Cycles in Relationships

Pinkee here~ All of life is based on cycles. If you really think about it, it’s true. The days and nights, the growth cycle of plants, the seasons, the tides, a woman’s menstrual cycle. Women in general seem to be more in tune with the cycles of life. They tend to go with the flow, and bring themselves into harmony with what is more easily than men. No judgment here. Just stating what is. And as always, I’m talking in general. Of course there are exceptions to every rule.

So how come, if this is true about cycles, that all of life is based on them, we seem to have so much trouble accepting that in relationships things are no different? In other words, how come we expect it to be all up and no down? All togetherness and no separateness? All positive and no negative? We want our relationships to defy the order of the universe? No wonder so many of them are not working!

In particular I want to focus on the issue of togetherness/separateness. Some of us tend to think that the ideal relationship entails both parties spending nearly every waking moment together. There are a number of problems with this, the most basic of which is it goes against the true nature of life. True, we all do have an innate urge to merge, and I don’t just mean physically. Yes, we want to be close physically, to make love, to cuddle, and we also want to be close emotionally. But let’s not ignore the urge to separate. Many of us do, and that creates problems down the road. Sometimes we will even go to extreme unconscious measures just to get a little time and space away from our partners. Many a fight has been picked in order to achieve the unconscious goal of separation.

However, if we do consciously recognize that separation is one of our needs just as much as togetherness, we can avoid these and other problems. We can consciously choose to create it in our lives so we don’t need to choose it unconsciously, or by default.

So here’s an example of what consciously choosing separation looks like. Let’s say it is Saturday morning. You sleep in with your partner, wake up, make love, take showers, and have a leisurely breakfast. That’s a lot of togetherness in one bunch. Now might be a good time for you to reconnect with yourself. Love can make us feel high and ungrounded at times. Ground yourself by meditating, writing in a journal, or doing some exercise on your own. Take some time for you. After that, maybe you have some errands to do on your own or you want to visit a friend. Later on in the day you may want to reconnect with your partner.