We come together in relationships to experience what’s impossible alone. Intimacy, understanding, love and touch. We want to be together.
Yet, when we look around, great relationships have space between each other. Space to be apart.
The bad news is, that there is no rule for the amount of closeness or separateness for each to thrive. And that begins the art.
The good news is once we see this paradox, our request (not demand) for space or connection becomes a generous act for the sake of thriving relationships.
That’s the dance of being close and separate, of attachment and authenticity.
As Esther Perel points out, “love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy” because “our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. But too much merging erases the separateness of two distinct individuals. Then there is nothing more to transcend, no bridge to walk on, no one to visit on the other side, no other internal world to enter. When people become fused — when two become one — connection can no longer happen. There is no one to connect with.”
