We love each other but it’s driving us crazy!
What can we do?
If this is you, you’re caught in a cycle that is likely to have little to do with your actual relationship. If you keep going down the same spiral to the same painful place, feeling frustrated and powerless to be any different it’s more likely to have to do with your past than your present. However the present is where it’s being activated. These moments of fighting over who didn’t put out the cat litter, who won’t touch me where I want to be touched, who won’t listen to or believe me etc are usually not about what they seem to be about. Despite how much they do seem to be about it!
They can be related to man/woman differences in interpretation but more often these painful fights are about something in our personalities that are separate to our relationship, more often related to the relationship we had with our parents than with our partners. This is why they can become so entrenched, because we’re trying to sort it out where it doesn’t belong.
This is not a bad thing if you know what to do about it. In fact it’s happening so you can heal those unresolved parts of yourselves, that were wounded in your original child/parent relationship and probably why you unconsciously chose to be in relationship with each other. It can also be why you resort to behaving like the child you once were, no matter how adult you begin.
When you can separate the issue from each other and look at yourselves it becomes clearer and easier to deal with.