated.

We had intimacy issues right off the top— we were not physically compatible, and part of me knew it. But I was trying something different: I wanted to learn to build a partnership with someone that was not based on physical foundations. Plus, I had had a lot of adventures in my life, and my relationship to physical intimacy had changed drastically with my discovery of mindfulness and the gentle shedding of ego and performance. I didn’t need that aspect of the relationship right now— I needed to learn to commit, to build something, to understand the other facets of a relationship that aren’t all about attachment, emotion and sex.

I believed we could grow this part of us.

Years of perfect, wonderful partnership unfolded. We love the same activities, we have many of the same passions (and many different). We share world views most of the time. We had the same vision of a future. We are really good at doing things together— chatting, watching TV, going for hikes, going on vacation, going surfing, playing music, and enjoying life. But despite years of functionality, a better understanding of each other, deep attachment, and hours and hours and a fortune spent on individual and couples’ therapy… we never gained access to the physical intimacy that we both desired.

It wasn’t until after the breakup that I could see the dynamics underneath the problem.

I know I am someone who over-functions and who is hyper-independent. I will not pretend that I have always been emotionally mature. Mindfulness, therapy, and becoming a therapist showed these skills; this way of being. One where emotions can be uncomfortable and allowed. One where emotions can exist and be beautiful.

Not everyone needs as much emotional intimacy as I do. Not everyone craves the type of spiritually and physically fusional relationship that I need now. Many people are happy to live in a functional partnership with little intimacy, emotional or physical— or to treat these things as something we do together from time to time when it’s been a while or we feel we should.

That’s not for me. I try not to do anything because I feel I should. I do things because I want to, they feel right— they are aligned. They bring me closer to health, to healing, to my values, and to the person I want to be.

The slow death happened under our noses. It began as a sensation that I was the parent in the relationship— the instigatr and container of any important or serious conversations. The one taking care of things, life, myself, and everyone else.

Now, over-functioning isn’t a virtue. In this story, I had to learn that this tendency often makes me decide things and make moves too quickly, take over and lead decisions without leaving space for the other to come forward, criticise and expect higher performance from the other. Especially, I have been uncomfortable with dependency, and have never been good at asking for help.

I couldn’t see it happening in real time, but I also couldn’t understand why every emotional or serious encounter was so difficult, and why I always found myself apologising, when I was the one who had a need that wasn’t being met.

Physically, intimacy was anxious. I felt our physical relationship being used as a measure of worth. I felt monitored, and there was no possibility for me to be simply myself within that space of monitoring. The more we engaged in physical intimacy that felt like anxiety; that felt like work; that felt like me being the therapist or parent— the less I desired it. Naturally.

At some point, the responsibility for the problem got shifted onto me. Not only subtly by my partner, but also by our couples’ therapist. Everyone seemed to believe that I should give physical intimacy a try, and that I was the one blocking things.

I couldn’t see the emotional underlying dynamic until after the breakup— I could only see the physical block, and feel the parenting dynamic.

It was a one-week retreat in Morocco that made me realise that we both deserved better than we were getting.