How to be with someone? The secrets of a fulfilled relationship

by Andra Picincu

It is an inherent question considered interesting by many persons. I'll try to detail the most important moments that occur in the life of a couple and the needs we try to replace when we get involved in a relationship.

When you analyze a situation that caused sufferance for a couple, family or even people, there is always a certain tension; there is an inherent issue that appears by itself: it always comes about the best time of the couple, the moments when they met and the time when they were truly together. I think that the analysis of those situations can give us some references about what it means to be with someone. And in these moments occurs a fact: there isn't only a state of happiness, because in the background, the sufferance will be always present.

Being with someone is based on pleasure, but also on deprivation. The idea of deprivation is important in developing a relationship. The attraction for the other and the love for him involve implicitly, the deprivation. This 'lack' doesn't necessarily occur in moments of solitude. Being with someone means that he is already capable to receive this 'lack', to integrate it and understand it. But in order for the other to be able to do this, it's necessary that you feel able to manage the "lack".

The most difficult moments in a relationship, when occurs the inability of both partners to manage this 'lack', are those in which appears a need to continue the existence of the partner in a physical way. The other must be physically next to you, because, otherwise, it won't be possible for you to feel well. These moments are difficult because you assume your inability to be with yourself. In these situations, the other is missing and you want without realizing, to be affected by what is in you.

These circumstances lead to jealousy, which represents the inability to be alone, to be with your 'lack', with your anxiety, your old traumas, your own sufferance, and the other has the capacity to own it. In the absence of the owner, the sufferance occurs. Many of these situations produce a saturation effect on the relationship, as the partner won't have the ability to support a state of permanent presence, so he will leave, ending the relationship (at real or imaginary level).

I chose the term 'lack' because it is the one that responds to several situations - a lack of something - either a physical one (difference between genders), either the lack of a state originated in childhood, or a lack of relationships with parents, or a lack reflected in anxiety, with origins in the family history, or a lack marked by desire.

This makes the other -the couple partner- to be very different from any other social relation. You feel the need to fulfill that 'lack' by the presence of your partner. You think that after being with him, after succeeding to have a relationship, you won't feel deprived anymore. But this is not possible, because the 'lack' is felt by your partner and nothing will be the same as before, even if you feel now that it is possible.

The beginning of a relationship is based on the illusion that the lack will be satisfied. If you take each couple at the beginning of the relationship you'll notice this, a great investment in the other and the fact that this investment gives a hope: "from now on, this will never happen, everything will be different in my life", seem to say those two. But this implies that there are different states, feelings, desires that are not satisfied, that reflect these lacks. As more as the other's reality becomes more visible and the couple realizes different experiences for real, as more the illusion will disappear, being replaced by the couple itself.

It is said that a relationship based on interest is more durable than one of love. From this perspective, it seems that the couple leaves from the start without the illusion of the absence, and that their marriage is not based on the idea that the other can replace the 'lack'. In other words, there is a risk of disillusion, but, on the other hand, they will be deprived by the pleasure of illusion.

Couples who resist are those who will to support the deception of filling the lack. But the solution that really exists is the acceptance of their 'lack'. The therapeutic approach is one in which this lack is expressed by words, understood, taken as it is, whatever it is.