Leyla Aylin Kuntsal
We can become sophisticated at relationships
without necessarily
becoming more intimate.
Real intimacy asks something else of us—and allows for far more freedom and connection.
We’ve learned so much about relationships:
attachment, boundaries, needs, communication, regulation, repair.
Much of it can genuinely help us become more capable in relationships.
But we can learn to do all the right things without changing the deeper ground we're doing them from.
(The relationship work itself can even become the new fight: someone didn’t communicate right.)
This work is about returning to ourselves—
not away from each other,
so we can actually meet.
It's about building and inhabiting our own center, so we become less likely to leave ourselves—
and then naturally need to do so much less of the exhausting stuff:
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Explaining ourselves.
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Trying to make them get it over and over.
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Saying it just right.
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Analyzing yourself and the other person
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Getting them to understand or see us a certain way.
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Getting them to be different.
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Doubting our experience
We often don't know what a burden we've been carrying until we feel the relief on the other side.
When our fundamental okayness no longer rides on all of this,
we have so much less to carry—and so much more room to actually encounter ourselves and each other.
What changes when our fundamental okayness isn't riding on each other?
It's one thing to feel centered and steady when we're being understood, seen, or responded to as we hoped.
What happens when we're not?
Can I let you misunderstand me without abandoning myself trying to make you understand?
Can I find my own experience before turning it into a conclusion about you or what you should do?
Can I want something deeply from you without making you responsible for keeping me okay?
The less we need to manage each other in order to remain okay,
the more we encounter our own selves...
and the closer we can actually get to someone else.
This work is for you if
One of you feels like you’re doing the emotional labor; the other feels like they can never get it right.
Your needs aren’t getting met, and you feel like you’re banging your head against a wall.
You want to remain yourself and be deeply connected—and not lose your own agency and self in the face of what your partner feels, does, wants, or struggles with.
There’s something in your relationship you know would be better if your partner would just do x, y, or z.
You don't know what’s yours, what’s theirs, what can change—and when to work on the relationship versus accept what is and discover your choices.
