You love me and then you abandon me: liquid relationships
You love me and then you abandon me: liquid relationships
What is meant by a liquid relationship? How does someone who engages in liquid relationships behave? What are they trying to avoid? What can online therapy do?
Liquid relationships are distinguished by their fragility, the weakness of the bonds, which easily dissolve following a conflict or with an excuse. One does not fight for the other. One does not grow. One doesn’t really face couple dynamics because one doesn’t dive in, but stays on the surface. By doing so, the bond never becomes truly authentic, and despite hopes, one finds oneself once again alone and confused, since another characteristic of liquid relationships is precisely that of confusing the partner, who believes they are loved, in a couple, and then sees the other walk away even for reasons that are essentially trivial and solvable.
It was the Polish philosopher Bauman who wrote extensively about “liquid relationships.” These fit into a society that is changing, oriented toward consumerism, not only of objects but also of people and relationships.
Children of our society, which influences—despite decisions, values, and behaviors—the bonds that are created with others are extremely fragile. Especially in a couple, shared planning dissolves, leaving space for immediate and narcissistic enjoyment.
However, this form of “enjoying” at the expense of the relationship, forcing the latter to retreat, even through occasional erotic performances, remains according to Bauman only an apparent and illusory freedom.
Libertinism, which aims to surpass the unjustified moralistic canons of the past, now seeks to destroy every value in order to satisfy a new and modern thirst for consumerism. It is indeed the drive to consume, both objects and people, that destroys not only the world but also love.
In this way, in fact, the fear of real intimacy between people is fed, the fear of going deeper and putting oneself on the line, a great dispersion of one’s sexual, empathic and mental energies, in more or less significant relationships.
Responsibility and growth
Liquid relationships develop around the idea that feeling emotions is dangerous. More weight is also given to external approval than to deep and inner feeling. Individuality feels the weight of society. One thus chases ephemeral satisfaction, often betraying commitments and loyalty, thinking that this is the best way to obtain autonomy and respect instead.
Relationships become consumer objects. To escape from a real and shared intimacy, one stops at illusory and childish fantasies, often repeated as if scripted from one relationship to another (on this subject see my article “Relationship Hopping”), and one no longer tries to build or to deeply know the other, laying one’s soul bare in favor of a higher and deeper growth.
Adult resources, in a sense, are not used. It is the unhealed child within us that acts, maladaptively or rebelliously, behind a false façade of autonomy. On the contrary, it should be the conscious adult who guides our emotions and allows our authenticity to emerge in a more conscious and adult way.
The need for concentration
In the era of liquid relationships and constant distraction, what we need instead is to concentrate. We should try not to lose the experience of ourselves, to stay with our discomfort in order to solve it, to listen to it. Avoidance, in fact, interrupts contact with reality and in doing so there is no growth or resolution.
It is necessary, in a reality in which people, bonds, affections, dissolve with extreme ease, to develop mindful presence. To build and solidify first and foremost oneself and one’s own identity, regardless of the external and social canons, trying to remain focused and attentive to the real needs of our soul; and then to direct that presence also to one’s relational and affective life.
What can online therapy do?
Online therapy can help shed light on the fears in establishing relationships with others.
Often a relational trauma, even in adulthood, with abrupt ruptures never processed, belonging to previous relationships, can lead relationships to remain stuck to that trauma, in a phase of freezing, without real re-elaboration. Online therapy can therefore help a person who seeks to establish liquid relationships—that is, more connections than relationships—with their fears that prevent them from freeing themselves from emotional burdens that lead down a fundamentally unfulfilling path, one that brings them more and more to the surface, disconnecting from their true authentic self.
For information write to Dr. Jessica Zecchini.
Email contact consulenza@jessicazecchini.it, whatsapp contact 370 32 17 351
