Teesside therapy clinic

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Finding Each Other

I’ve been reflecting on the Gestalt Prayer lately, particularly the idea of finding each other.

There’s something deceptively simple about it.

We often think of finding someone as something permanent. We find our person. We find a relationship. We find something we’re supposed to hold onto.

But I wonder if that misses something important.

Perhaps finding each other is not necessarily about finding someone forever.

Perhaps it is about finding each other in the moment.

That moment when two people genuinely meet.

Not the person I want you to be.
Not the person you think I need you to be.
Not two people trying to fulfil each other’s expectations.

Just you, being you, and me, being me.

And for a moment, something happens between us.

A conversation where something opens.

A moment of vulnerability.

A shared laugh.

A silence that somehow feels connected.

A moment where we feel genuinely seen, and perhaps genuinely see the other person too.

And then the moment passes.

Sometimes those moments become relationships that last years.

Sometimes they become friendships.

Sometimes they are brief encounters that change something in us and then disappear into the landscape of our lives.

And sometimes we don’t find each other at all.

The prayer seems to leave room for that too.

There is no demand that the connection must become permanent to be meaningful.

Maybe that is part of the freedom within it.

We can meet without possessing.
We can connect without controlling.
We can love without demanding permanence.

Perhaps finding someone is not always about keeping them.

Sometimes it is simply recognising that, for this moment, we found each other.

And perhaps that is enough.

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Maybe vulnerability isn’t the opposite of strength.

We talk a lot about men needing to be strong.

Be resilient.
Hold it together.
Don’t let things get to you.
Get back up.
Crack on.

And somewhere along the way, feeling things got labelled as weakness.

But I’ve been thinking about it differently.

If you’re strong enough to feel your disappointment, that’s strength.

If you’re strong enough to sit with your hurt instead of immediately trying to escape it, that’s strength.

If you’re strong enough to admit that something broke your heart, frightened you, rejected you or fu***ng hurt you, that’s strength too.

Because sometimes it takes far more strength to feel something than it does to bury it.

And if you’re not strong enough to feel it yet?

That’s okay too.

You don’t have to turn vulnerability into another performance of masculinity. You don’t have to prove how emotionally evolved you are. Sometimes you simply aren’t ready to feel something, and that’s human.

But don’t come round here telling me that feelings are weakness.

Sometimes feelings are the thing you need the most strength to face.

Maybe the real question isn’t:

“Are you strong enough not to feel?”

Maybe it’s:

“Are you strong enough to feel what you feel?”

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