”The Passage” Principle

”The Passage” Principle was born as a child of a couple where each partner discovers himself through the eyes of the other. It’s a principle that can be applied to any type of relationship, even though it follows the observations made by me in couple therapy sessions.

In essence, it talks about the “golden ratio” between receiving and giving. It’s easy to understand it and follow it in everyday life. Read it and print it with your own life experiences to bring it closer to your understanding.

Many years ago, one of the paradoxes of a small city in Romania, named Caracal, was the difference in price of the bus ticket from the center to the train station compared to that of the ticket from the train station to the center. Following the same route. So A to B is not always equal to B to A. Not even in a straight line.

The communication path developed between partners in a couple is signified by their actions, the way they expose their feelings, and how the needs of each of them are fulfilled.

The Passage Principle which I submit to your attention and criticism, was born after many observations I made linked to the demand-offer model in couples. I will exemplify only one of the study cases.

Andrew and Bianca

Andrew constantly comes to Bianca with an avalanche of emotional-affective, material, and financial offers to fulfill any needs of her, even those barely suggested. Or just imagined by him.

The passage between them is fully crowded by all these  “gifts”, so Bianca doesn’t see and does not need to see any space to let her also go to Andrew (see drawing 1).

She receives, accepts, and eventually gets stuck in the habit of receiving. Waits and receives: “I deserve it”. Andrew is stuck in the habit of giving to overflowing. Little by little, he develops a feeling of dissatisfaction for his unfulfilled needs in their couple.

The rebalancing of the passage as a communication area is carried out under therapeutic supervision: Andrew and Bianca jointly analyze the offers.

The selection process begins

Very harsh for Andrew, but this process comes with news for him: learning the language of expressing his own needs. Bianca agrees to give him all her support and learns the new code, discovers and responds to Andrew’s needs.

Drawing 1

Why?

”I didn’t want to lose her. Where else can I find a woman like her? I want to have a family”.

Andrew begins to understand the phenomenon he has created so far and justifies it in his own way.

The avalanche of offers that Andrew comes with, reflects his need to exist in a couple. He built “hooks”. He made sure that in this way Bianca would have “everything she wants and even more”.

The problems came precisely from that “even more”. So much so Andrew could no longer be seen behind the mountain of gifts.

Unusual for him to speak of his desires, he did not register even rejections. Which almost satisfies him. He had been denied enough in his childhood. The joys he gave Bianca were also the only ones he was entitled to. To share his joy, his contentment, this was his reward.

Suddenly, he could not say what the moment of revelation was, but he was certainly tired.

I put in the passage drawing what he had told me. I tried this metaphor of a passage for the meanings he gave to the situation. He was very happy and we continued to work together in this way.

In the next sessions, we work also with Bianca. For her, the passage metaphor was an even bigger breakthrough. She confessed that she would never have thought in those terms.

We named each arrow in the drawing, and then we released the passage, giving up one of Andrew’s “useless, meaningless” offers, as Bianca called them. That “more”. That “maybe you don’t even realize you want it”.

We balanced the offers from A to B and from B to A only after Andrew managed to express in front of Bianca some of his needs hidden for so long. Bianca was rediscovering him. Or she just really saw him for the first time.

Released from the burden of “doing for Bianca”, Andrew begins to discover the pleasure and satisfaction that come from conversations they have and the resumption of some of his favorite activities that he had abandoned for a long time, being afraid that Bianca would not share his passions.

Which, by the way, did happen. But it was the perfect framework for each of them to take time and space for personal hobbies.

After about 12 weeks, the configuration of the passage was different (see drawing 2).

The crowding tendency from A to B was still there, but the whole space looked much more ventilated. The passage is filled with innovative offers. Communication is diversifying. At each therapeutic session, the drawing changes and becomes the foundation of our conversations.

Drawing 2

To my great surprise, Andrew and Bianca created a choreography that expresses our graphic metaphor. They signed up for a dance class, an older desire of Andrew and they chose tango steps. They slip past each other, stop halfway, walk away, and approach.

The habits are difficult to overcome and even if things are going well in the space of therapy, Bianca and Andrew need to transform the tools they have gained into solid behavior, tested in practice, without the artifices that a therapist can create.