There is a statistic that sounds almost like a sentence: most marriages eventually end in divorce. The exact percentage varies depending on the country, but everywhere the number remains high - above 50%. People usually blame financial problems, lack of understanding, or cheating. Yet these reasons only describe the surface. The real forces that destroy relationships operate much deeper. A marriage rarely collapses because of external circumstances. It collapses because it was originally built on unresolved inner trauma rather than conscious choice.

We meet each other at the level of our trauma. It is truth, unfortunately. When a person meets someone new, it can feel like a miracle. There is a sense that, finally, someone truly sees you, understands you without explanation, and can give you what was always missing. It feels like recognition, like destiny, like coming home. But this recognition is not connected to the future. It is connected to the past. The nervous system reacts to a familiar state of being: a pattern formed through previous emotional wounds. The person is not recognizing someone new. They are recognizing an emotional structure they already know. This may include familiar feelings of abandonment, emotional distance, struggle for attention, or... the need to earn love. At that moment, the mechanism of repetition begins. The relationship becomes an unconscious attempt to heal an old wound through a new person. 

The difficulty is that both partners arrive with their own unresolved pain. Instead of healing, they recreate the same emotional patterns. This is why most relationships either end in separation or continue while internally disconnected and lifeless.

There is a very small number of people who manage to break this cycle. This happens when at least one partner becomes aware of their trauma and stops acting from it. Then the relationship can move to a completely different level, a level of conscious choice rather than unconscious repetition. But in most cases, people either leave because of trauma or stay because of trauma.

Marriage as a social structure, not a spiritual one... I did know it for a very long time! Marriage was not originally created for love. It is a new phenomena of maybe last 50-70 years conditioning us that marrige MUST be something romantic all the time! However, for the primary function of marriage is social and economic. It's always been this way! Marriage was designed to regulate property and inheritance, to ensure clarity about lineage and ownership. Yes, follow the money! It created a stable framework where children had defined status and resources passed predictably between generations. Monogamy became part of this structure. It provided social stability and reduced competition and aggression among men. In a monogamous system, most men had access to partnership, which helped maintain order in society. 

But this stability came at a cost, especially to women's autonomy. Marriage became an effective social tool, yet it did not account for the deeper emotional and psychological realities of human beings.

Why sexual desire changes over time.

One of the most painful shifts in long-term relationships is the gradual disappearance of sexual desire, especially for women. In the early years, attraction is strong and natural. But over time, the number of women who no longer feel sexual desire toward their partner increases significantly. This is not simply a psychological issue. It is deeply connected to perception and emotional structure. The central factor in female desire is admiration.

A woman feels deep attraction toward a man she admires. This admiration is not necessarily about appearance or status. It is about how she perceives him internally. Admiration disappears the moment a woman stops experiencing the man as internally greater than her, not greater in status, appearance, or words, but greater in structure, discipline, and inner direction. Admiration lives in her nervous system as a response to stability, clarity, and self-ownership. When she begins to see hesitation where there was once certainty, compromise where there was once integrity, or comfort where there was once growth, something shifts silently. It is not the specific habit, failure, or weakness that destroys admiration. It is what that moment reveals to her: that he no longer stands anchored in himself. A woman does not lose admiration because he is imperfect. She loses admiration because she no longer feels that he is moving forward from a place she herself has not yet reached. The moment she feels she has outgrown his structure, admiration collapses. And when admiration collapses, desire does not gradually fade, it disconnects at its root, because her attraction was never sustained by logic. It was sustained by her emotional recognition of his inner authority.

When admiration disappears, desire disappears with it. Again - this often happens when a woman begins to perceive weakness, lack of discipline, or loss of direction in her partner. Even small patterns can shift her perception. Sex then becomes something done out of obligation rather than desire. And if a woman doesn't want sex with her partner, she will look sick, actually make herself sick, or there always be a reason why she can't have sex. 

The man senses this shift. He feels the absence of genuine attraction and begins to interpret it as absence of love. Emotional distance grows, and the relationship slowly weakens.

Cheating is a symptom, not the root cause. 

Cheating rarely causes the collapse of a relationship. It reflects deeper disconnection that already exists. When emotional and physical intimacy fade, a person faces an internal conflict. On one side, there is the shared life: family, stability, social identity, and routine. On the other side, there is emotional emptiness and the need for intimacy.  Many people cannot speak openly about their truth because they fear the consequences. They fear losing stability, security, and their familiar life. So instead of confronting reality, they create a hidden reality.

They begin to live in internal division. The relationship continues outwardly while inwardly it has already changed.

Why people stay even after love has disappeared?

Many couples remain together long after emotional connection has faded. This happens because relationships provide stability and structure: financial security, social belonging, shared responsibility for children, emotional safety in familiarity, continuity of life structure. 

People fear losing these foundations. So they stay, even when their inner experience has already moved elsewhere. They cheat because of trauma, they leave because of trauma and they stay because of trauma. 

In a relationship, there is never just one person who lies. There are always two. One person does not tell the truth because they fear the consequences. But the other person also participates in this system, because they are not capable of withstanding the truth if it is spoken. One cannot withstand the reaction of the other, and the other cannot withstand the truth itself. This creates a mutual system of avoidance... and violence.

A person does not speak honestly about their needs, their lack of desire, or their intention to seek intimacy outside the relationship because they cannot withstand the emotional reaction of their partner. They cannot withstand the pain, anger, fear, or the collapse of stability that may follow. But the partner also cannot withstand this truth, because it destroys their internal sense of safety and their image of reality. Both lie! This means that immaturity in relationships is revealed not in the act of cheating itself, but in the inability to withstand emotional reality.

A mature person is someone who is capable of withstanding both their own emotions and the emotions of another person without running away, without destroying, and without hiding. They are able to speak the truth about their needs, their pain, their loss of desire, or their internal changes, even when that truth provokes strong emotional responses.

Maturity is the ability to remain present with reality, even when that reality dismantles illusions.

Immaturity is when a person chooses deception because they cannot withstand the emotional intensity of truth.

This is why cheating, in most cases, does not happen because of a desire to cause pain, but because of the inability to withstand emotional honesty. 

Let's go back to admiration... again, a woman’s desire is rooted in admiration. Female attraction is deeply connected to admiration. This admiration may arise from many qualities:

— intelligence
— strength of character
— reliability
— integrity
— emotional presence
— inner stability

The most important element is perception. A woman must internally experience the man as someone she looks up to.  When that perception changes, admiration fades. When admiration fades, desire follows. This is not about objective reality. It is about internal emotional truth.

A man is drawn to a woman who chooses herself. A man who acts from awareness rather than trauma does not seek a woman who disappears into him. He is drawn to a woman who has chosen herself. A woman who develops, grows, and follows her own path. A woman who remains internally whole. Such a woman does not submit her identity. She stands beside him as an equal. This creates real attraction. The man admires the woman who honors her own path.
The woman desires the man she admires. This mutual admiration creates living, dynamic relationships.

Most relationships are formed from trauma, not freedom. 

The deepest truth is that most relationships are formed not from freedom, but from unresolved emotional patterns.  People choose each other because their wounds align, not because their consciousness aligns. This creates strong attraction but does not create stability. True relationships become possible only when a person stops choosing from pain and begins choosing from wholeness. When a person no longer seeks someone to fix the past, but instead meets another from fullness. At that point, the relationship stops being an attempt to survive.

It becomes a space where life can fully exist.