“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 promise/obligation to not change. Their souls must maintain unaltered the same configuration that lays at the base of their original interlock, and this until the end of times. That’s the conditio sine qua non for the relation to continue. It’s like taking a psychic radiography in a determined moment of the couple history: that’s their relationship. To keep it up any subsequent movement of both can’t alter that first picture. Evidently, this dogma leads to the individual’s psychological stiffening. Soon, the automatic pilot takes control and the conscious subject is put to sleep.

In its forced rest, the psyche to which has been denied consciousness and action, will speak up in a varied series of symptoms and problems. But, if the initial dogma is not questioned, there’s no solution.

The tenet of this model of relationship is archaic. It assumes static individuals who don’t evolve. It also counts of the fact that one lives in order to fulfill the other’s needs, which impedes to both of them the possibility to develop new attitudes and perspectives about themselves and life. Being “good” in this relationship is then being what the other wants/needs us to be.

Nevertheless, one day the unconscious water fissures the cement and shatters oppression. Life flows in the movement that synthesizes its intimate dynamic. The psychic demand of freedom, expansion and knowledge until what point can be repressed?

The two of them still love each other, but the situation has radically changed and their love is doubted: they love each other because they fulfill each other’s needs, as well as one “loves” the bakery for the daily bread? Do I love you because we have a good time in bed? Or because you are the mother of my children? Do I love you because you represent a role I’m used to and “need”? Or because of what and who you are?

Many couples avoid this radical questioning; they fear their relation will not survive to the revelation of its foundation. They thus condemn themselves to live nailed at the cross, between the loyalty to a model and the evolutionary urgency to overcome it.

The resulting crises conduces some people to embark in the journey of self-knowledge. They’ll perceive that from the identity of a Lego piece seeking for their interlock, they’ll navigate to a new vision of themselves, as reflexive and conscious persons in perpetual evolution. It’s not anymore the fixed and static mold that promises happiness, but the lively and dynamic company of another reflexive and conscious individual engaged in his or her existential journey.

This new dimension of the relationship carries only two needs: that the other exists and that he (or she) is free. This model, which is an evolutionary result of the previous one, is called intersubjetivity and it was elaborated by the Italian psychoanalyst Silvia Montefoschi in her book “L’Uno e l’Altro” (“One and the Other”), in 1977. The central purpose of psychoanalysis is, she states, orienting, promoting and helping individuals in the transition from an interdependent relation to an intersubjetive one. The first experience of it happens in the psychoanalytical setting.

This transition of “models” can be compared to the work of clearing the toxins that obstruct the blood circulation, impeding the organism to function the way it was originally designed to. It’s because of the jumble of “psychological trash”, in the form of the persistence of what is old and useless, that occur so many neurosis and problems in the relation with oneself and with the others.

In the intersubjetive bond, a truth is acknowledged as stronghold: that love inhales liberty and liberty exhales love.