Today there is much talk of relationships and their fundamental importance for the realization of a sufficiently peaceful and harmonious life. The fact that there is too much talk of relationships already an indication of the difficulties which are encountered in the interpersonal relationships. I'd like to start outlining some relationship fatigues, and then to find some- just as precarious – therapeutic path.

The relationship fatigues

The relationship fatigue is marked by certain conditions or syndromes that affect the personal, family, social and even religious existence.

The first fatigue might be described as the big brother syndrome. We are together to eliminate one another; who gets out of the way the other wins. In this context we approach the other, mainly to understand his weaknesses to be able to rule him out more easily, to tell him that I am right, he is wrong, to predict his reactions and be able to neutralize them.

The second is the syndrome of self-centered attitude. The desire for self-sufficiency and self-reference. This attitude is a serious obstacle to the relationship, as it leads to dream of personal autonomy that flows into ruling the other and the surrounding environment. The other is seen as the aim of one’s purposes, I consider myself to be able to guess his expectations.

The third is the syndrome of fear. The multiplicity of encounters between people and the richness of the social, economic, political perspectives that open before us, instead of building trust, give rise to uncertainty, distress, sadness. Fear causes closure to the other, particularly to the different person, leads to primarily individual or family solutions, causes perception of the future not as an opportunity, but as a threat. The relationship is expressed in the suspicion, an investigatory attitude.

The fourth syndrome is the syndrome of the man without an unconscious. That is, a man who is no longer aware of his limit, his "failure to be", but identifies himself with his "void" and tends to overcome it by jumping into the enjoyment that the void itself provides. The man without an unconscious is no longer able to discover the meaning of his own illness but is led to identify totally with the thing above it (food, drugs, alcohol, etc. "Antiamore, list of no-love items).

The man without an unconscious withdraws into a protective niche antithetical to the world and the other/ Other, withdraws into an autistic and narcissistic enjoyment that is independent of and move away from symbolic exchange with the other just from his wound, from his failure to be.

The fifth syndrome relates to the sphere of religiousness. We could describe it as the syndrome of fusion. According to some scholars, God is perceived by younger generations as a family person and friend. He is felt so close as to lose a bit of his transcendence. His presence appears so close as to be dispersed and found in the gestures and signs of everyday life. This movement can certainly indicate the need for a more people-oriented religiousness, a faith in which the existential dimension prevails over the legal-dogmatic and ritualistic one. However, the "transcendent" appears not to be anymore a specific sphere separate from everyday life, but appears to be almost merged with it. From here the difficulty of many people to feel and live the experience of the Christian faith as friendship with a personal God: an Other who transcends you, but manifests himself and talk to you as a friend.

The relationship fatigues can also be confronted with a few "cautious" therapeutic paths.

A first path is undoubtedly to be open to listen to the other, to cause the other to resound inside oneself. We all think we know how to listen, but we are not aware of the beauty and effort of hearing. Listening requires application of mind, "belly" and heart to the other in his totality; requires attention to his words, his slang, his ideas; to the conformist or creative, repetitive or creative configuration of his way of talking; to the "time" of his speaking and thinking, for example: the prevalence given to the past, present or future. "Resounding listening" requires, again, the perception of emotions and feelings that crosses the mind of the other in the "here and now" of the relationship, his emotional attitude - for example, introverted or extroverted - his silences, his desires, his dreams, and his deep movements of peace or joy, sadness or anger. One could go on.

To try, then, to contain our desire for sufficiency and rule , we must prepare ourselves to listen to the fragility, as well as our and the other wound. A participating listening to the other drama can foster in him the transition from injury to slot, namely the literalness of the personal stories to the opportunities that they hold. The physical or existential wounds hold a hidden meaning (slots), that I do not "have to" understand, but I need to wait, "give hospitality" and "welcome". To listen to the frailties, allows to bring forth a perspective "other" than the immediately experienced one, allows to discover all the ties that can help the other to come out of its sufficiency and open to the recognition of his fragile wealth and his broken beauty.

A third therapeutic path makes use of the curiosity. But be careful, because there are several curiosities: the self-centered curiosity and the relational one. The self-centered curiosity is made up, first of all, by the judgement. First, one judges (phenomena, events, people), then one goes to the interest or distance. In this way, we get away from involvement, nurture a sense of superiority, we are not available to enter the "home" of the other. Self-centerd curiosity is also gossip, causes to become "nosy", as the Desert Fathers said: we declare ourselves in the service of the other, but only to use him.

The way of prayer

A fifth therapeutic path opens to the spiritual way. It is the way of prayer, or rather, the opening to God who speaks. A path that certainly concerns those who recognize to be Christians; a path that is only partly therapeutical, but that has its roots in the need to rediscover the relationship with a personal God who is the first to look for man and not vice versa. Speaking of the Servant of God, Isaiah says: "Every morning, the Lord alerts my ear so that I listen to like a disciple" [Is 50.4-5]. It is God himself who takes upon himself to wake up hearing so that it can listen attentively to understand the teachings of the new day.

According to Bible, God is not "The one who is", but "The one who speaks", and by speaking looks for friendship with the man and gives rise to his freedom. In life, one grows as deeper one descends into the depths of listening, as more one makes room in oneself until to become home of the other / Other.

Therapy of relationship today is manifold. It seems to me that there are two main directions. A trend of a cognitive behavioral kind in which the subject is helped to restore an upset order, a broken balance; the aim is ultimately a new psychophysical well-being, achieved also through a pharmacological support.

A second trend, which accepts the complexity of the subject-person, enhances the symptom, injury, frailty, the desire as a "beyond", an "opening" to the singularity of self, a singularity / difference that prepares to a "step" toward the other and to the transcendent. An opening that becomes the environment in which the relationship is an opportunity for further deepening one’s singularity. The real risk of the therapy of relationships can be to forget the distinction, as set by the theology of the Christian East, between nature and person. Nature responds to the question "What is it?". The person transcends the question. The latter, in fact, is irreducible to its own nature. "To feel the mystery of the person, it is necessary to pass all its natural context, all the cosmic, collective, individual context, everything that can be grabbed. One always grabs nature, but does never grab the person. One just grabs objects, even when they are objects of knowledge. The person is not an object of knowledge, more than God is an object of knowledge. As God, the person is the incomparable, the inexhaustible, the bottomless".
As opening to God who reveals himself requires listening, prayer, vigilance and, ultimately, death, so the knowledge of the person requires loving care as it holds a mystery that reveals its brightness only in the knowledge and paradoxes of love.