Love is challenging and maintaining love in our intimate relationships is especially difficult. Our culture complicates the process by romanticizing intimate relationships with concepts like "soul mates", implying that if we just find the right mate we can avoid the struggles of partnership. The truth is, relationships do not spare us from the pains of life. They don't protect us against loneliness, loss, disappointment, failure or fear. What many couples do not realize, however, is that within the painful experiences of their relationships are opportunities for personal growth that can deepen and strengthen their intimacy.

Anyone who has stayed in their relationship beyond the blissful "infatuation stage" knows that conflicts inevitably arise. Dealing with these conflicts can trigger defensive responses. While painful in the moment, these conflicts can be useful in providing insights into our relational patterns. The pain gets our attention, how we respond is what makes the difference between staying stuck in self defeating cycles or learning new, more fulfilling ways to relate to our partners. If we choose to deny, avoid or self-medicate in response to our relational conflicts we only perpetuate our suffering. Only by accepting that relational pain is inevitable, and allowing it to emotionally open us up, can we generate the insights which promote our healing.

Emotional Triggers and Defensive Patterns

Relationships can be very powerful vehicles for human growth when we accept that relational pain is inevitable. All psychological wounding is relational in nature. Relationships are the environment in which we have been most deeply hurt and the only process through which we can heal from those hurts. The key step in this process is noticing our own "defensive patterns". Until we become conscious of what triggers us and how we respond when we get triggered we are stuck in an endless unconscious cycle which we repeat in all of our intimate relationships.

Becoming conscious of our patterns is not easy. Our patterns are usually old, deeply ingrained, and conditioned responses which over time have become automatic and unconscious. Self compassion is essential as understanding our patterns involves acknowledging our own flaws and fears which can trigger a variety of painful feelings. Often these are the same feelings which arose in our earliest relationships but were so painful we needed to repress them to cope. Unfortunately, as long as they remain unconscious so will any opportunity for healing.

Intimacy as A Vehicle for Growth

Acknowledging our wounds is challenging but it is the only way to gain insight into our defenses and develop more loving and secure attachments. Our relational conflicts provide the opportunity to face these painful patterns and learn healthier ways to respond.

Therapy can be very useful by providing couples with a safe environment in which to identify their defensive patterns and manage the painful feelings which come up in the process. Over time this can turn their intimacy from a source of pain into a vehicle for growth.