CASE STUDIES

Case Study #1:

“Should I stay or should I go – but I love her with all my heart!”

A young man in his early 20’s came to see me in my clinic. He said that he and his girlfriend had been with each other for the past four years, but that he was beginning to wonder if she really loved him or was simply taking advantage of his good nature. He said that he was trying to work out whether he should leave or stay in the relationship.

I asked him how he felt about his girlfriend and he said, “I love her very much”.

When I asked him what made him think that she did not love him, he said that they both worked full-time jobs and so if he got home from work before her, he’d take the clothes off the line, fold them and put them away, vacuum the apartment, tidy the place up and make it neat and inviting for her when she came home after a long day at the office – this was his way of showing her that he loved her and cared about her.

He told me that he would greet his girlfriend at the door when she came home from work, she would give him a hug and a kiss and then go upstairs to get showered and changed. She would however make no mention of his efforts around the apartment and appeared to not even notice his work. My client took this to mean that she was taking him for granted and taking advantage of his good nature. From his perspective, she obviously did not love him.

I asked my client if his girlfriend would be willing to come and see me.

When his girlfriend came to see me, she told me that she thought her boyfriend (my client) was ashamed of her, especially when out in public or around friends. I asked her why she felt he was ashamed of her and did not love her, she told me that when they went out, she liked to hold his hand, but he would soon let her hand go. If they were at a party, he did not cuddle or outwardly show physical affection to her. When they went to the movies, she liked to cuddle up to him which he seemed to “put up with” whilst the trailers were on, but that he straightened up and focused on the movie when the main feature came on. She concluded that he obviously did not love her.

I asked her how she felt about her boyfriend and she said, “I love him very much”.

So, what’s going on here? They both love each other dearly, but neither feels loved by the other. This is a common complaint of couples who first come to see me.

The issue here was not that they did not love each other, but rather that each was showing their love for each other in ways that the other did not recognise. His “Love signal” was focused on doing things for her to make her life easier. She needed him to show her how he felt about her through physical touch and outward demonstrations of affection.

“Both were transmitting, but neither was receiving!”

When these different preferences were pointed out to both in therapy, they were able to be more receptive to each other’s Love signals and build on the strong Love Bond that they had for each other.

case study #2:

“I love you but I cannot guarantee that I won’t leave you one of these days – IS THIS AS GOOD AS IT GETS?”

A little while ago, a professional couple in their mid-40’s came to see me in my Clinic. I will call them Bob and Jane. I saw them in the waiting room – she was crying quietly to herself, tears streaming down her face. He was looking straight ahead, stoic and not wanting to be there.

When I saw them in my therapy room, Jane told me that she and Bob had been childhood sweethearts who had reconnected at university and had been married for the past 20 years. They had 3 children in their early to mid-teens.

Jane said that she thought that they had a good marriage – until Bob told her that whilst he loved her, he did not know whether he would be there for the long-haul. He reassured her that there was no other woman in his life, and that he was not interesting in entering into another romantic relationship, but that he felt he had slowly lost himself in the marriage, and when he looked at his life, began to wonder if “THIS WAS AS GOOD AS IT GETS”.  

Jane was in shock, felt deeply hurt and said that she loved him and had thought that they would grow old together.

Further exploration of the nature of the relationship revealed a busy couple who had become good, caring parents, but who had forgotten how to be husband and wife – MAN AND WOMAN.

During the session I asked each to tell me when they first met, what had attracted them to each other, who had made the first move and what had happened. Bob told me that he had seen her at a university party and how ravishingly beautiful she looked. He said he had needed a couple of beers before working up the courage to approach her and say hi, and that she had played hard to get and had said hi back, but then continued talking to her girlfriends.

Jane now had a smile on her face and told Bob that she had actually noticed him two parties ago and thought that he was cute, but that she was going to make him work for it, and so had pretended to be indifferent to him when he had approached her, but that on the inside her heart was beating at 150 beats per minute.

By now both Bob and Jane were reliving that first meeting 20 years ago and were re-experiencing those very same feeling they had felt back then. Bob reached over in the therapy session and wiped away his wife’s tears, and she kissed his hand. They left my therapy room hand in hand.

A little while later, one of my colleagues came into my office to ask me what had happened. He had seen them in the waiting room prior to seeing me and had seen Jane crying and Bob looking on awkwardly. My colleague had just come back up from the carpark and had seen Bob and Jane leaning against their vehicle, locked in a tight embrace, kissing each other passionately – like two love-struck teenagers!!

They had just rediscovered that old flame that had always been there but had dimmed because they had let “life” get in the way.

“Change is possible, you sometimes just need to be shown how”