How to deal with pauses in romantic relationships

Breaks in romantic relationships can be an opportunity for personal change.

In couple relationships we live some of the most intense experiences of our lives. We experience encounter and intimacy, but we also feel vulnerable, exposed, and our greatest fears and insecurities surface.

When we experience the experience of the couple's pause (a determined time where a distance is taken, even no contact is made) it is usually interpreted as a kind of rupture or preamble to rupture. The pauses in the couple usually bring anxiety, insecurity and guilt to the people who live it (especially if you have not made the decision). Why do we feel so bad? How can we cope with this time and experience?

This problem is more common than we think in a psychological consultation when going through a process of change. In many occasions the people I have accompanied lived this pause with intrusive thoughts, sleeping problems and an increasingly intense state of anxiety. However, tips or advice do not help.

What is important is not what happens, but how you understand, manage and cope with what is happening.. This is the objective of this article: that you deepen in you to improve the situation thanks to your own personal change.

The pauses in couple as an opportunity to meet with you

Why is what happens in couple relationships so complicated?

Human beings are social and emotional beings. In a couple we live a unique and crucial experience: although our well-being must depend mainly on ourselves (when it depends too much on external factors, self-esteem is very conditioned), in a couple we cannot avoid that a great part of our well-being depends on how that relationship flows.

At the beginning of a relationship, there is a dissolution in the other personwhere we experience an encounter. Later, a struggle of egos arises. Insecurities, fears, guilt, demands, need for control, and pauses arise in the couple as a last strategy to continue the relationship.

These pauses are experienced with increased anxiety and all the symptoms that an anxious state implies: intrusive thoughts, searching in social networks, need for contact, difficulty sleeping, eating, etc.

In short: the relationship, instead of an encounter where we experience well-being and share an important part of our life, becomes an experience that distresses us. However, the problem is not in the relationship but in your understanding of it, the problem is not in the relationship but in the way you understand and manage what you are feeling and how you deal with it..

We tend to think that going to a psychologist is a drastic decision motivated by urgency. When it happens in this way (when there is already a picture of intense anxiety that hinders your daily life) the processes of change are difficult, but equally beautiful and transformative.

However, the best decision is to live this process in a preventive way. Before the intensity grows, and in situations where you feel that your wellbeing and security is too fragile, living a process of change will be transformative, living a process of change will be transformative not only to solve what happens to you now, but also for your future. (in relation to any situation you face: work, emotional, personal, etc.).

When accompanying people in processes of change with difficulties in their couple breaks, it is discovered that the main problem is not in the couple, but in the way we approach that distance and how we understand and manage what we feel.

Psychological elements involved

Let's see now what are the main factors that influence how you approach those pauses and how to solve these situations (thanks to your own personal change).

If you want to deepen in this difficulty in video, here I tell you personally (press play and if you want to subscribe to receive more content).

1. Your concept of a partner

A couple's pause can be the time to rethink your concept of what a partner or relationship is to find the root of your anxiety or insecurity..

If your relationship or partner is a place where you place part of your well-being, need for acceptance or valuation, it will always be an external factor that you cannot control and that will generate even more insecurity. A relationship is first and foremost an experience where we share an intimate bond, but where your well-being still depends mainly on you.

2. Difficulty managing anxiety:

If you have a difficulty in managing anxiety (which is felt mainly in the chest or pit of the stomach due to breathing mechanics). every situation within the couple you will feel it with more intensity and anxiety..

Fear and insecurity

In a relationship we invest part of our well-being and fear and insecurity emerge as protection mechanisms. If you have not been able to understand and manage these emotions it is probable that you try to control in excess, overprotect, or on the contrary, to isolate yourself emotionally from the relationship or partner (for fear of loss).

4. Guilt

Guilt is a frequent emotion in couple's pauses and is also motivated by anxiety. We think that we are responsible for the other person's suffering or disappointment and this intrusive thought paralyzes you even more.

• You may be interested in, "What is guilt and how can we manage this feeling?"

5. Frustration

Frustration is a low-intensity anger that arises when what has happened is not what we want. It is It is an unpleasant emotion that appears through a control mechanism, which in turn is a control mechanism.It is an unpleasant emotion that appears through a control mechanism, which in turn, is another tool of fear and insecurity.

The consequences

The greatest personal difficulties you face as a couple multiply during breaks or breakups. Intrusive thoughts, doubts, indecision, anguish, problems eating, sleeping, resting or thinking clearly arise.

But the solution is not in the partner, in a return or in a drastic and unrealistic change, but in your own personal change process. your own process of personal change. What happens in relationships is nothing more than what was already happening in you, only intensified and exposed.

How to deal with crisis periods (in the relationship or in a pause period).

The real problem with periods of distress is not what we feel, but how we manage it. Feeling insecurity, fear or discouragement is sometimes natural and has a positive function. Facing crisis periods in a positive way is also part of a learning process where you learn to understand and manage what you feel, assess your belief system and modify it, and above all change your approach to yourself and how you conceive a relationship. This period of crisis can be an opportunity to live a process that will lead you to achieve the following changes.

1. Acceptance

Acceptance implies that you are at peace with yourself because you understand that what happens, whether it is a pleasant experience or not, follows a process and is appropriate. Acceptance leads you to establish limits, to know what depends on you and what does not, to give the best you have and at the same time not to lose your personal self-care..

2. To discover which is your form of bonding affectively with the other (if you do it in a dependent way or not).

Relationships are not general experiences but very particular. Try to isolate yourself from the relationship model you have learned (especially through the over-information culture of superficial social media content) and try to know yourself to discover what relationships mean to you. try to know yourself in order to discover the meaning that relationships have for you..

3. Learn to understand and manage anxiety

Anxiety is not a difficulty that appears only in periods of crisis, but is intensified in those moments. Learning to understand and manage your anxiety and emotions helps you not only in this process but also in the future. In your life experience you will always find difficulties to learn from. Learning to know yourself and manage what happens will give you a greater awareness of yourself and your decisions..

4. Focus on your own learning

This is a time to focus on yourself, to discover yourself, to know yourself, free yourself from what is blocking you and to be able to give your best while being aware of your limits.

To conclude...

The pause can be a moment to focus on your own self-knowledge, to know what you feel, how it conditions you and how you can learn to manage it in order to understand situations with more perspective, from calm and acceptance.

When you live these periods alone, it is common that our thoughts condition and distress us even more. That is why company is so important: to look at the situation with perspective and live a unique learning experience that makes you feel better not only now but in the future, which also improves your ability to connect with others. I make you then a special invitation: in Empoderamiento Humano you can find an option to schedule a first exploratory session with me via Whatsapp. In this session we get to know each other, we go deeper into your situation, we find the problem, we discover a definitive and stable solution and we see how I can accompany you in this process so that you can achieve 100%.