Meeting, liking each other, falling in love and … Cupid’s arrow hit a new couple. An “Us” begins to mark territory.

Every couple, in its beginnings, usually resembles a birth, a new venture: special care, careful attention, loving dedication. An energy that is alive is matching habits and seeking to accommodate a new reality in a necessary routine. They are a team with the same journey.

But along the way, parallel paths emerge, each one of them attending to other needs: professions, friendships, varied occupations and a multifaceted vital program that has to do with their respective individualities. While the couple is drawing its own outline.

These are the logical dreams. But… The story is not so linear and the paths are not so easy to follow. It is possible to make pacts, arrangements, which are agreed from the best intentions of coexistence, but life has more practice than theory, and it is from that place where agreements begin to weaken.

Signs in the horizon

Many couples take as their horizon that of “loving each other for life”. In fact, it can work, and there are those who have been able to settle into a cohabitation whose nuances range from the barely bearable to the rewarding and healthy.

The life in common has its day by day and it is what is pointing out horizons. Sometimes, these stop widening because disturbing signs appear that unfortunately lead to the deterioration of the relationship. Let’s see some of them:

– Symbiotic behavior. Each member has lost their individuality and they start to do everything together in a compact way. But in the long run this suffocates and living together is not at all gratifying. When what is common and what is personal come into conflict, it is a clear sign of deterioration.

– Attention to looks and tones of voice. Starting to talk without looking at each other or holding boring, uninteresting chats are usually signs of being apparently present, but with erratic thinking about something else or somewhere else. To inquire without invading, but be the convenient thing to do, would be not to let it pass.

– Lack of common projects. Although it is important to take care of one’s own initiatives and dreams, common projects are the real driving force of life as a couple. Their postponement or absence are marking worrying declines.

– Renovation of the soil. Pulling up dry leaves, cutting the grass, transplanting, are the care that a garden requires. When this does not happen, the weeds advance and so does the deterioration. The same can be said of a couple.

There are sociocultural and natural signs that begin to show their deterioration: not sharing outings, disinclination for recreation, indifference to what happens to the other, decrease in the body temperature of desire, or simply of accompanying each other. Discomfort is felt and there is an atmosphere of uncertainty that needs to be cleared.

The signs can be varied and diffuse, or few, but strongly perceived. To ignore them is to allow the leaves to begin to dry and the weeds to advance.

Exposing doubts and suggesting ways out is a way of tilling the soil. If after this it is impossible to recycle, let us not forget that emotional reserves are always there. Each person is, in itself, seed, plant, and garden.

Translator Jimena Freytes

Written by Lic. Eva Gazi