Untangle instead of tearing
Resist these thoughts! Avoid an abrupt separation from your partner. It won't solve anything and will be the wrong kind of relief. Don't run blindly into another relationship. Don't send the other person off feeling hurt because you are painfully missing something. What you're looking for you can find above all in yourself.
Admit to your partner the unrest you're feeling. Give each other more room to search for your inner selves. Stay loyal to each other, "We are both looking for ourselves, and we won't hold each other back." Agree to continually talk about it, and allow each other to participate in the search. Reinforce your loyalty and your trust in your partner with clear language. Do so especially often and lovingly during this time. Your relationship will thus slowly expand and offer both of you more space. During the renovation phase of your homestead, it can still happen that the two of you lose touch in the construction site. Both develop further, but not necessarily in the same direction. So trade rooms again. Keep each other informed. Get into the craziness of the other, as strange and unusual as it may seem to you. Orient yourself according to the following rule: "We never know everything there is to know about our relationship, but it always offers enough space for learning more."
Maintain patiently the image of your large, magnificently expanded and renovated homestead in your mind. Orient yourself according to the motto: "Slowly disentangling is better than tearing." Even if it takes you a long time, you will avoid many frightening experiences in the dark forest.
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Excerpted from How to Simplify Your Love, copyright 2008 by Marion Küstenmacher and Werner Tiki Küstenmacher. Used by permission of McGraw-Hill Companies. All Rights Reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.
