From the same author

Rediscovering the True Self;

PRI, 3 steps to mastering the art of conscious living;

Illusions - 'Free yourself from the maze of destructive emotions'.

Ingeborg Bosch

Our Love

How to release the inner joy and romance in our relationships

Published in the Netherlands by Ingeborg Bosch PRI b.v.

© 2016 Ingeborg Bosch

Cover design Bart van den Tooren

Layout design Ebook Guido Cuijpers

ISBN 978-90-807049-3-0 NUR 777

www.PastRealityIntegration.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

Our love

How to release the inner joy and romance in our relationships

Perfect mastery of love amounts to nothing less than Self‐realization

Sri Sathya Sai Baba (Indian saint 1926 – 2011)

Love

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire,
that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart,
and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

I wholeheartedly dedicate this book to all those people who day in day out commit themselves with their whole being to live from the heart; anchored in and guided by love, compassion and empathy for all beings and all of life, and who fully realize that all obstructions to this state of being are solely to be found within and not without...

...and to all those people who want to learn how to do this.

Table of contents

From the same author

Copyright

Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Dedication of this book

Table of Content

Foreword

Thank You

Introduction

1. The Tree of Love

2. A greater whole

3. ‘Diagnosing’ your relationship

4. What can PRI do for your relationship?

5. Back To Our Fountain Of Love

6. Our Love – Found, Once Again!

7. Dysfunctional Relationships

Epilogue

Appendix 1 Test: Personal Profile

Appendix 2 Further explanation and examples of the five defenses

Appendix 3 Test: Defense Recognition

Appendix 4 PRI Intensive or regular couples therapy

Appendix 5 Men and sexuality

Appendix 6 Information on finding a PRI therapist

Appendix 7 information about the professional training for PRI therapist

Definitions of PRI vocabulary

Index

About the author

Foreword

I have spent a great deal of time and energy trying to understand the mysterious relationship forces that lead to loving and healthy relationships or, on the contrary, to enduring but dysfunctional partnerships. Along this journey I have encountered many talented therapists, teachers, and writers – many of whom contributed to a greater understanding of relational truths. In this journey I have discovered many like-minded kindred spirits who are similarly seeking truths and guidance for healthy and forever love. Many of us truth seekers desperately want to heal our bruised hearts so that we may fulfill our lifelong dream ‐ enduring and healthy love.

I have always believed that there are few coincidences in life. I have no doubt that Ingeborg Bosch and I were always meant to connect. The 4,109 miles that separated us, including a very big ocean, wasn’t a wide enough divide to keep us from synchronistically discovering our shared beliefs and hypotheses about the nature of healthy relationships. I felt fortunate to meet a person who understands, as I do, the power of unresolved childhood attachment trauma over relational health. Even more luckily, I encountered a like-minded person who knows, from the depths of her heart, mind and soul, that the impediment to healthy love is the absence of self-love.

“Our love” is a special gem of a book where she writes with unabashed candor, intelligence, and authenticity. I longed to find a book that would speak to me in the way this one does. I was captivated by her use of metaphors, clinical examples, theories, and techniques. Her creative use of metaphors, especially, brings to light the absolute essentials of a lasting and loving relationship. To illustrate, her use of “soil, water, and light” drives home the need for all of us to tend our emotional garden in order to find and maintain long-term personal and relational health.

As much as this book strikes an emotionally resonate chord, it also is an instruction manual of sorts ‐ one that provides well-articulated explanations and directions on how to foster healthy loving relationships. “Our love” relies on brilliant explanations on how to resolve and heal the deeply embedded and often hidden emotional wounds that inhibit one’s experience of fulfilling loving relationships

Ingeborg Bosch’s understanding of how unresolved emotional wounds inhibit affirming and mutually-loving relationships is the cornerstone of this book. It is as if she tapped into the heart of the human condition where she extracted universal truths about how to heal the trauma that blocks so many of us from soul to soul loving connections.

Her concern is about the human condition. One could almost imagine that she peeked into the source of all love and happiness and now wants to share it with us. And for this, she is a modern-day alchemist! Not just a clinician, teacher or writer, but more of a champion of the human spirit. She channels the essence of love, healing and human potential in her work and has uncovered universal truths that will echo with sweet familiarity.

In conclusion, this book is written with a depth of clarity that few other books have accomplished. It is a clinical masterpiece that I cannot recommend highly enough. I trust that you, the reader, will come to the same conclusion.

Ross Rosenberg, LCPC, CADC, CSAT
Clinical Care Consultants ‐ Advanced Clinical Trainers
Psychotherapist, Author & Professional Trainer
Author of The Human Magnet Syndrome: Why We Love People Who Hurt Us

Thank you

Thank you to all those people that were and are a part of my life and that made it possible for me to learn the lessons that I needed to learn in order to be able to write this book.

Everything that I write about in my previous books, and in this one, comes out of my own direct experience. Either my personal experience, or something I experienced with a client or with one of the many PRI therapists. They have all taught me so much.

I feel truly blessed to have found so many teachers on my path. Each of which has given me valuable lessons, sometimes very painful, but always necessary and very instructive....

My most important teachers are those people that are or have been the closest to me, to whom I have fully given myself, with defenses and without defenses1, who have given me so much love and support and through whose hands I also have suffered so much pain...

Every moment however was necessary, and is truly a gift from Life, even though I have gone through moments that I could see no more light.

I so hope that this book will make those moments more bearable for you, when it is your time to go through the darkness. Knowing that you’re not alone helps so much.

Amongst the many people that were there for me, that have helped me, that have contributed in one way or another to this book, there are two people, that have been such an amazing ever present enormously loving and endlessly supporting presence in my life, that I want to do them justice by thanking them here. Lenneke and Nynke, my dear friends and ‘right hands’, you have been and still are such an enormous source of support, help, understanding and pure love to me during those difficult moments when I needed it so much, that I cannot put it in to words.

Thank you for everything.

1 Survival mechanisms we developed during childhood

Introduction

Love, Love, Love...
All you need is love...
What makes the world go round is love sweet love...
I can’t live if living is without you...
If you leave me now, you’ll take away the biggest part of me...

How we all long for love. How we all live for love. The things we do for love. How great we feel when we are in love. All the songs we sing about love. All the art that was made out of love. There is no doubt about it, love really and truly is at the core of our being, of our dreams, of our greatest wishes and unfortunately sometimes our worst nightmare...

This book is a fundamentally optimistic book. After a life full of personal lessons and in working with my clients, I found to my surprise that the way to a good relationship is not that complicated! The couples that I worked with, and that committed to doing follow up homework together and individually, saw a substantial and lasting improvement in their day to day life. This was such a wonderful discovery. There seemed to be a basic logic to relationships. And it was possible to find this logic, decipher it, do the necessary work together and heal.

That is what this book is about. How to heal the relationship that we once started so full of love, hope and good intentions. How can we find back and not lose each other again? Or how can we prevent losing each other if we are still enjoying a loving day to day interaction?

One of the most fundamental things that became clear over and over again in my work with couples, was that ‘when two people are open for contact, they will always be well, no matter how big the problems they might be facing’. One of my clients put it this way during a couple’s seminar, and this deceivingly simple phrase kept coming back again and again. Whenever there is a problem you can be sure that one or both is not open for contact....

Also it became crystal clear that in order to heal a relationship both partners need to work individually and together on their problems. The nicely coined slogan ‘you can only heal yourself’ as an answer to people in therapy who asked what to do about problems with their partner, was clearly misleading and untrue... In fact, those couples where one of the two does a lot of work on themselves while the other continues in his or her old routine are the couples that often fall apart.

But first let’s take on step back. Before we learn how to decipher and get to work on what is holding us back from living the love that we once shared, we are often in the dark about what went wrong and more important what to do about it.

In spite of our ardent hope for love, it seems to be very difficult for most of us to create an enduring and loving relationship. The figures are clear: in Belgium a truly shocking three out of four marriages break up, in the US more than fifty percent ends in a divorce, in all of the EU 50% fails, in Spain divorce rates have doubled (source: Eurostat 2009), in the last ten years and in Holland approximately 35% doesn’t hold till ‘death do us part’. The average Dutch marriage lasts 14.5 years1. The second seven year’s itch?

If prospects for staying together are not very hopeful, how about the quality of the relationships that do survive the test of time? All those marriages that do hold fast...But to what price? Many couples live their ‘mutual individual’ lives, hardly sharing much more than the practical side of their ‘family organization’ – household, children, family duties, etc. They might have long given up on truly sharing their lives and have settled into living more or less peacefully under the same roof... Long lost are the days of passion, inspiration and joy, endless conversations, sharing intimate emotions and walking hand in hand. In a sad way these couples, even though their lives might be quite functional, have almost become like strangers, intimate strangers... In PRI we call this kind of behavior the defense mechanism2 of Denial of Needs (DoN), which I shall explain more in detail in Chapter 4.

1 Eurostat 2009

2 The essence of PRI theory is that there are five ways – defense mechanisms – to defend ourselves against feeling old pain from our past, pain we needed to repress. All of us use these five defenses unconsciously. Denying that there is a problem, is one of these defenses, it is called Denial of Needs. See Chapter 4 for further explanation of the five defenses.

Then there are those couples who continue in spite of all the conflicts that they never seem to be able to solve. They stay together but go on fighting over no matter what. Fighting has become their way of life. Who doesn’t know one of these couples who usually start putting each other down at the dinner table in front of their guests? Not hindered by the presence of onlookers, maybe they even like the exhibitionistic aspect, they take up a lot of time and emotional space with their fighting. These couples have long since lost hope that there is a possibility of talking constructively to each other, expressing their feelings while trusting that the other person will listen empathetically, and in that way coming to a mutual understanding and a solution of the problem. In PRI these people are stuck in what we call the False Power (FP) defense3. Getting angry, irritated, judgmental etc. provides them with a way not to feel painful feelings that they carry inside themselves.

A last sad stereo-type of an unfulfilling relationship is the well-known caricature where one of the two bosses the other around. Either the wife bickers at her spineless husband who seemingly conforms to every command or the bullying husband who completely dominates his wife’s life. The misbalance in power in these relationships is obvious. Both partners seem to have come to accept it and live their lives in their ‘stable dysfunctionality’....In PRI this kind of combination is seen as fueled by an enduring interaction of the defenses called False Power and Fear4.

3 See Chapter 4 for a further explanation. False Power is one of the five ways in which we defend ourselves unconsciously against old pain coming up. False Power consists of negative feelings and thoughts about others – anger, irritation, jealousy, etc.
4 Fear is another one of the five defense mechanisms, just like False Power and Denial of Needs. Or put differently: one of the five ways to defend ourselves unconsciously against our old pain from coming to the surface. See Chapter 4 for further explanation.

In a way the three above examples can be seen as prisons that we have created for ourselves. Prisons because as time goes by it becomes harder and harder to get out, even if there are many days that we toss and turn and ask ourselves ‘how did I ever end up in this mess?’

Apart from the emotional suffering that is the daily reality of many couples, the amount of suffering caused by problems related to physical intimacy is quite impressive. In my experience not more than 10% of couples, after the initial years of passion, enjoy a mutually fulfilling sexual relationship. An astonishing 30% has no sexual contact at all anymore. This is a well-kept secret as not having sex seems to be the last taboo in our ‘modern’ society...And that leaves us with 60% that struggle on and off (more on than off) with their physical intimacy. He wants it more than she. She is tired or has a headache. He is afraid and insecure and suffers from erection problems or premature ejaculation. She is not attracted by him anymore. He doesn’t feel excited by her anymore. They fantasize or look at pictures of other people...etc. etc. The list of sexual problems is long and couples suffer and struggle or give up completely because ‘the whole thing’ has become too painful or just plain ‘too much of a hassle’....

Are we hopelessly lost? Can our relationships be saved? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel??

Because the quality of our relationships – or the lack thereof – has such an impact on our daily well-being, including our health5, the topic is very popular. The time is more than ready to write a book about relationships from the point of view of PRI.

What is really going on that is making it so tough for most of us to build a loving and fulfilling relationship? Is it enough to respect each other and learn how to communicate? To express your own needs and to learn to listen to your partners needs and wants? To learn to negotiate? To find an activity together? Is that what it is about why we don’t make it through? Or is there a larger underlying problem, that keeps sabotaging our efforts to do all of the above and make it work?

5 Many studies have shown people in stable relationships enjoy better health and recover from illnesses quicker than singles.

Those of you who know PRI, will understand what I am getting at. I will show beyond a doubt that you can have all the communication skills you like, but that won’t be enough to get out of recurring patterns that are damaging your relationship. Patterns that seem to come up again and again, driving you both crazy and hopeless... Patterns that stem from your long gone past and that won’t leave the present alone no matter how well we learn to communicate.

Also we need to consider the far reaching effects that our struggle with our partner has on our children. Children from divorced parents have a higher chance of getting divorced themselves (Innocent Prisoners, Bosch, 2007), lacking faith in the longevity of relationships.

On the other hand, staying together ‘because of the children’ is an option to consider carefully. If children perceive the marriage as not so bad, the split up makes them feel as if they don’t count. If, on the other hand, the problems are clear to them this effect is not found and children might well agree with the decision no matter how much they prefer their parents staying together... Children are very perceptive though and will feel that deep running troubles are undermining their parent’s relationship.

Another important aspect is whether the way you are living with your partner is the example that you want to pass on to your kids. You might sacrifice living a life that is good for you or settle for an unhealthy relationship because of your love for your children. However, if that means that you are teaching them by your example (that is how children learn, not by your words!) that it is good to stay in an empty or unhealthy relationship and be unhappy, is that really the message you want to hand over to your children? Is that what you would wish for them?

In Chapter 7 will address in more detail the difficult dilemma of how to know when it is time to stay and keep on trying, or accept that leaving is the thing to do.....

So we suffer from our lousy relationships, our children suffer. The costs are high on both an individual and societal level.

On the other hand, we have also come to expect more out of life and out of our relationships. The days are over where women would be stuck at home, with no financial means of their own, in a sort of ‘economical-physical‐prisoner-for‐life’ situation. Accepting whatever her husband did or did not do, including being at his physical service if he so felt the need. It is hard to imagine what enormous benefits woman in our western societies have received in only the last 50 years. And from this women’s lib, men have gained the possibility of creating an equal and loving relationship. All too often we forget that inequality also directly brings disadvantage for men. Disadvantage in the sense that they will not be able to experience real intimacy with their wives. After all, equality is the first and foremost requirement for intimacy and love.

But in spite of the importance of relationships for our well-being, in spite of all the suffering, the high costs of that for our society, for ourselves and for our children and therefore for our future, in spite of all that we still don’t learn anything about communication or relationships in school nor from our parents. If we are lucky, we might indirectly pick up on some functional and loving behavior, but with all those high divorce rates and unhappiness in couples that stay together, those changes are quite slim. So how on earth can we do a good job in our relationship? Nobody taught us, nobody showed us....

To complicate matters further we are finding out that the popular saying ‘what you see is what you believe’ is actually reversed! The truth as neuroscience is showing us, is ‘what you believe, is what you see’.... Think about that for a moment. It means that we will see in our partner what WE believe to be true about her or him6. We will NOT see what is true about that person.... So if I believe him to be aggressive and critical, it is exactly that what I will perceive. My perceptions will validate my belief and confirm my idea of the truth. If the computer broke down and my partner is irritated about that, I will think ‘see how aggressively he is behaving again, today’? And this in turn will confirm my idea of the truth – that he is aggressive. On the other hand, if I see him as a patient person, I will think: ‘of course, that lousy computer broken down again, how calm he reacts to this stress, he is only slightly irritated’. If I believe she doesn’t love me, I will see all those little things as meaning that she doesn’t love me. If he puts on his nice clothes in the morning and I believe he loves me I will think ‘oh wonderful, he wants to look nice for me’. If he puts on the same clothes and I believe he doesn’t love me anymore, I will think ‘who is he seeing today, that he is putting his best shirt on for?’

6 Throughout the rest of the book, I will use ‘her’ and ‘him’ alternately. Wherever is written ‘he’, you can read ‘she’ and vice versa.

Not only do we see what we believe, meaning that our perception of the present is a direct result of our beliefs, but to complicate matters further these beliefs about the present are a direct reflection of our.... past. In a way you could imagine that the film of our past is continually projected onto our present day life, making for a strange mixture. We see the faces and events of the present day, but the meaning of it all is a direct reflection of painful past experiences.

For example, take Sandra. Every time when she goes out for dinner with her partner and he looks around, Sandra thinks he is interested in other women in the restaurant. She is convinced he is not really interested in her, and as a consequence she will again and again perceive the evidence for this idea. The origin of her conviction is that as a child Sandra was usually ignored by her depressed mother, who showed affection only to Sandra’s little brother...

In general terms we can state that what we endured as children, whether it was too little care and attention, abuse, aggression and conflict, not enough love, or over-exertion and expectations way beyond our capacities to name a few, will manifest as a belief we have about our partner, which we therefor will perceive after the initial in love phase is over. What you see is not your partner, but the painful aspects of your own past.... No wonder to most of us, it seems such an impossible task to keep on living from the love that we have in our hearts, but that got buried under such a large amount of dirt through the years.

Having children is the biggest responsibility one can take on in life, but having a partner relationship is truly the biggest challenge! Eckhart Tolle’s idea reflects this: ‘if you want a relationship because you are looking to be happy you will be disappointed. However, if your objective is to grow, then you will most likely be satisfied’. So why do most of us want to be in a relationship?

What is that really about, given the fact that so few are truly happy in a relationship, at least in the long run?

Is it that we are afraid to leave, afraid to confront the painful feelings that come up like little devils when we are ‘alone’? Feeling that our life is not worth much when we are not in a relationship? Afraid we can’t survive by ourselves? Afraid of making ends meet by ourselves?

How many of us are walking around with a ‘hole in our soul’ and are looking for our partner to fill up this hole so we can become whole? This means that we will have to mold that person into the exact form of the hole in our soul.... An impossible task, causing a lot of damage to integrity of the other person and to the relationship. Yet this is exactly what most of us try to do, albeit unconsciously.

How many of us realize that we all carry this hole in our soul? Each and every one of us. The hole that was caused by painful experiences that as a child we were not able to process. And how many of us realize that no other person in the world can fill this hole? That we can only do this ourselves. When we are able to love ourselves, and are happy just being with ourselves, then maybe we can find someone who is also whole in herself and isn’t trapped in the illusion of looking to another person to be filled up either.

One of the greatest questions that I have always avoided answering directly, is the question what is LOVE?? Love is such a widely used and misused word. There are so many kinds of love: for your lover, your child, your friend, your family, your dog and cat, etc. What is the common denominator in all these different sorts of love... is there such a thing? Should we make a difference between unconditional and conditional love? But are we humans capable of giving unconditional love: I will love you no matter what you do or don’t do...? Is that kind of love possible in a couple?

I do think that there is a common denominator. Take a moment to reflect on the following examples. Will you still love your lover if he sleeps with someone else? Will you still love your friend if she talks nastily about you behind your back? Will you still love your brother if he ignores you? And will you still love your parents if they fail to be there for you when you need them? You get the idea... Is love about what I GET from the other? Is that love? Or is it about what I GIVE to the other? I think many would agree that love is about the latter, about what we give to another: How do YOU want me to love YOU so that YOU feel loved by ME? That is three YOUs for one ME.

If Love is about giving, it means that we need to know what to give. In order to know what to give we need to have a good capacity for empathy – listening to, understanding cognitively and emotionally what it is the other person needs or wants. We could say that an operational definition of love could be empathy. If you can be empathetic, you are able to love the other person. If you have difficulty being empathetic, loving in the sense of giving what the other needs or wants becomes very difficult. Without empathy it will be difficult to truly relate to another person, to truly connect and to be truly caring. We will see throughout this book that empathy is a key faculty in the ‘science’ of loving. But empathy alone is not enough...

The main purpose of this book is to be of direct practical help to its readers. This means that long theoretical discussions will be avoided, that the aim is to keep it short and simple so that anybody who is looking to improve their relationship will find practical guidance in this book.

In Chapter 1 and 2, I will start by explaining how I look at relationships, using five dimensions which can help us to diagnose what is or isn’t going on in our relationship. After explaining these dimensions, in Chapter 3 I will provide you with a test to diagnose your couple: ‘where are we doing fine, where are we in some difficulty, where can we improve’? Followed in Chapter 4 by a brief explanation of the essence of the PRI theory and method if you are unacquainted with it, and a very important new PRI tool – dis-identification – that I have not written about previously. In Chapter 5, I will give you with the tools to go ahead and work on the areas you discovered that are in need of extra attention and maybe repair work. In Chapter 6, I will also give a few examples of how this PRI approach has worked for couples that did the work, showing it is not even that difficult after all, as long as you DO what is suggested!

In Chapter 7, I will talk a little about dysfunctional relationships as they cause much suffering and damage and are more frequent then we would like to believe. By dysfunctional I mean those relationships that are caught in a destructive dance where there is not an equilibrium between giving and taking between both partners. Often there is a lot of fear associated with these sorts of mechanisms. Fear of being left and staying alone. This fear, which is so present in many of us, can make us do and accept things that are not in our interest and often are very harmful to us and even worse, to our children. It is important to know how to recognize dysfunctional relationships and to know what to do to get out.

As I mentioned, the main focus of this book is very positive. You will find that if you are both willing to open up to the possibility of working on yourself and your relationship, A LOT is possible, no matter how serious your problems might be at the onset.

I have seen couples that were convinced they would need to get divorced, make a full 180 degrees change after a few simple steps and some essential insights into the destructive mechanisms in their relationship and where these really came from. Not from their partner as they were convinced of all the while.

So don’t lose hope, if you once loved each other, if you once experienced the beauty of being deeply in love with each other, you can learn to love again. The fountain of your love has always been there, it has just become covered by so much dirt year after year without the necessary cleaning work. As a result it has now not only become completely invisible, but you have even forgotten its existence. But believe me when I say it is still there and you can find it again.

I truly hope that this book will be the beginning of learning to love again for you. Finding out on the way that all the love you need is already inside yourself and that sharing it with someone else is one of the most beautiful experiences this life has to offer.

France, December 2014

In this world no other virtue is greater than love. Love is Life. The person with no love to share is as good as dead. The power of love surpasses all the innumerable powers in this world.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba (1926 ‐ 2011)

Chapter 1

1. The Tree of Love

Metaphors can be quite helpful in order to quickly understand concepts that otherwise would need a lot of words to become clear. I find it useful to use the tree metaphor when looking at emotional needs in a relationship.

What are the basic needs of a tree to survive and grow?
Soil
Water
Light

Let’s see what this translates to in relationships.

Soil – trust

A good soil will provide the tree with the possibility to develop healthy roots. These roots are of paramount importance for the tree in order not to be blown over by the first little storm that might pass by. Of course each type of tree needs a different soil to grow healthy roots. And some trees grow much deeper roots than other kinds that naturally stay more at the surface.

In a relationship the good soil represents the essential element of trust that partners have in each other: will you be there for me when I need you? Can I count on your support and care for me, also when times get tough? Can our relationship endure a little or a bigger storm?

There are many questions that we can pose that will indicate the level to which our relationship is indeed firmly rooted, giving us the security and certainty that we can build on the other person. That they will not let us down when we need them. That we form a team that works together, instead of two individuals that are mostly engaged and interested in their own pursuits.

What it is that makes you feel that you can trust your partner and vice versa will be different in each relationship. For one it means knowing that your partner will not lie to you, no matter what happens, or how painful the truth may be. To another trust means knowing without the shadow of a doubt that you can wake her up in the middle of the night and she won’t get angry but will give you the help needed. To yet another it might mean having confidence that the partner will not leave you.

But whatever it is that may give you the trust in your partner and your relationship, it is trust in itself that our relationships are based on. With trust our relationship will be able to grow good roots and hold fast in the storms that life will always present us with.

Janice has been married to John for 17 years and through all their ordeals, she has never felt that John would let her down in times of need. When their children were born he was right there next to her, to take care of what he could. When she was exhausted with the broken nights, he took over the nightly feedings and encouraged her to sleep as much as she needed. When she lost her job and got depressed, he was there to take her out on walks or other outings if she was looking for some distraction. The list was endless and Janice knew beyond a doubt that she could always count on John, he would be there for her and not let her down in times of need.

Robin has been with Susan for over 20 years. They were both very good looking in their youth and Susan has preserved much of her appeal to men.

Wherever she is men will be delighted with her presence, her outer and inner beauty make her appealing to both men and women. Even though Robin has less charisma, he has no doubt that he can count on Susan’s fidelity. He knows she loves him and that just like he himself, she is not interested in an open relationship or any other promiscuous adventures. Susan enjoys meeting people, she is an open and spontaneous person, but it is clear to her that any sexual adventure would do more harm than good to her life and relationship and so she is completely faithful out of her own choice to Robin. She knows that for Robin things are the same way. Their trust in each other’s freely chosen loyalty is the basis on which they can open up to the world and be comfortable in exchanging with others. They have no fear about the other cheating, nor do they feel the desire themselves.

Karen and Jay have been together for 10 years. They know that whenever one of them has a problem that the other person will be there to listen, understand and solve whatever is causing the difficulties. Knowing that their partner will be there to listen to them no matter what the problem is, gives them an incredibly solid base of trust in their relationship. A few years ago Jay fell in love with another woman. He was totally shocked that this had happened to him as he knew that he deeply loved Karen and would never want to leave her. When his feelings hit him, his first impulse was to go to Karen and tell her about it. After he had told her what had happened to him so unexpectedly, she said ‘Life is about love, I don’t want to hold you back from love, if that is what you feel. I do not want to forbid you to experience the love you feel. Please go and find out what this means to you’. Jay was completely surprised by Karen’s reaction, as were a lot of their friends...The fact that Jay could go directly to Karen to tell her about his feelings was thanks to the enormous trust this couple had developed in each other: ‘no matter what, I know he/she will be there for me’. Jay and Karen are still together and their relationship has withstood the test of time.

Unfortunately, it is not always like this.

Every time Julia talks to another man, Terry will get angry with her afterwards, accusing her of making sexual insinuations and flirting. No matter what Julia does to convince Terry of her good intentions and his misperception, he will not let her words in, convinced that she wants to cheat on him. Terry’s jealousy has such an effect on Julia that she has stopped talking to other men altogether.... She feels afraid of Terry’s anger that can arise so unexpectedly. Each day feeling more and more like his prisoner than his partner in their relationship.

Or take June and Tim. Whenever he is on a business trip June is convinced that he is cheating on her. She has often tried to get him to confess...Tim has become quite discouraged by June’s lack of trust in him. No matter what he says, she keeps on accusing him of things that she imagines in her head...Tim feels sad and talks less and less to June, afraid he will say something that will set her off.

Or Thomas and Pete. If Thomas tells Pete about the pain he is having from his divorce, Pete will interpret this as a sign that Thomas still loves his ex. For Pete it is very easy to feel threatened by the idea that he will lose Thomas. In spite of his deep pain and the necessary mourning process of his divorce, Thomas keeps his feelings about this process to himself. He knows that Pete cannot trust his love for him and feels immediately threatened by anything he says about his ex. Thomas feels alone with all his grief and withdraws emotionally from Pete.

These short examples show clearly how important trust is in our relationship. Without trust it is really as if there is no soil for your tree of love to root in. And no matter how beautiful the tree, no matter how big and strong and beautiful it may be, without good roots it will not withstand even minor obstacles and will be blown over.

The first thing therefore to look at in our relationship is the degree of trust we have in the other person. Do I trust my partner? Can I give her the benefit of the doubt? Do I believe what he says or do I believe the demons in my own head? Is she there for me when I need her? Can I build on him being there no matter what?

Water – emotional intimacy

No matter how well rooted a tree may be, resisting the worst of storms, if there is not enough water the tree will dry out and shrivel up. The water comes in through the roots and flows up and down the whole tree, nourishing the cells with the necessary liquids and nutrients. Not enough water is a direct danger to the survival of the tree.

In a relationship water symbolizes our emotions and in particular the degree to which there is emotional intimacy. Too few emotional intimacy, and the relationship will dry up. No matter how strong the root system may be, if there is not enough emotional intimacy the relationship will suffer greatly. Do you feel that in your relationship there is enough emotional intimacy? Can you talk about your feelings? Can you share your vulnerabilities? Does your partner understand what you are saying? Does he take the time to really listen to you? Is he touched by you when you are touched? Or just plain simple, do you regularly take the time to talk about your feelings together? Is talking together about what you are feeling valued as an important part of your daily life? Or is talking intimately a memory from a long gone past? And is the talking you do mostly about what needs to be organized by whom and when. ‘Please pass me the salt...’. Unfortunately, many couples are passing more time together daily watching TV or on their smartphones or tablets than talking together.

Mary is a very emotional woman, married to Dan who is the opposite – very rational. To Dan feelings seem to be superfluous, bothersome, complicated and to him life would be a lot easier if people would just be more rational. Mary has given up talking to Dan about what she feels. The reactions he gave her when they were still young have completely disheartened her and confirmed her that in the emotional sense she is alone: ‘you are born alone, you die alone and whatever presents itself on the way is just an extra, but don’t count on it’. This sums up her attitude to life. She never was able to share with Dan her feelings about things that touched her. From the horrible loss of their son when he was 14, to the affair he had behind her back, and her insecurities about herself, to name just a few. Dan would never say much when she started talking about her feelings, he would quickly become distracted, start looking around, yawning, and then make some trivial remark.

It was clear soon enough to Mary that Dan was not into talking about feelings. Was he disinterested? Or insecure? Or unfeeling or uncaring about Mary’s feelings? Or maybe afraid of saying the wrong thing? Mary didn’t know what to make of it and never really found out. She just felt very upset, rejected and abandoned emotionally and she stopped talking about her emotions all together. Of course this took its toll. As the years passed without anything really changing, she felt more and more anger towards Dan, which she could not express to him because he wouldn’t listen to her. In the end it resulted in a relationship where she told him at age 40 that she had given enough of herself to him and that from that day on their physical intimacy was over for good. If he so desired, he was welcome to go and look for it elsewhere. Now, 10 years later, she snaps at him often, her suppressed anger is obvious, but she sees no way to address or deal with it. And Dan, who is unhappy as well and just as powerless to change anything, retreats in to his own life, his own activities such as fishing, his video games, and motorbike and drinks more and more alcohol each year. He suffers from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and has undergone bypass surgery.

Theo is permanently afraid to do the wrong thing and get blamed for it. So instead of even trying, he will avoid going into any emotional communication with Claire, his wife. This drives Claire crazy, and unlike Mary she does keep on trying to get him to listen and react to her. ‘Please honey, what do you think of what I just said?’, ‘Can you give me a reaction at least?’ But the more Claire insists that Theo reacts, the more Theo panics inwardly, feeling that he needs to find the exact words to satisfy Claire. And the more he panics, the more he becomes paralyzed and the less he will say. If Claire cannot recognize this state of his, and as a consequence keeps going on to push him into giving a reaction, eventually he will explode. He will burst out in anger at Claire and tell her that it is not up to her to force him into a reaction the moment she wants it, that life is not like that, etc. Claire will then feel completely defeated. Not only does Theo not listen to her, nor understand her, nor react to her pain when she asks him, no it is even worse. He will get mad at her and accuse her of the most illogical things. Every time this happens she sinks into a deep dark bottomless pit wondering why she still is in this relationship.

Barbara and Bill have what seems to be an ideal marriage. A beautiful home, 3 lovely children, vacations several times a year, a busy family and social life. Many see them as the ideal couple. However, every evening after dinner both sit down behind their computer until at eleven Bill goes up to sleep. He knows that Barbara stays up longer, and even though he much dislikes this, he has stopped to ask her to come to bed at the same time as him. Barbara usually doesn’t come to bed until 00.30, when Bill is sleeping. In the morning they both get up early to take care of all the things that need to be taken care of in a family with three young children. Barbara has always told Bill that she needs less sleep than him and isn’t tired at 11 pm. And even though that is true, the real reason that she doesn’t go to bed at the same time is that she wants to avoid any possible sexual approach Bill might make. The truth of this ideal couple, underneath the surface, actually is that there is no emotional intimacy. Bill doesn’t really notice this lack in the relationship, for him all is fine as long as their household and life is running smoothly. Barbara does suffer from the lack of emotional exchange, but has given up hope of ever being able to really reach Bill. When he decided to have their first son circumcised without Barbara’s consent and named him without consulting with her, something inside her broke. She kept it to herself as any attempt to discuss her standpoint with Bill was futile. He would hardly listen to her and just repeat his own idea. Barbara buried her pain deep inside, and sometimes even forgot about it herself, until after 20 years one minor incident was the stick that broke the camel’s back and she left him within a few weeks, never to return.

What a shame. And how different it can be, when there is emotional intimacy in the relationship.

Take Arthur and Anny. They make sure to spend at least two evenings per week together in order to really talk about how life is going for each of them individually and for them as a couple. They both want to listen to and understand the other and share in the emotional intimacy. It wasn’t always like this. They had to learn how to open themselves up to the other. How to express what they were feeling and how to truly listen to each other so that they would be able to really understand what the other was saying and react from the heart.

Pascal and Mark have been together for 10 years, and from the beginning both were very sensitive to the others needs and feelings. Pascal will notice when Mark comes home tired from work and will let him be in peace for a while before asking him if he wants to talk about his day. Mark really appreciates this because he needs a little moment to wind down by himself and not feel any pressure from Pascal who is more talkative in general. However, once Mark is feeling a little bit wound down, he loves it how Pascal is interested in hearing about his day. Mark feels that Pascal is truly interested in what happened to him during the day, and that he is especially attentive to what Mark felt. If it was positive, Pascal will be genuinely happy for Mark. If it was painful or difficult in another way, Pascal will be touched as well. Pascal’s love and connection with Mark is very deep. Their emotional intimacy is a very strong aspect of their relationship, as is their physical intimacy. This aspect, as we will see in Chapter 2, is directly related to the emotional intimacy.

Margret and Tom both come from abusive backgrounds. Both grew up with a lot of violence and verbal aggression. They are used to people around them exploding easily. In their relationship they had to work hard at developing emotional intimacy because they would both expect the other to blow up in their face when they revealed anything that might be perceived as negative by the other. And of course with their backgrounds, both were easier to explode than most people1. Working on their fear and outburst of anger however gave them the patience, the openness and the willingness to build an emotionally intimate relationship. Their hard work was very beneficial to their daily lives, which they can now live in harmony most of the time, knowing what to do – talk, listen and understand! ‐ as soon as a problem arises that causes tension.

These common examples clearly show how emotional intimacy is like the essential life force of our relationship. Your tree of love might have strong roots, but if there is a lack of emotional intimacy your daily life will dry up, lacking juices, both emotional and physical, as we will see later.

1 Children learn from the example that their parents give them from day to day. If someone experienced a lot of aggression in his childhood, he will be more easily prone to this sort of behavior than if he grew up in a family in which nobody lost his temper.

Most relationships unfortunately suffer from a lack of emotional intimacy, especially after the first few years have passed by and both partners get caught up in the demands of everyday life. It is so easy to ‘lose’ each other in the everyday hassles and stresses. Instead of remaining the couple in love, we easily devolve into two business partners, running Family & Co. The damage most of us do to our relationship in this way, is very big. Especially women have a hard time settling for this kind of emotional poverty. More and more women at a ripe age of fifty or sixty or even older are leaving their long time husbands with this being one of the main causes. After so many years of emotional emptiness, having tried often but unsuccessfully to get their husbands to ‘do something about themselves’, they do not see the use of living out their old age in the same empty way. Instead they choose to leave and start a new emotionally more fulfilling life. This relatively new phenomenon is becoming so wide spread that it is now being called a new trend named ‘the grey divorce’...

Ask yourself how the emotional (and physical) exchange is in your relationship. Do you take the time to talk about each other’s feelings? Do you have quiet time together to do this without being interrupted? Can you listen and understand each other? Can you feel for the other’s feelings?

Light – awareness

So let’s suppose the roots of our tree of love are strongly developed. We know we can trust our partner, that she will be there for us or that we can build on him. And let’s suppose the emotional intimacy is at a good level. You take time to be together, to talk together, to share your feelings and you are able to listen and understand and empathize with each other.

The last element the tree needs is light to grow. Soil to ground in, water to feed from, and light to develop by. In a relationship the light stands for awareness. We may trust the other to be there for us, we may have a good emotional exchange, however if we are not aware of which things belong in the present and which things in the past, our relationship will be in danger in difficult times2 and in easy times it will not develop much. However, no life exists without difficult times, so the need to be aware of what is going on in the present and what is a projection from our past is crucial.

Sally felt insecure about herself and went into therapy. She really appreciated her therapist, Mel, who, as is typical for a therapist, was good at listening to her, asking the right questions and reacting full of empathy when Sally was touched during the session. She would regularly mention Mel to Jack, her husband. Jack, soon became convinced that Sally had a crush on Mel and that she might even be having an affair with him. Jack, an orphanage child, full of unconscious fear of abandonment, was not aware that his strong reactions to Sally’s positive experience with her therapist, were in fact not at all about Sally, nor about her therapist, Mel. It was all about Jacks own childhood. Having been abandoned immediately after birth, growing up in an orphanage and seeing many other children from the orphanage being adopted over the years, while he himself never got ‘picked’, gave him a deeply rooted pain of rejection. An unconscious conviction that others were more likeable than he. That nobody could ever prefer him over someone else. When Sally was so enthusiastic about her sessions with Mel, this directly hit Jack’s biggest unconscious and therefor still unhealed pain. But since Jack didn’t recognize this, he was convinced that his strong feelings were completely about the present: his wife was falling in love with her therapist, everybody could see that! And of course he was really upset about that, everyone would be! Sadly, Jack’s strong negativity towards a process that to Sally was so helpful in her life, eventually became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The impossibility to explain to Jack that she was not in love with Mel, that he had no reason to be jealous, led to such an estrangement between them, that eventually Sally left Jack. In spite of their love for each other, there had not been enough awareness in their relationship about the enormous influence of the past on the present.

2 Contrary to popular belief, couples that have to deal with great hardships, like the loss of a child, run a greater risk of difficulty in their relationship. Shared suffering often amounts to double suffering, not half! The reason is that for most people it is hard enough to support someone else. Let alone, if they themselves are in a situation of great suffering themselves. Then giving emotional support can become almost impossible. And on top of that, this holds true for both partners. Seek external help if you have endured great suffering!

Jack’s jealousy, the problem that kept going on as long as Sally kept going to therapy, was one too many. We can only wonder what would have happened had Jack been able to be aware that his strong feelings were completely inappropriate in the present and were entirely caused by his unhealed past and deeply unconscious wounds. It took Sally years to accept that she had lost her marriage to unrecognized ghosts in her husband’s head. Ghosts that as long as he didn’t have the awareness that they were there, would always win easily over any of her arguments to the contrary.