From the author: This incident, like others I have described, occurred more than 10 years ago. That’s why I don’t reveal anyone’s secrets and don’t harm anyone with my stories. A short middle-aged lady with a harmonious build entered the room and sat down on the sofa. “I want to understand what’s going on.” – She started after we met. A successful, strong woman sat in front of me. “I live with a man, and for the last six months we have been constantly arguing, I absolutely cannot understand him, we yell at each other so much that my hands begin to tremble.” This has never happened to me. I have a friend, I share my experiences with her, but she cannot help me. And you can’t use a person - that’s how I’ll lose my friend. I start asking her more about the situation. Lives with a man for about 2 years. The first 1.5 years lived like in a fairy tale - it seemed to her that she had found the harmony that every woman dreams of. Everything was there - tenderness, understanding, consonance, common interests, support, passionate love. But six months ago, disagreements began, and they were completely petty, but it was impossible to come to an agreement - there was “just a wall” between her and the man. I asked about her previous life - I want to find out whether she had long-term relationships with men, whether she is capable of intimacy. It turns out that she was married for 20 years. She played the main role in the family - she was more successful in her career and earned more. She would like her husband to be stronger, but in a situation of lack of money, he did not solve the problem, but simply stated that he could not earn more money and that was all. But they lived well, didn’t argue, negotiated, she liked her work, so there’s nothing to reproach her husband for. They have a son who graduated from university, is a successful specialist, and has his own family. And a few years ago, her husband informed her that he was leaving for Canada on a contract. And he left, alone. My interlocutor soon met love, and was at the peak of happiness... I see that she is able to maintain long-term good relationships, which means that the problem may not be with her. I ask about her current man. He had 2 marriages and twice lived with women without marriage. Each marriage left one child. When asked how long he lived with his previous women, she answered: two to three years (that’s it! They also live for 2 years). She talked in detail about how he lived with them - the first year was good, and then he suffered for a couple of years and got divorced. In response to my question about his relationship with his parents, she said that she gets along better with them than he does. He avoids meeting them in every possible way, although he behaves politely, does what he needs to do for them, but nothing more. She also talked about his relationship with his son, a good-for-nothing, whom she is trying to get a job, but to no avail. But these are all the details that only confirm the hypothesis that this man is incapable of building relationships with women. Most likely it is a fear of intimacy. It is quite possible that the ears grow from his parental family, but this information will not help us in any way - he is not here, and he will not come to therapy (according to the client). I schematically drew the entire story of my interlocutor in the form of two family trees - her and partner. And since her request was to understand what was happening, I told her about the pattern of relationships of her current “beloved”, showed the repeated breaks in his relationships with women after a honey year and a half. After about a year, the first crisis occurs in family relationships (there are 6-8 of them in total, as described by different authors), when the rose-colored glasses fall off and shortcomings begin to be seen in the loved one. Someone copes with this period, and the relationship reaches a more genuine, authentic note, when they take off their masks without fear and love more what is under the mask. This same man has stumbled upon the “moment of truth” for the fifth time, but is unable to get past it. – So this is the terminal phase of your relationship with this man, when it is no longer possible to help your union. It is only possible, as in the case of the last phase of cancer, to accept the death of love. And then I was overwhelmed by a very strong feeling of despair,.