American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “Having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night is a very old human need,” and yet this need is often a very complicated one.
Our primary relationships often serve as a stage where we act out our most important human interactions. In a complicated and artful dance we oscillate between disclosing our most intimate secrets--exposing and participating in our most sordid and banal fantasies--and making sometime extraordinary efforts to ensure that information about ourselves remains unknown.
It is to our primary partner that we usually we go to find physical and emotional fulfillment, but here we may also find extreme pain and dissatisfaction. It is no wonder then with so much of ourselves invested in another person that we find ourselves at an impasse having unintentionally recreated and reenacted old and tired dramas. We become frustrated with our partner and, quite often, we are frustrated with ourselves. Some of us become mired in a pattern of harsh criticism and banal defensiveness. Unwilling or unable to extricate ourselves from the unfortunate situation--we dig in deeper and deeper until we are full and truly stuck. This is the time to ask for help.
