Wife, mother, practitioner of gestalt therapy in the direction of psychotherapy Līva Spurava on her Instagram account regularly shares valuable insights about relationships , emotional well-being and the importance of planning regular date times with her husband. Liv has been together with her husband for 10 years and admits that, from the point of view of this day, there are several things that she would have liked to know before the wedding .

Falling in love and love are two different things

Liva started cohabitation with her husband when she was still young - at the age of 23. At the moment, her vision of many things has noticeably changed. "What I thought back then about what a relationship should be might sound pretty silly now. But I really believed it then. However, when I faced the difficulties and challenges that come with any relationship sooner or later , I gained experience.

At the beginning of a relationship, falling in love is a physiological process that actually has very little to do with love.

It begins to emerge only after this period, and both partners are involved in its formation and maintenance. It's one of the things I didn't know when I got married, but wish I had. Of course, the question is also whether I would have been able to understand it at the time," says Liva.

Your partner's job is not to meet your needs

Another thing that Liv did not know at the age of 23 and which turned out to be false - the belief that the other person must completely satisfy her needs. "It was only later that I realized that the other person is not there to meet our needs, but to live this life together and share both joys and sorrows. The fact that the other person was not created to meet my needs is one of the realizations in which I had to be very disappointed.

Many of us grow up with unsatisfied basic needs from childhood, such as the need for love, attention, physical contact, and we believe that when we meet our partner, all of these needs will be met. But in reality, the relationship becomes a place where such needs are very actualized, but the partner, no matter how hard he tries, will never be able to fully satisfy them, because they have arisen as a result of completely different circumstances. Our partner is often like a projector onto which we project our own unresolved issues," explains Liva, pointing out how important it is for each partner to take care not only of the relationship, but also of each of them.

"My well-being is my responsibility, and before I can take care of another person, I have to take care of myself first.

This is not selfishness, but the need to fulfill your inner this because the vessel . It is worth remembering both before and after the wedding." In order to understand at the beginning of the relationship what the partner's unsatisfied needs might be, it would be very important to learn about the beloved's parents, family and their relationship experience during the dating period. "It is important to know the circumstances in which the partner grew up and lived in childhood, because this will also affect the future life of the couple. You need to keep in your mind that the partner is likely to be very similar to his family and will form relationships based on the values ​​of his family."

My feelings and emotions are solely my responsibility

Liva points out that everyone who gets married should be aware that everyone is responsible for their own feelings and emotions. "How I feel about a given situation, whether it involves my partner or not, is my responsibility. How my partner feels is his responsibility. Although it sounds simple, it's actually not that easy to accept. Even after more than 10 years of living with my husband, it's still a challenge for me. I remind myself every day that my well-being is my responsibility."

A crisis in a relationship does not mean that love is over

Another thing that Liv would have liked to know before her wedding - there are and will be crises in any relationship, and this is absolutely normal. "A crisis in a relationship does not mean that the relationship or love is over. Every family and every relationship has stages of development, and each stage also has its own potential crises. I would have liked to know more about this, so that every crisis that affects different stages of a relationship would have been much easier to survive." Also, before the wedding, it is important to realize that not only emotional, but also sexual relationships experience their own crises and more passive stages of sexual relationships. "Sexual relationships are essentially a mirror of emotional relationships. If something is wrong in the relationship between partners, it will affect physical intimacy as well," says Līva.

My partner is not my whole world

"Before the wedding, I would also have liked to know that in order for the relationship to be great, my husband and I don't have to be together all the time. It is very important that each partner has his own individual life in which the other is not involved. In this way, the other person does not become the whole world for us, but we become even more interesting to our partner, as well as more fulfilled in ourselves. Lust arises where everything is completely unknown. Therefore

each of us should have some part of life in which the partner is not involved."

Couples psychotherapy can be a great help in improving relationships

In order to take care of their relationship and its quality, Liva and her husband regularly attend couples psychotherapy, which to some extent has already become their ritual. "We started attending couples therapy not because we had an actual crisis in our relationship, but because we felt that it would be a great benefit for our relationship. Couples therapy serves as a sort of audit of our relationship. It's like work we both want to do for our relationship. My husband and I both love it and are both motivated to improve our relationship even more. Another strong ritual of our relationship is regular dates, which we have been going on for six years. We usually try to spend at least 6-8 hours together, but sometimes it is also two or three days. Such dates bring us together a lot," says Līva, recommending them to other couples as well.

Text: LIENE PÁLENA

Photo: LIGA TIEFFENBERG / GAIŠANAKTS

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