From the author: The article was written by Gestalt consultant, psychologist Anton Fominichev. In preparing the article, lectures and articles by Gestalt therapists were used: D. Khlomov, E. Kaliteevskaya, I Pogodin, N. Kedrova, I. Kulishova, as well as some ideas and reasoning of M. Kireev. They say that concentration gives rise to understanding. As in the old joke about a teacher who complains to colleagues about careless students: “I explained everything to them five times, by the fourth I figured it out myself, but they don’t understand.” That’s the same for me, no matter how much you talk about relationships, no matter how many difficulties and joys you experience, but complete clarity in the questions: “what is a relationship with another person?”, “what is intimacy?”, and most importantly, “how to love so that there is enough space both?” does not occur. Maybe this is for the best, otherwise there would definitely not be any energy to think about relationships. In this article, my attention is focused on the relationship between a man and a woman. Relationships - in which it is so difficult, and at the same time, it is necessary to accept and experience differences, forgive each other’s imperfections, and most importantly, despite the pain, do not lose sensitivity to yourself and your partner. Relationships are a support for everyone’s growth and development, and not a cramped cave with fading ambitions and smoldering hopes for a better life. It seems to me important to consider the role of, let’s call them, “negative feelings”, such as: aggression, guilt, resentment, jealousy, disgust. Show that attempts to ignore, or express without understanding the desires and needs that lie behind these feelings, lead to the destruction of relationships. But first, I would like to say a few words about loneliness, which is often, in my opinion, mistakenly perceived not as an integral part of relationships, but as their opposite. In solitude, a certain type of relationship manifests itself, in which there is no risk, little difficulty and pain - this is a relationship with oneself. In this kind of relationship, there is no clear time frame for the duration of interaction and there is no need to achieve a specific result. Psychologists distinguish three types of loneliness (according to a lecture by E. Kaliteevskaya): Loneliness - solitary. Or a “pause for yourself,” experiencing your own uniqueness, when you choose to be alone in order to gain access to your inner world, comprehend if something important happened, and make plans for the future. This is free solitude, solitude without pain. Such loneliness is part of a relationship and acts as a guarantee that intimacy is possible in the relationship. Loneliness is abandonment. The experience of being abandoned. I can’t live without you, I’ll die without you. The world has collapsed without you. The whole world is you. This type of loneliness occurs when freedom in relationships is violated. Usually this type of loneliness is accompanied by a fair amount of resentment and guilt - this is always a signal of dependence. Loneliness is isolation. When despair arises from the powerlessness to control the process of intimacy, isolation within oneself, the assertion that I can live without a relationship. Such a narcissistic component of loneliness, if it’s not the way I want, I’ll manage without you. When a person finds himself in isolation, hell breaks out in his soul. They say there is nothing worse than hell in the soul of a narcissist. From the huge volume of unsatisfied needs and desires, a huge amount of aggression accumulates, and all this destructive force is directed towards oneself. All psychotherapists in the world say that such auto-aggression is the most difficult to work with. This type of loneliness is often the choice of the person himself due to the inability to survive the trauma that occurred in a relationship that is significant to him. I believe that without the experience of positive loneliness, intimacy in a relationship is impossible, because if I don’t have the right to leave, I have no sincere desire to stay . Those relationships in which a person in some way loses freedom of choice, his healthy autonomy, are called relationships of the dependent type, and in them he becomes inaccessible to experience.true intimacy, and if you like, love. First, in literature, and then in psychology, attempts were made to describe the phenomenon of love from various angles. They distinguish (according to a lecture by E. Kaliteevskaya) Love-admiration. Admiration is pleasant to encounter, but admiration is associated with isolation. Such love is associated with detached observation and recognition of the other's merits, it is like admiring a landscape. For example, in Japanese culture, true love is love devoid of reciprocity; it is believed that only by distantly observing the object of love can one experience the fullness of this feeling. Love is pity. The opportunity to be together, to sympathize, to empathize, to touch. To experience such an experience when the touch of another person turns out to be vital. When you want to be petted, they ask - how are you living? That is, it is such a joint, co-existence. Love is pity, when I understand that another person may be feeling bad, and I want to show my desire to be with him. Love is tenderness. It is a more detached experience that says “I see you, I notice you, but I see your fragility, and I will not come so close so as not to destroy you.” Because I notice you, but I feel tenderness for you. I won’t destroy you, be calm. And we all get confused in these concepts and look for each other in this endless space, meet, disperse, look again, fall, get up, and no one can help on this difficult road, however, for everyone have their own guidelines. For example, Microsoft founder Steve Jobs, in his speech to Stanford graduates, said the following: “The knowledge that I am going to die is the most important tool in helping me make difficult decisions in my life! And everything else is other people's expectations, pride and fear of shame or failure, all these things recede in the face of death, leaving only what is really important. Remembering death is the best way to avoid the trap into which you are driven by thoughts that you have something to lose. You are already naked, you no longer have a reason not to follow the call of your heart.” And this is how the world works, if we start listening to our heart, it will inevitably lead us to the Dream, and this road is difficult to overcome without a loving person nearby. Interest and curiosity are the return ticket from loneliness. As long as there is interest in the partner in the relationship, as long as there is curiosity to find out what he is like, so different and so dear, what he feels, thinks and how he looks at what is happening, there is life in the relationship. The question that my clients often encounter is how are relationships deprived of this very life? If we talk about the recipes that we use to destroy relationships, or to lose the sense of intimacy, love, and belonging in them, one common ingredient is added to each of the hundreds of unique dishes - its name is loss of sensitivity, a ban on recognizing any phenomenon of relationships. I am sure that in order to distance yourself from another, you must first distance yourself from yourself, alienate any of your feelings, desires - forbid yourself from realizing them. Within the framework of this article, I would like to consider some relationship phenomena that arise in every couple, but are often ignored or distorted beyond recognition. Speaking about such a phenomenon of human existence as emotions, it is important to say what they inherently are. The statement from which I base my reasoning is as follows: “Feeling is stopped action.” To confirm my position, I will cite the opinion of the famous therapist, founder of the Moscow Gestalt Institute, D. Khlomov: “We learn to stop and not immediately implement an aggressive impulse, but to feel it as anger towards someone. And in this sense, feelings are evolutionarily more useful for creative adaptation than immediate expression. This contains the beginnings of some kind of civilized handling of reactions. That is, so that our life is not some kind of immediate reaction.” We are not slaves to emotions, juston the contrary, thanks to them we gain freedom. In a certain sense, emotions are a mechanism through which a person becomes free, becomes the author of his own activity. American psychotherapist R. May argues that “human freedom is localized in the pause between stimulus and response” - the “I” of each of us is, in a certain sense, a set of ways of dealing with tension within the gap between the stimulus and our response to it. A stimulus has arisen, but we do not immediately react to it, and the resulting tension, depending on the stimulus and the preferred reaction to it, is subjectively experienced as various kinds of feelings. But it is feelings that act as a protector from an immediate reaction, giving us time and the opportunity to orient ourselves and choose the appropriate response. I think it would be reasonable to start talking about feelings by considering the phenomenon of aggression. “Aggression” translated from Latin means “movement towards.” . .”, and later “attack”. The main function of aggression is to transform what is inappropriate for us into what is appropriate for us, what is foreign into one’s own, to transform an object of interest into one that is potentially possible for contact or assimilation. In psychology, dental and annihilative aggression are distinguished. Annihilation aggression is an aggression of destruction, it is realized for two reasons: first, the object is so frightening that it must be immediately destroyed, contact with it is impossible; the second - due to chronic dissatisfaction, so much aggression has accumulated that if it is not directed to the outside world, it will destroy the individual himself, and then you need to destroy something outside in order to make yourself feel better. Dental aggression is aggression with a human face, aggression to satisfy a need, the energy necessary for each of us to realize our own desires, here aggression actually becomes synonymous with excitement. The manifestation of aggression is reminiscent of cracking nuts, you will hit hard, there will be nothing to eat, i.e. relationships will collapse, weak - there is nothing tasty to eat, everything is quietly peaceful and terribly sad, desires are not realized, hunger increases. When talking about aggression, it is important to go beyond the moral aspect, and to put it bluntly, talking about aggression in the context of morality is simply stupid. Why? Everything is quite simple, it is important to separate form and content, for example, electricity in a socket is outside of morality, and adrenaline is not bad or good, it is not written on it what it is for. Aggression is the energy of interaction, but where this energy is directed, what form it takes, depends on the situation and is everyone’s subjective choice. Morality is appropriate in relation to assessing the form of presentation of aggression, in relation to aggression itself as a phenomenon; it makes no sense to use morality. As for the forms of dealing with aggression in the context of relationships, there are quite a lot of them, let's briefly consider some of them: Irritation is the experience of a lack of resources to respond or understand the situation, the uncertainty of the frustrating object, such aggressive passivity. Anger is a reaction to frustration that arises when the moment when activity to satisfy a need began to develop, but for some reason was interrupted. Rage is an undifferentiated aggressive state when there is no direction and control, and the main task is destruction, and it does not matter whether oneself or an external object. Annoyance is anger , mixed with pain. A form of aggression characteristic of experiencing loss. Guilt is turning aggression on oneself. Feelings of guilt reduce a person's confidence in himself and drive him away from himself. Guilt is always based on morality. And then, if there is guilt, then there is some kind of rightness. And it’s always not me who is right, but someone else. And then if he is right, let him be responsible for everything. Resentment is blocking aggression by recognizing the importance and value of the person towards whom aggression is directed. In a poetic version, resentment is anger stopped by love. In Eastern philosophy, resentment is Yin anger, i.e. a woman's way of getting angry. Boredom - blocking the awareness of aggression, a way to solvethe problem of placing aggression and risk associated with this process, by ignoring the feeling itself, is an energy-consuming undertaking, therefore it is subjectively experienced as absent-mindedness and loss of strength. Elena Kaliteevskaya writes: “Resentment and guilt are all phenomena of dependence. This is when we try to fixate another, put hard pressure on him, and fight for power in a relationship. And if a lot of energy is spent on power in a relationship, then there is no energy left for intimacy. All of it is spent on power. You can achieve what you want from another person, only it will be a victory in the cemetery. An eternal monument to eternal love above the slab of relationships, above the grave of relationships. There is no relationship, but everything is fine. I won.” Blocking aggression in a relationship draws participants into an interaction of the “Rescuer, Tyrant, Victim” type, but so much has been written about this that I think a simple reminder of this is sufficient. It is important, when encountering aggression, to realize that behind its expression, behind the screams and angry words, there is always a desire or need, some need, to which, at the moment, a person is deprived of access to satisfaction. There are no inherently evil people in the world, there are people who are hungry, dissatisfied and therefore embittered. Discussions on the topic of relationships between a man and a woman would be divorced from reality, as well as overly romanticized, without mentioning such feelings as disgust. Disgust is a reaction to excess, when a loved one becomes too much and a desire arises to move away. In my opinion, one should be quite sensitive to this phenomenon, because it, as well as the phenomenon of aggression already mentioned above, protects relationships from becoming swamped, turning into a swampy mass full of misunderstanding and embitterment in which both will drown. Inability to disgust leads to poisoning. In addition to aggression and disgust, it is important to talk about jealousy. I think jealousy is a very interesting feeling. Jealousy is envy and greed, and, of course, it is a projective phenomenon in nature. The one who is jealous is very envious of the one he is jealous of, his greater freedom in realizing his interests. Jealousy, due to its projective nature, is a marker of the jealous person’s own desires. Psychologist E. Kulishova expressed the following consideration: “Sometimes you can be jealous of your man for those women who are not at all his type. And which ones are to my taste. Sometimes jealousy is a failure of need. This does not mean sexual need, but the need for friendship, the need for tenderness. Or if I'm jealous of the woman I like and not the one my man likes, maybe it's a need to discover the same femininity in myself that she has. So yes, there is an element of envy in jealousy. And projections. As a marker of what I need. This is the kind of woman I would need to be.” Jealousy - in addition to the above, also greed, this is a form of instinctive possessiveness, reluctance to share. Greed is the inability to assimilate, assimilate what is received from the outside, greed is the inability to be grateful, appreciative for what one has received. The peculiarity of such a phenomenon as jealousy is that, on the one hand, it is a faithful assistant in determining one’s own desires and needs, and on the other, a reliable barrier that blocks the experience of gratitude and appreciation to a partner for being there, for being like this “ good,” and if he is nearby and so “good,” it means he is very valuable. Undoubtedly, this is not the most pleasant thing to do, to be sensitive in a relationship with a loved one to such emotions as: aggression, resentment, guilt, boredom, disgust, jealousy . However, there is no doubt that anesthesia of these experiences leads to the death of the patient, i.e. decreasing intimacy and increasing the likelihood of separation. It is important to understand that feelings in themselves have no value; what is valuable is the message they bring to us. Feelings are a true compass that helps us navigate the subjective reality of our lives. And inattention to them increases the likelihoodto get lost and arrive in a completely different direction from where you were sailing. It should be recognized that intimacy is the experience of human relationships, it is the experience of not only contact, but also departure. In truth, intimacy is not the only value and purpose of relationships; they also involve the exchange of various kinds of resources. I would like to dwell on this point in more detail, since the phenomenon of exchange gives rise to a large number of communication traps and other difficulties. Very often there is a desire to return the lost paradise, to repeat the experience of parent-child relationships, in relationships that are partnerships in their essence, i.e. relationships that arise between a man and a woman. In the relationship between mother and child, the mother must take care of satisfying the needs and desires of her baby, and the baby must only express his dissatisfaction in time, by screaming, crying or in another way. In general, the child’s task is to report his discomfort, and the mother’s task is to understand the nature of this discomfort and eliminate it, i.e. guess and satisfy the desires of your child. Most of us have experience of this kind of bliss, and naturally, it is quite positively colored, so there is a great temptation even after 20-30 years to not despair of repeating this experience with another mother, while the gender of the partner is not important, as long as he guesses and satisfies my desires . But this does not mean at all that in relation to a man, a woman cannot sometimes be motherly caring, and a man cannot be instructive and caring in a fatherly way, on the contrary, if this exists in the relationship of adults, this is wonderful. Many men, when they get sick, stop being adults and become little boys, or capricious teenagers, and then they need someone who will play the role of a mother, who will take care of them and feel sorry for them. But after some time, the interaction will again acquire a horizontal character, two equal and adult people. Relationships in which roles are securely fixed look pathological, and an attempt to change anything is met with protests from the partner. Attempts to replace male-female relationships with relationships of the child-parent type serve to take according to the “should” principle, and if you give, then according to the “I want” principle. It is the insensitivity to distinguishing between these two contexts that is often the cause of infidelity. Towards a caring man-father or to an obsequious, nurturing woman-mother, sexual attraction quickly fades, and over time the “children” will grow up and leave the relationship to the left, creating their own, now another family. In which, however, history may repeat itself. In child-parent relationships, there is no mutual exchange as such, parents must give, children must take, children will eventually grow up and give everything they can (or want) to their offspring - and there is a certain a kind of harmony. Male-female relationships involve an exchange: status for sex, protection for tenderness, money for cooking. Each couple has its own methods of exchange, in some ways unique, and in others well-known. Another difficulty, in addition to replacing the context of the relationship, is the desire to exchange “something unnecessary” for something really important. For example, a story about your great and pure love for intimate services. It would be nice to understand about your own ways of exchanging in relationships, as well as about your own resources and deficits, and, of course, to distinguish male-female relationships from child-parent relationships. Our whole life is interaction with others and assimilation of the experience gained, everything What we know about ourselves and what we know about the world was received and learned by us from relationships, from the experience of contacting “You”. Relationships are an art, and at the same time hard work, full of danger and risk, pain and disappointment, and most importantly, it is a dynamic process in which it is almost impossible to control and predict anything. Buddha said: “everything that has a beginning has an end, create your world with this thought and everything will be fine.” A couple is the beginning of a new journey. And with every step, the dream of an ideal existence without problems becomes covered with cracks and dust. Meeting with.