You have to create opportunities - also in love

Mrs. M. plucks at her blouse and slips around on the sofa. "I'm starting to feel embarrassed," she finally says. I can barely see my husband, but when he's around, he pulls out of his skin at the slightest little thing, everything annoys him, everyone else is an idiot, and then I'm just annoyed and make an appointment Therefore, as often as I can, with my friends. " Mr. M. listens apparently unmoved. "You urgently need to talk to each other again ...", I begin. Ms. M. has now wrapped herself in a blanket. "Yes, but we do not have the opportunity to do that," she says. And I ask them both, "Is that really true?"

Relationships do not just stay good We always have to clarify relationships. Relationships - above all our love relationship - are for us the most important thing in the world. The long-term study at Harvard University, which has been attended by participants for more than 70 years, shows that it is not success and recognition, but close, loving relationships that determine the health and happiness of a person. Then our psyche is programmed. That's why we always feel how close or strained our love relationship is right now.

"I'm afraid to talk to you" - a good start when the relationship does not feel good anymore

We therefore know exactly when we would have to do something to restore the connection between us. But instead of approaching each other, we wait. Because a troubling relationship feels insecure. We fear the other "too much" to be when we come back with our dissatisfaction around the corner. Or we fear being "too little" and just hearing again that we are doing everything wrong. So we creep around each other, hold small talk and imagine that the right opportunity has to arise to find each other again.

Oskar Holzberg has been married for over 30 years and has been counseling couples for more than 20 years. He found that some sentences apply to all relationships. In each ChroniquesDuVasteMonde he introduces one of them.

But it is not the opportunity that we lack. What keeps us out is our fear of being rejected and our shame of showing ourselves in need. But the longer we wait, the harder it gets. Because we are always disappointed with the partner that he does not step on us. So also Mrs. and Mr. M. land again and again on the relationship zero point. Mr. M. fears that things only get worse when you touch a problem. In his parents' house, people simply went over problems. So he reacts irritated as soon as his wife addresses him. And since Mrs. M. had an overburdened, impatient and very devaluing mother, she retreats anxiously. Close they come only in their spitzmundigen farewell pussy. In the little feeling is that they could just as well smack the door frame.

We can not just override our relationship fears. But we do not have to, because we can show each other. "I'm afraid to talk to you," is a good start when the relationship does not feel good. If we do not criticize the other, but show him how lonely or rejected we feel right now. For this we do not have to wait for the supposedly right opportunity. Because opportunities are created.