Marriage is a covenant that requires a delicate balance between the members: the expectation is of reciprocal support and acceptance. When this attitude is not offered by itself, as part of the deal, some basic trust is broken.

How this issue is broached, makes the whole difference. Can we ask for support without feeling humiliated and put down? Do we have to ask; when it was promised to us from the beginning? If this automatic support falters and our partner sides with others and not with us, can we trust that the relationship is still strong enough?

The basic question is one about the reciprocal commitment to each other´s growth and development, including overcoming childhood traumas by providing here and now the love and recognition that our parents were never able to deliver. We have chosen this partner, and only this partner, with the purpose to heal the past together and experience now the support and appreciation we so much need and cherish.

Then, the real obstacles begin…people are people and most times they cant see the trust deposited in them in the middle of a battle for getting “what I want” over what the other can give…real battles are waged in the wrong conviction that imposing our will we will satisfy the eternal yearning for love and support.

What is sad is how we forget the real needs underneath the positions of the battle format: a need to be accepted and understood, not humiliated or put down by the other.

The real test, the true moment when we can see it this relationship will subsist and deliver its promise is when we can see one side behaving towards the other in the same way his or her parents did: doing humiliation; rejection and put downs with impunity.

Here the circle has closed and we are in the same place we started from and wanted to leave forever…with the help that this partner, selected for our growth, was going to provide.

The helper is now the perpetrator of the verbal and emotional violence we wanted to leave behind in our childhood, and the promise of marriage is broken.

How can we change this dynamics and move on? Perhaps making the explicit contract obvios to both: “we are here together to provide good things for each other; and not to repeat the hurts of the past; if we repeat this treatment so hurtful, then we are not for each other”

Making obvious the deal can help to stop it. Can we from there design another contract including this time the real healing of the hurts of the past? Can we say: “As nobody recognized the good things I did while I was growing up, could you be more generous with your appreciation of me here in the house and when we are with friends? I’d love to hear you saying how much you admire me!”

Neil Warner

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