Does everyone live as a couple?

We live in a modern world where we can choose our life-style and find our own way of belonging. Does everyone live as a couple? Obviously not, yet, sometimes it feels like there is an unseen agreement about the need for everyone to have a partner – for both men and women. When we look closer, we can feel relieved (or not) to realize that just as each person is unique, so too are the ways in which people find their style in their relationships.

There are many reasons for all of us to want a partner with whom we can build a long-lasting relationship. Some of those reasons have to do with surviving, safety, and having a base. Other reasons have to do with social status and the wish to have a family. But beyond this, there is in all of us, the need to share, to take a part in someone else’s life, and let someone else take part in our own life.

Individual wanting

There are many people that come to sessions of the Pantarei Approach in order to deal with this topic in their life. Some people are looking for a partner, while others are wondering if to stay in their relationship; some are happy and want it to continue, others suffer and wish to find a way to improve things.

As practitioners, we often meet clients who we are inspired by in so many ways. People who are unique, people with so much love they wish to share, and yet who are single and wish to find a significant other. “Does everyone live as a couple, except me?” Their heart would ask in one way or another. They will see the world divided into couples and singles. They would feel more insecure as they don’t have someone next to them. They would look at Valentine’s Day as a day to power through.

The desire to have a partner

We can all relate easily to their desire: to have someone who will share the big and small moments with them, someone with whom to plan; someone to cuddle with while watching a movie, someone to go out with, and to prepare breakfast with on Sunday mornings.

Two years ago, a woman came for a process with me. She became quite shy when she told me that she lived alone and was without a partner. Her shyness about this topic was the exact opposite of who she was. She was a successful career woman, and in a way that might not be so surprising, the more she succeeded at her work, the bigger her experience of failure was regarding her romantic life. She was sure that there is something she needed to change so the magic would happen and she would fall in love with the right person. She believed that there was something she did that made others reject her. The fact that she had many friends didn’t change that belief.

What we need to change in ourselves

She had been to different consultants and many of them agreed with her or strengthened her belief that things would change if she would only be softer, or clearer; if she would only know what she was looking for, or if she would take more time for herself and for her well-being; if she only had more hobbies and socialized more. “Does everyone live as a couple besides me?” she asked them. Each person had an opinion of what she needed to do more or do less of, in order to make the magic happen and find her significant other.

What I saw was am impressive woman. A woman who struggled every day, tackling the things that were important to her. I saw her eyes light up when she told me what she loved, and I saw her delight when she noticed that the most significant things in her life had started to change for the better. I saw how her self-confidence continued to grow, and how her success made her feel more joyful. But she was still without a relationship.

The complexity of our feelings

During the hands-on parts of our Pantarei sessions, I touched her back, her hands, her feet, and with it, I also touched her past disappointments, her parents’ divorce, her wish for love. She told me about her ex-partner who had betrayed her over a long period of time and how shocked she was when she realized she hadn’t even noticed. We learned together how honesty, in any communication with people and most definitely with a partner, was one of her most important values.

In the sessions that addressed her wish to find a partner, we focused on her longing to love someone, her longing to have someone to come home to, to explore her passions with, someone to talk and laugh with. We could easily feel how her longing for something was often a great source of power in different areas of her life and that even in her job at the time, wanting something and being clear about what she wanted led her to take good decisions. Everyone in her family and at work knew how clear-minded she was and liked it. During the sessions in which we addressed the topic of finding a partner, we celebrated this unique quality of hers.

The power of longing

With each session, whenever we explored her needs, her longing, her desire, there was a certain calmness about the experience. She embraced her frustration as a drive, she acknowledged her wish, and she made peace with the fact that we are not always in control of the outcome of our dreams.

We laughed a lot during our sessions. Her heart was full of love and the wish to give, and it made my heart grow. She started enjoying the time spent with her many friends even more, as well as the advantages of being single. Her curiosity for the future became important, and she started to organize different social activities that came from her needs for more contact. Does everyone live as a couple? Clearly not.

During our work together, what we discovered went far beyond the question of having a partner. We found her individual strength, her own vulnerability, her own bravery. We found her unique being and we both felt how powerful that being was.

As we approach Valentine’s Day, the day for couples to celebrate, we often hear these questions in different ways: does everyone live as a couple? What if we change the narrative to: how does my heart express what it wants, needs and desires?

The need for human contact

Pantarei teaches people to notice the richness of human connection. Richness that goes beyond the division of singles and couples. It teaches us to create human contact. One that is based on our uniqueness, on the desire we each have, on the specific situation each of us is in, and on the dynamic personal connections we have with our partners, with our friends and with our family.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

By Vered Manasse