An intimate relationship is the ideal setting for healing repressed feelings. When you find someone you feel safe with and loved by, all your repressed feelings begin to surface in an attempt to be healed. Through honest and loving personal relationships, you can not only learn to master the everyday tension which arises between you and another person, but you can use the relationship as an opportunity to heal old hurts, thus enabling you to become a more powerfully loving and lovable person.

Healing your feelings is an ongoing process. Whenever you get to a new level of love and closeness in your relationships, a new level of deeply repressed feelings will surface in order to be healed. The degree of intimacy determines the intensity of release. Without an understanding of the four R's and the five different levels of emotions, you might think you are going crazy; the more you love your partner, the more tension may seem to arise between you. But with dedication and commitment to growth, you will soon learn how much easier it is to tell the complete truth about your feelings and resolve the tension, rather than hiding the truth from yourself and those you love.

When you are living alone in your own separate world, it is very easy to continue repressing your feelings. This is why some people avoid relationships. It would take them too much effort and energy to continue repressing their feelings around another person. These people can only stand relationships for a certain amount of time and then they leave, either physically or emotionally, by shutting down their feelings altogether. You know you are resisting dealing with some repressed feelings when you leave your partner and feel relief.

This is why so many people cry for space in relationships. They walk around with all of these repressed emotions, and are pretty successful at holding them down until they come home at the end of the day and see each other. As soon as they start to open up, all of the unexpressed feelings of the day begin to surface. Rather than deal with them, it is simpler to just stay shut down. “The last thing I may want to think about after work is what a hard day I had, but if I don't let those feelings out in the presence of my wife and release all the anger, hurt and fear, I will end up repressing them, and repress a part of my love for her as well”.

This is not to undermine the need to be alone at times. We all need time alone and time away from any relationship to stay in touch with who we are. The need for autonomy is equally important as the need to share but should not be used as an excuse to deny one's feelings.