Become reconciled! Does this work?
They had disposed of the rubbish, whitewashed the walls, wiped every wooden rafter of the threshing floor individually. And then the party with 200 guests ... Karla Nielsson *, 43, and Piet Thomas *, 49, stand in the barn of their remaining farm in Dithmarschen and talk about their wedding. How they got married after eight years of relationship, though they thought twice before they finally lost their love. They succeeded, which is a tempting thought for many. Karla Nielsson and Piet Thomas have gathered together and are looking for the same partner again the luck. They are thus in good company: After all, 10 to 25 percent of all separated couples - depending on the study - dare the new edition of the feelings, found the Chemnitz sociologist Oliver Arranz Becker out. Skeptics fear that such "warmed up" relationships could fail on the same sore spots. Proponents are tempted by the familiar: do not have to start from scratch again, fall back on the proven, continue on familiar territory ... that our time has become noticeably harder and more performance-oriented and change our life situations and values faster than ever before, arouses longing Fixed points that promise stability and trust. Even if the tingling sensation is lacking, it can also be nice to know who you are getting into, what quirks, fears and sensitivities await you. And what chocolate sides.
Reconciling is very popular
Several celebrities are on such a love comeback model: Starting with Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, who kissed and beat and married twice, about Beau Leonardo DiCaprio and Model Bar Rafaeli to Kate Middleton and Prince William, the lovers of the year. Piet Thomas pours steaming tea into the cups. We moved into the little cozy kitchen, it's raining outside, the cows are staring at the fence. Karla Nielsson shivers and puts on a colorful cardigan. In the next room are guitars, a double bass, an accordion and many music stands. Piet Thomas teaches music, she plays for years in her band Latinovo accordion and piano. That's one of their stable connecting lines. "If it goes well between us, it's groovy, if not, something has to be changed in the rhythm," explains Karla Nielsson. And now? Everything is "groovy", says Piet Thomas. Their love story began after an evening in April 2002, at a music club in Heide. Karla Nielsson had been on stage and Piet Thomas in the audience. Suddenly he was there, that magical moment in which Pling made it. The next day his phone rang. She would go on a trip to St. Peter-Ording to see if he came along ...
After the stormy beginning with sun, sand and wind in their hair, they came closer to each other step by step, visited whenever there was time. She went to Friedrichstadt, he visited her in Heide. Both had been single parents for years, Piet lived with his daughter, Karla with her son and daughter. Both had separated from their partners when the children were little. "Three years we were in seventh heaven," says Piet Thomas, "then Karla crashed into a crisis." After close relatives had died in the tsunami in Thailand, she disappeared a year behind a wall of sadness. The sadness drove out the butterflies, she sat down to them. Piet was unable to handle it, and kept avoiding his girlfriend more and more often. Until he avoided her in panic. Karla felt alone, she moved inwardly. Bit by bit her love broke up. And suddenly there appeared another man in whom she fell in love ... She broke off contact with Piet.
Become reconciled? Suddenly the heartbeat was back
The split was a shock to him, he realized that he really wanted Karla. "There was only yearning and pain in me," he recalls. But there was no turning back. For Karla Nielsson, a new era had already begun. She started a family therapy in Hamburg and also processed the separation. It passed a year. At some point, she says, "I had a life in which there were no more points of contact with Piet, a life in which a relationship with him was inconceivable." Until the day they met at a flea market in Wilster. Wild palpitations, a look in the eyes and an embarrassed small talk ... Now everything was imaginable again. They fell in love again, and everything seemed "groovy again." That was in the fall of 2007. A little later, Karla Nielsson became pregnant. A wish child. There she was 41. She had a miscarriage. And only five months later, the second. The feeling of being a failure made her dive back into mourning.Unparticipating like a spectator, her partner stood by, again denying her support in all his helplessness and fled a second time before her all-determining sadness - straight into an affair. Now Karla collapsed, desperately missing him, desperately wishing him back into her life. Her failure already had a certain routine at the time.
That just a gas cooker brought them together after nine months, both find themselves very funny today. Karla had just berled herself, then she asked her ex by SMS to bring her back her old camping stove. Piet Thomas tells with laughter how he would have crept up quietly to put the "stupid cooker" with shaking knees in her garage, he was relieved, he says, that she was not there ... On the way home he wrote to her via text message: I'm miserable without you. A call followed, then another. Many injuries are cautious. This time, there were mouse steps towards each other. But the love for each other was stronger. At some point they met at the symbolic place St. Peter again, talked, flirted and turtled in the sun, were for the third time, freshly crushed. Karla watched as "he got a really nasty sunburn", but said nothing. Today they have to laugh about this little malicious memory, loudly. During the walk on the North Sea they could have put everything on a scale. They left it. Piet's heart was wide open for the first time. "Without the risk of being hurt," he says in retrospect, "you do not get any big feelings in love." That everyone first grew for themselves, had to get to know each other better, so that a growing together was possible, this realization was not always painless. But their two divisions today are their most precious stones on the common path - only by stumbling they realized, "that everyone has his vulnerabilities and fears that everyone brings his story and thus makes mistakes," says Karla Nielsson. Piet Thomas nods. And then he looks Karla in the eye and asks: "After all, we were running away with all the caprices just before ourselves, right?"
Also make aware of your own mistakes
This should finally be over: When they were last fall in a small hotel near the Czech border with a red wine on the bed, Karla got the marriage proposal. She said yes. Immediately. "Anyone who decides to come together again has mostly cleaned up before and understood what went wrong," says Hamburg couple therapist Hartwig Hansen. "If you become a loving couple again, the feeling for each other is more intense, more reflective, more mature and conscious." It is important, however, that both see the crisis as a challenge to rethink their own mistakes, only then could the relationship to a separation grow. In long relationships, nobody would ever fail to "look in the mirror at some point in order to become aware of his own deficiencies and wishes, which he brings into the relationship". Annabelle and Michael Schumann * have done this over and over again in the last 25 years - also with the help of couple therapists. Cuddle harmony and boredom do not exist with them. And so her long love story is a story of passions. "Since we know each other, we rush towards each other like magnetic dolls and then have to break away from each other with a jerk," Annabelle Schumann, 53, already explained on the phone. "It costs a lot of energy, but lukewarm does not work for us." In her sunny, modernly furnished loft in Berlin Mitte, pastries and chocolates and a luscious bouquet of red roses are on the glass table. Annabelle Schumann is sitting on the edge of the sofa, awake and upright, his long blond hair lying open over his shoulder, and he, the successful lawyer in dark jeans and sports jacket, has let himself casually sink into the upholstery.
At that time, when he discovered her in the turmoil of a bar, it was clear to him: "The or not." He grins. "And if I want something, then I can do it too." He embraced her until she belonged to him. And then what Annabelle Schumann called the "fireworks of our love" began: They were in love for two and a half years. Michael was still at the beginning of his career. He was just setting up his law firm when his wife became pregnant. Everything was still in flux. Until the typical baby trap closed: With the birth of her twin girls Sina and Carlotta, the challenges began. The fact that Annabelle and the two children additionally had a life-threatening infection after birth further aggravated the situation. "She lived only with a view to the children," says Michael Schumann reproachfully, "and I was excluded and jealous." To get his wife's attention, he provoked her. The stress became more unbearable. Completely overwhelmed by the situation, Annabelle resorted to her only solution: she demanded a spatial separation - temporarily, to breathe. Michael blocked. A separation on time? Unthinkable! "That," he says, "was the beginning of the end for me." He proposed to divide the apartment, to build a kind of wall. The fronts hardened, she continued demanding his move.He refused until she was "removed" from the apartment with the help of the police. "They almost carried me out, that was the biggest pain." First he slept in the office, later with a friend.
Those who live with children know that they can be the reason for relationship crises. "At the heart of all conflicts are new strains that have to be distributed flexibly and differently," explains sociologist Arranz Becker, who is an expert on "pair stability" at TU Chemnitz. According to his sobering conclusion, only around half of all couples are able to "formulate expectations for each other, solve problems that arise, and make arrangements and agreements flexible" with the birth of a child. The Schumanns did not succeed at the time. She capitulated, urging him to divorce. This day is as close as it was yesterday, even though it was actually 19 years ago: Michael Schumann crossed his arms over his chest and emphatically states that he survived only with one goal: "I wanted my family back." He wrote letters, he courted Annabelle with little things, gave her a plush hedgehog. "You have to stick to it, always," he says. Especially the twins, which he took every two weeks. Annabelle did not respond. She experienced the separation in a mixture of relief and tears. Her conscience tormented her, because "of course I knew that such a Aus especially the children clogged". But her world has long since turned on without Michael.
About eight months after the divorce she flew with the girls to her brother in Vietnam and stayed for three months. When Michael picked up the three at Frankfurt Airport, the miracle happened: Carlotta, then two and a half years old, came through the automatic door, raised both arms and flew into her father's arms. The little girl had fallen from a swing in Saigon and had broken both arms. And suddenly, here at the airport, they knew what they had not felt at home: "We belong together." This key scene still touches Michael Schumann, he wipes the tears from his cheek. Embarrassed silence. Annabelle Schumann's voice trembles when she says that only then did she realize that he is a great father. They slept together again. Were fresh crush again. Felt like a feather and overjoyed to be a family again. And because the old apartment had bad memories, the Schumanns moved into a beautiful house with a garden. The twins are 21 today, one is in Buenos Aires, the other is in Vienna. For Annabelle Schumann, now 19 years after this break-up, it's clear: "I'll never make such far-reaching decisions in a crisis again, calmer times are better." However, the break can not be undone: they still have not remarried. "Maybe we'll do that at 80?" Quips Michael Schumann. Married or not, her passion keeps her close together. "I want to go to bed with you at 80," he says, whistling his hand audibly onto her thigh. Annabelle Schumann laughs and says: "Maybe not jump because of my knee, but the heart certainly wants it."
To read more:
- Hartwig Hansen: "Finding Love Again - Key Scenes from Couple Therapy", 14.95 Euro, Balance
- Hartwig Hansen: "Respect - the key to partnership", 14.95 euros, Klett Cotta life!
