Many married couples have to address issues that arise from very common misunderstandings, which affect the way we experience intimacy, effective communication, and sexuality. They all stem from one simple mistake: we are used to only seeing part of the big picture when it comes to sex and intimacy in a marriage, and this partial view leads us to create false expectations.
We often think, for example, that intimacy relies on finding someone who makes us feel loved and accepted, but this is only part of what defines true intimacy. Similarly, we tend to believe that sex is first and foremost a human biological trait, and that a low sex drive should therefore be considered a pathological condition. According to the author, however, this is not the case at all.
When relationships are built on these misunderstandings and distortions, it eventually leads to an imbalance from which it is hard to recover. So, we have to look beyond traditional views and beliefs, and explore the processes that really govern intimacy within a marriage; only then can we revive the sexual desire between two people, and disprove the pessimistic belief that marriage kills intimacy.
So, what is the main cause of most problems within a marriage? Very often, even if we do not realise it, issues in a relationship are the result of what the author calls excessive emotional fusion: the two people in a couple become one, and ‘lose’ themselves in their connection, which ends up controlling them to such an extent that they are no longer able to be independent of each other.
Emotional fusion does not mean we love ‘too much’, because being totally fused to our connection with our partner prevents us from recognising ourselves or the other person. Jealousy and possessiveness are perhaps the most obvious forms of emotional fusion, whereby we simply cannot accept that our loved one is able to exist without us, and vice versa. Emotional fusion is also one cause of domestic violence and femicide, as the killer totally loses all sense of self and simply cannot accept being abandoned or rejected.
