“…most couples who seek therapy feel extremely lonely in their relationships. They miss and long for their partners…I use the phrase ‘moments of loneliness’ to capture the emotional shift that occurs when couples become-in what appears to be an instant and without a trace of doubt-heartless persecutors of each other rather than trusted and dependable partners. ”
“The capacity to bear loneliness is an impressive and hard-won developmental achievement. Loneliness begins in the earliest days of infancy and the shadows of that primitive experience leave their imprint on our ongoing ability to mitigate loneliness in later life….focusing on loneliness keeps loss and mourning in the forefront of our shared minds, and now and then allows a bridge to be built from blame to empathy.”
…”there remains in each of us an unsatisfied longing for understanding-without words-and for the idealized mother who never disappoints and never stimulates aggression. The ongoing for this irretrievable loss contributes to our sense of loneliness.”
When we are upset with our partner, it’s often because of one of two dynamics (or both…):
- We perceive our partner in a particular way: We experience our loved one whereby parts of ourselves, combined with disappointing bits of parenting figures, are projected into our partner, who is then related to as if he/she possesses these projected attributes. “You’re just like my Dad,” right?
- The “good partner”, who represents the ever-available mother in our deepest imagination, turns into “the bad partner”, who reminds us of the moments of intolerable disappointment when we were very little. We feel abandoned, rejected, assailed. Then we get mad! The ability to miss someone, or be disappointed in the connection, without lapsing into anxiety or feeling of rage, is an outstanding and often transient accomplishment.
Being able to penetrate the often intolerable tangle of these confusing emotions and simply say “I miss you”, ” I need you,” “I’m sorry,” which is no simple task, makes couple therapy rewarding.
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Quotations above from Alperovitz, Sharon. (2014). Moments of loneliness: A shared experience of learning from impasse in couple therapy. Couple Family Psychoanalysis, 4: 69-85.