The Lost Self
“Marriage is a kind of therapy that honor you with its subconscious intentions.”
“Marriage is not a static situation between two people that never changes. Marriage is a spiritual and emotional journey that begins with the enthusiasm of attraction and goes through the rock-hard tension of self-discovery, twisting.”
Have you ever thought?
Why do we love him or why is he who comes close to us? Could it be just a coincidence? Or should we run away by saying fate?
Let’s start again. Why do we love someone? What do we expect from a relationship? Does it mean to complete our missing life? Are we looking for shelter? Excitement or hope? To belong to someone or somewhere? Maybe change the name of our loneliness.
After these questions, I always wanted to write beautiful and heartwarming things about love and affection, but I think the situation is a little more complicated.
Most people, after marrying this “right person”, go through a process called “honeymoon months” as often stated. If it is just the way we expected it to be, we feel comfortable and well; if it is a marriage other than what we expected, it does not feel safe and comfortable. Afterwards, another process that passes with the conflicts, adaptation process and the desire to change each other begins. If we are in a relationship that we consider unhappy, there are basically two options. To leave or continue. The ways we encounter with both options are changing. As we continue, we can turn the crisis into an opportunity, making us happier or unhappy. By leaving we can be happier, or we can choose a more complex life. So why is this happening?
It was good for me to explain the answers to some questions with the “imago approach”. Here, I want to continue based on this approach. Of course, I wouldn’t want to ignore the fascinating and blinding aura of love , by reducing it only to psychological bases.
“Yes, I want to continue my life with him, I want to live with him, he is definitely the“ right person ”. It is a fascinating and happy moment for us. But this choice is not just a coincidence. Even though we meet a large number of people, feel close and establish different relationships, this “coincidence” becomes a little more remarkable. The unconscious is waving at us. In short, we do “unconscious marriage”. Why does the unconscious make such a choice?
The approach says; we choose people who share the positive and negative characteristics of our parents in a common way or we find these people close to ourselves. The “Imago” we have is decisive here. Imago; It is a fused picture of a combination of people who influenced you in early childhood. Our decisions are about how well the fit is with this picture. The things that we think were done rationally are actually shaped by an unconscious effect. But why do we make a choice related to our parents? Along with this sense of familiarity, we have fallen into the unknown so-called childhood wounds.
Relationship improves. Here is the magic sentence.
While we all grow up in the beautiful world we come from as babies, we grow up with our shortcomings and endless needs. It is not possible to fully meet all of a child’s needs. The tanks of our lucky ones are a little more full. But we all have unmet emotional needs and they continue with us until they are met. In addition to these needs, we also have existing childhood wounds awaiting healing. Here we are looking for spouses to heal these wounds in the selection of a mate. These wounds hiding in the primitive parts of our brains and unfinished business now see a ray of hope for recovery.
That person we call the righteous person is now turning into heroes who can heal our hope and childhood wounds. In the meantime, I think the primitive mind is having fun in a festival mood. We are now caught in the air of being together with the dream of healing in the relationship.
As time progresses, we move into times when we realize that things are not going exactly the way we want. Recovery and fullness do not progress as we expect, and some negative traits of spouses begin to lighten. This period is a period of frequent conflicts, attempts to change the spouse, subconscious forces encountered, preconceptions and predictions. “You did this as well.”, “You have always been like this.”, “You changed so much.”, “Why don’t you want to understand me.”, “I don’t understand you.” It is the period in which such sentences are used frequently.
This period of increased conflict also includes opportunities that are unprecedented in life. By choosing the transition from “unconscious marriage” to “conscious marriage”, it is possible to live life happier and fully.
Realizing that the person we are with is not the same person even though it has the similar characteristics of our parents, to understand that they are two different people and that our spouse is a different person with similar needs, and we become our roadmap to live a true and more aware love. Being able to focus on the other as well as on ourselves, and our inner discoveries, which we will make with the information we will gain from similar crises, allows us to look ahead. Accepting the existence of the parts we have denied allows us to improve exactly what we need, by contributing to the problem of the person we are with.
The past is in the past, although its effects continue today. Although our primitive brain often reminds us of our past, we can balance with our logical brain. By loving and accepting the other person unconditionally, we can go to a more magical door with what he tells about us, both in our relationship and individually. This is also the magical world of the journey towards our lost self.
Viewed through the window of wisdom, this is a wonderful thing. The search for integrity that we seek, the endless things about the healing of our wounds also show us the existence of an established order and this is permanent hope.
Psychologist Fatma Kılıç
