7 REASONS TO CONSIDER ENDING A RELATIONSHIP
1. A partner humiliates and suppresses you mentally or physically.

2. You live in a couple according to the principle "My happiness is in your hands."

3. You can't imagine your life without children / joint rest / separate rest / sex, etc., and your partner does not share these values.

4. In a relationship, you give way more than you receive.

5. You would like to separate, but don't because of children / mortgage / fear of loneliness / guilt / addiction / pity for a partner, etc.

6. Your partner is blackmailing you into staying together.

7. You have been unsuccessfully trying to remake your partner for years, but you do not give up trying.
Stage two: distance. One day, about a year later, we suddenly notice that the partner is far from being a handsome prince or a sweet princess. He doesn't look like us. His differences are beginning to irritate.

“Often partners do not accept these differences. They think that their family, their beneficent merger, will be destroyed, - says Anna Bokova, - and they begin to fight for power. They try to get rid of differences by making the other like themselves. It is at this phase that the first conflicts arise - attempts to get rid of differences.

The family system is under stress. And often at this stage there is a collapse. And the couple sees the only way to survive it in a break and divorce. It does not occur to partners that an important and necessary stage for them is coming - distance. You need to go through it correctly, often with the help of a professional family therapist.

Partners learn to deal with each other's differences in new ways. Every person needs distance. Because in the outside world - our hobbies, communication with others, in work, solitude - we draw new impressions that we bring to a couple. And it enriches the relationship.

“It’s equally bad when we stew in our own juice, not letting our partner get impressions outside the couple, and when we move too far away without coming back,” explains Anna Bokova.

It is then that partners often say: “We have become strangers, we have nothing in common - we go to bed at different times, we don’t spend time together at all, we have nothing to talk about, we don’t touch each other.”

At this stage, love triangles appear, resentment arises, and the partner may not be ready to resume close relationships. How to be then?

Third stage: contact. Between merger and separation, Robert and Rita Reznik propose to place two more points and consider relationships in a couple as cycles. In order for the couple to return from separation to merger in the next cycle, they need to go through contact and intimacy.

“We must accept that throughout our lives we will get to know each other, get to know each other,” says Anna Bokova. “Contact is when you are ready to tell about yourself, who you really are, and not worry how much the other will not like you.”

At this stage, we allow each other to be themselves. This is the period of presenting the differences and getting to know the differences of the other - when one states that he likes embroidery, and the other that he does not like fishing.

“If a wife does not like football, but goes there, because it is important for her husband, and in the end she endures and gets angry, this is not a contact. This is an attempt to go back into the merger without going through other phases. It is the desire to erase differences."

The absence of common interests does not mean that the couple is ill and should part. Vice versa! "Oh, look how many differences we have, let's get acquainted: I'll tell you what I'm interested in, and you tell me what you're interested in." This is the contact. When we share ourselves, we talk about ourselves and what we have brought from our distance, what we want to share with others.”
7 REASONS NOT TO WORRY ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS
1. In general, you are happy, most of the time you feel loved and love yourself.

2. Your fights don't end with threats of a breakup and long periods of silence.

3. You can tell your partner about your desires, mistakes, sorrows, doubts, fantasies. He does not always share them, but he respects and supports you.

4. You can be yourself, and you do not have to constantly adjust to the mood and desires of your partner.

5. You have a good time both together and apart.

6. You don't feel like you're "fighting for the relationship."

7. You have joint goals and plans
Stage four: intimacy. This is not about sex. “Intimacy is about trust and security. When you can say who you are, even knowing that you can be rejected in this. You trust yourself to another person, says Anna Bokova. - And even if he says "no", this does not mean that he does not love you, that he is some kind of bad. Until the partners present themselves to each other as they are, share frankness in phases e intimacy, they can't really get close. It’s very disappointing when people at the stage of difference diverge and never allow themselves to try a different model. ”

It is important at what stage of family life partners turn to a therapist: when a couple can be helped, and when, alas, it is no longer possible. For example, when the differences are so irreconcilable that the other side is not able to accept them for reasons of their own security. This often happens if the husband has a mistress with whom he is not ready to part, or another family. The wife cannot accept this, it categorically does not suit her.

To be together means to dance a pair dance, in which there is everything - a merging in emotions, and distance, and contact, and true closeness.
“Everything is very individual. Some have one value system, some have another. And so they present them in contact, but are not ready to accept and move on to the phase of intimacy. And maybe the best thing they can do for the couple and for themselves is to leave and find another person with more suitable values, ”says Anna Bokova.

To prevent relationships, the expert believes, it would be good to go to couples therapy once every five years to check whether we are both going where we are going, where our borders are now, at what phase we are. And you can end therapy when the husband or wife at breakfast says: “Coffee is disgusting!”, And at the same time, both spouses know that it is just about coffee.

“There is a ceremony in the Catholic religion when the newlyweds each go to the altar with their own candle, which is extinguished after they light one common candle,” says Anna Bokova, “Robert and Rita offer a new model when a couple lights a common candle, but at the same time continue burn and their personal candles. This is a great metaphor for harmonious relationships. After all, to be together means to dance a pair dance, in which there is everything - a fusion in emotions, and distance, and contact, and true closeness.