Archive for the ‘Relationship’ Category

Our identity is the consequence of a series of relationships, starting with the most important, with our mother, and followed by the one with our father. The way our personality, innate tendencies and attitudes are molded, find their way or limits, are developed or frustrated depends exclusively on the relationships in which we grew up. We are relationships.

Since newborns, we live inserted in a web of relations, the people around us relate to us in a specific manner and that will become the way we relate to people and mainly to ourselves. The way we deal with our emotions mirrors the style the adults who took care of us dealt with them. The way we interpret ourselves and the role we play are the effect of how we have Read the rest of this entry »

We always love the right person, although she or he may not be the right person for our life, or for the rest of our life, or even the right person to make blossom the best of us.

We always love the right person, and he or she is always prince charming or the beautiful princess, although he or she may be so only for one hour, one day or one year. The rest of the time together is gained thanks to the revenue generated by that nurturing moment of love.

There’s always an important reason to love a person, and I mean “love” in a wide and general sense. I’m not necessarily talking about the faithful and consistent love, firm and conscious, but about whatever love that can at least resist to some turbulence. The Read the rest of this entry »

“I love you and I don’t want to ever separate from you,” the lovers said to each other.

Years later, a steal hoop clenches the actions of both, a series of “can’t” is part of their daily life. They still love each other, but remained together thanks to many concessions and “mid-terms”. More years go by and the two of them are still together, their souls as gray as their hair. Their life is monotonous, the range of options and allowed experiences, with time, had been more and more restricted. They are tired, their thoughts and emotions partially numbed. They see only a small slice of life. They still say they love each other, as much as it is possible for a soul in restricted liberty.

The relation of such lovers is built on a dogma, not questionable by principle: the Read the rest of this entry »

Generally, a woman is victim of the man who she calls “companion” or “husband”. However, she can be a victim of other people, like employers or parents, friends or neighbors. The “victim” is the person who lives a relationship based on power in which she occupies the weaker position. The unbalance of strengths can be either physical or emotional, financial or sentimental. Usually these aspects go together, although there’s always one that sticks out.

After a certain amount of time, which can go from 1 to 20 years (or more!), she’ll have to get it. She in fact already knew that things weren’t doing fine, and for a quite long time. The question is taking an attitude. She “gets it” when she can’t delude herself anymore saying that “it’s not so bad”, “it’ll change” or “I need to be patient”.

She runs away from awareness because:
1) she foresees that the problem is “enormous”;
2) she believes that’s the only existing reality. Read the rest of this entry »

Two pigeons beak the grain on the soil when one of them ruffles the feathers of its neck, utters a hu-hu hu-hu hu-hu and walks in circle around the second dove that continues looking at the floor apparently indifferent. In fact, its behavior is instinctive and finalized, the second dove will go around with a not interested air looking for food, while the first one goes after and around it. Its function is to “test the other dove”, not anyone can give continuity to the species.
Read the rest of this entry »

I doubt my Grandpa has ever finished fifth grade. Yesterday, June 30th he would be 97. Born in Polignano a Mare, a village in the eastern coast of the Italian boot, moved to Brazil where he worked since he was a child, leading a very hard life. Back to Italy for the military service, he married and built a family, until he had to emigrate again to Brazil in 1950.

He betrayed my Grandma once, during the time they lived apart, she with the children in Italy, he in Brazil working to gather the money for their tickets. Evidently, the extra conjugal relationship continued after Grandma arrival, and went on until the day she suspected something, as he walked out in the Sundays afternoon, well dressed and perfumed (he was Italian!). Grandma took her two daughters by hand, my Mother and my Aunt, and the three women of the house followed him. When his mistress opened the door to welcome him in, Grandma – who also didn’t completed elementary school but was no fool – shouted, from the other side of the street: “Shame on you! How could you, a married man, with children! What a shame!” And various other adjectives in dialect I could not repeat. Read the rest of this entry »

In times of holidays, kin reunions and joy are expected. Not always, though, the heart is happy. Family life is one of the biggest challenges of our times. Blood bonding doesn’t guarantee likely mentalities and values. As for everything, there are the conservatives who adapt themselves and don’t question, and the restless who look for something more than the shining superficiality of the appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

Machismo has different facets. The explicit one is not in fashion anymore but it still happens. The barbarity of spanking a woman because she went out with her girlfriends or forcing her to a sexual relation when she doesn’t want to, is found among the lower social consciousness. Twenty years ago, the father of a seven-year-old boy I treated, sat in front of me and said: “To me, women are worth from the waist downwards.” That was his first session, after one year he was not the same man, however he didn’t change enough, giving the fact that he took his son out of therapy as soon as the boy stopped his violent behavior and began being able to relate and converse. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the major communication difficulties happens with those people who talk too much. Shooting the breeze is a way to turn oneself impermeable to others and life circumstances.

Words as a shield that bounce the listener off.
Words to disguise, omit and hide.
Words to drown the relationship. Read the rest of this entry »

There are nights you can’t sleep. You restlessly roll in bed and you feel agitated. You are desperately tired, can’t even open your eyes; all you wish is sleeping, sink into unconsciousness and be blessed by its invigorating action.

Ruffled thoughts come and go, ideas and feelings, peoples and events from the day before. You don’t want to think of them, you don’t care about them, they are not really significant. Why, therefore, are those inputs bothering you? What’s the big deal about them? And you keep rolling right and left, and becoming exhausted.

There are different reasons for having a bad night, from the most vulgar, such as an overwhelmed stomach that’s having a hard time digesting too much food, to worries about your future mortgage payment. You may also not sleep because you do need to wake up in some part of your life and realize what is at stake. If during the day you avoid the conscience of something it haunts you at night. But there’s also something else that might happen: you are being spiritually invaded by somebody’s invisible presence.

Spiritual invasions by living people are responsible for anxious nights when you are not able to overcome a superficial relaxation in order to really sleep. Disordered thoughts and feelings mix in your head and you can’t really focus. You are distracted and, at the same time, concentrated on something you are not really aware of. That’s because you may not be alone. Think: would you able to sleep with a person intensively staring at you? I guess not. Even though the person doesn’t touches you, their presence, that is, their energy do interfere with your system.

If people have this non-material effect on each other, why wouldn’t this happen without their physical presence? It may seem strange to think of it because of the materialist vision we are accustomed to use. However, anybody knows the positive or negative influence people spread around them just for being there. You feel a house that is cared and loved, where people live in harmony as well as you can have a bad feeling about places filled with the anger and despair of its inhabitants.

Let’, thus, imagine somebody who intensively hates, loves, wants or needs you. This person is not sleeping at your side, maybe they don’t even live in your house or city. It doesn’t matter where they are, for their material body is irrelevant in this context, what matters is the intensity of their thought of you.

Now, it’s never a simple “thought”,  it’s not just a sequence of words logically arranged together. If you pay closely attention, a thought to be powerful must be impregnated with affection. The thoughts that make themselves present are those drenched with feelings, they are alive. The stronger the feelings the stronger the presence by your bed, the worst you night will be.

Are these people aware of what they are doing? Not always. Let’s say there’s a couple passionately in love, they sure will feel each other even when sleeping at miles away. The connection may actually make their nights better. But we are talking here of bad sleeping. The claimers and needy people have some potential to bother your night (and also you day). But the worst of all are anyone, lovers, haters, needy, whatever, who denies their real feelings, represses them and live pretending otherwise. The self-liars are the problem.

Because whatever is sent to unconsciousness grows out of control, it’s like nurturing a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde inner split. These nice divided and unaware people who perturb your nights had disavowed their real self, which easily leads to obsession. For a bunch of different reasons (ego, pride, moral, hypocrisy, shame, etc.) they are bound to a façade that requires them to keep pretending to feel and think different from what they have inside. We wouldn’t mind at all about the way such people manage their lives, if we had the joyful chance to spend restoring and independent sleep nights.