How To Ignite And Keep Love?

The spring sun will warm, he will smile at her, she will smile at him. An invisible spark will slip between them and love will arise. They will firmly hold hands and walk through life together through troubles and joys. And they will live happily ever after, and they will die in one day … Good fairy tale? Kind? And here is the "evil" statistics: in 2015, 983 thousand marriage unions were officially concluded in Russia. And 502 thousand divorces were filed. Such is the sad "debit with credit", where for two created pairs there is one broken up. And how many people remain married, but they are unhappy …

First test

Love is the best thing that can happen to us in life. But can we somehow manage this feeling, or does it come and go when it wants? When we are in love, it blows our minds and we cannot analyze and understand very badly what is happening to us. In scientific parlance, this is dryly called "the antagonism of emotional and intellectual functions."

In psychology, the "rose-colored glasses effect" is well known, when, with strong love, we see only the dignity of a loved one. After some time, the period of idealization inevitably passes and our observation becomes sharper. We suddenly begin to see flaws, annoying little things. As Alexey Fedyashev (the hero of Tolstoy's "Count Cagliostro") said: "A person who should thrill me with a glove or a garter … will order noodles and eat them in my presence …"

The first crisis is coming, which may well end in rupture. But what happens to great feeling when this tipping point is successfully overcome?

Three whales of love

There are not many theories in modern scientific psychology that try to explain what love is. One of these theories is Robert Sternberg's three-component model. According to the scientist, love is born as a result of a combination of passion, psychological intimacy and commitment.

Passion is admiration, falling in love, physical attraction.

Proximity - respect, mutual understanding, warmth.

Commitment - caring, taking responsibility for a shared future.

Mature love (Sternberg calls it perfect) appears when all three components are balanced, mixed in equal measure.

But if one of the components dominates, the situation becomes precarious. The most unstable are relationships based only on commitment (in Sternberg's terminology, this is empty love) or on a combination of passion and commitment (the so-called fatal love).

On the positive, ah, and in very pink glasses

Psychologists from the University of Buffalo conducted a study of relationships in 222 married couples. Participants filled out questionnaires every six months for three years from the date of marriage registration. They were asked to describe the image of the ideal spouse. Also, each participant gave himself his own characteristic. For example, a woman thought her husband was athletic and brutal, but he considered himself a lazy person and liked to lie on the couch instead of studying in the gym. Those couples in which the spouses perceived each other through rose-colored glasses, after three years assessed their marriage as more successful and happier than those who were closer to reality. It turns out that romanticizing a spouse has a positive effect on life together.

Who is the head in this house

American psychologist William Schutz believes that in any relationship there are two dimensions: love and power. In a period of strong love, only emotions come to the fore. But a little later, when the rose-colored glasses are removed, people begin to share power. It is a process of assigning responsibilities and making decisions.

Moreover, equality is not always the best option. There is no “correct” distribution of power - good is what suits both partners. If the husband takes the initiative in how to spend the vacation together, and the wife likes it, then power is distributed in the best way. If the wife believes that maintaining comfort in the house is a joint task, and in the husband's opinion, this is an exclusively female responsibility, then we have a power conflict (aka role-playing). If there are too many such disagreements, living together turns into a constant finding out "who is more important." Such a family is unlikely to last long.

Speak five languages

It is naive to think that the intensity of the feelings will be the same all the time as in the moments of the first dates. It may sound cynical, but, from a scientific point of view, any emotion is a reaction that occurs in response to a corresponding stimulus. Intimacy exists as long as we exchange impulses that evoke emotions - sympathy, respect, admiration, joy, etc.

Where to get them from? Psychologist Gary Chapman gave a good answer in his famous book, The Five Languages of Love. To maintain a close love relationship, you will need:

• 1. Time - just be together, communicate, share news, thoughts, experiences, walk and travel (create general impressions), find joint affairs and / or hobbies.
• 2. Touching - hug, kiss, walk hand in hand, stroke each other on the head, shake hands and, of course, have sex.
• 3. Gifts - give big and small, expensive and symbolic, with or without reason.
• 4. Words of encouragement - praise and give thanks even for everyday little things, admire and say compliments, confess your love.
• 5. Help - support in difficult situations, sometimes break the established system of power and do something instead of another.

Do not forget that the “language of love” is individual. Perhaps you need words of encouragement and touch as stimuli, but gifts are enough for your partner. As long as you maintain an equal exchange of emotional stimuli, the relationship will be sustainable.

Inviolability of borders

What else could threaten a relationship? Violation of internal boundaries. During a period of acute love, we want to completely dissolve in each other. But if we merge with a loved one, then we begin to believe that he is the same as ourselves. We expect from him logical (in our opinion) words and actions. And for some reason he behaves "not so"!

After a series of disappointments, the other extreme arises, numerous attempts to "fix" the partner. And not only does he not want to change, he also tries to remake us in accordance with his expectations. There is a duel - who will re-educate whom. Some young people even like such “fights without rules”. We had a little fight, they threw adrenaline into the bloodstream, and you can make up in bed. But sooner or later such "performances" start to tire, and the family breaks up.

Write on the tablets: we cannot remake another person. He can only change himself, if he wants and if he can.

When you need help

There are things that are very difficult to talk about (it's easier to be silent and hope that “everything will work out by itself”). There are difficulties that cannot be discussed without emotion (and therefore, instead of concluding the long-awaited "agreement", another conflict occurs). Sometimes it is not possible to clearly formulate the terms of the agreement. And then it's time to seek help from a psychologist. Qualified professionals from different schools and areas can help, we will dwell on four of them in more detail.

1. Psychoanalysis

Any relationship is viewed as an unconscious repetition of parental patterns of behavior learned in early childhood. A woman is looking for a “daddy” in a partner, and a man is looking for a “mother”. Love is often the result of the projection of the ideal parental image onto the spouse. A happy marriage is possible only when we learn to appreciate a person for who he is, and not for what we "hang on" him.

If you go to a psychoanalyst, get ready to remember your early childhood, be aware of projections and translate your own unconscious expectations into a reasonable plane.

2. Transactional analysis

At each moment of time, the person is in one of the special ego states - Parent, Adult or Child. Everything goes well if we communicate at the same level: Child - with Child, Adult - with Adult. As soon as communication becomes "diagonal" (for example, Child - Parent), so-called games arise. These are manipulative influences, where one partner "blindly" uses the other to satisfy some of his needs.

Each such game is a violation of psychological boundaries and forms pathological relationships. Get ready to explore your everyday communication and find games in it. They will help you find antitheses - behaviors that neutralize manipulation.

3. Gestalt therapy

"Gestalt" (with German) is a holistic, harmonious form. For every case and for every relationship, you can choose the best form possible. If there is no such form, we experience discomfort and unpleasant feelings for which it is easy to blame our partner. The form of relations cannot be constant, in one situation closeness is important, in another cooperation, in the third - play and seduction. In order to create a good form suitable for both partners every time, you will have to learn to be “here and now”, to listen to yourself, to be clear and sincere in manifestation and attentive to the manifestations of the other, to take responsibility for your experiences.

4. Systemic family psychotherapy

The couple is perceived as a whole, but at the same time it is believed that each of the spouses is an independent element of the system. In the course of therapy, there is a search for "systemic pathologies". They can be both external factors (for example, the influence of the parental family of one of the couple), and internal (for example, insufficient performance by partners of their functions).

From this approach, we can expect a better understanding of what unites (or divides) us. The main tasks are designing "ideal" relationships and planning specific steps to achieve them.

In conclusion, I would like to say the following: as long as relationships are a value for you, all difficulties can be overcome. Independently or with the help of specialists. But at the same time, you need to be able to let go of what has already burned out in time. And move forward towards new relationships. However, this is a completely different story …

EXPERT OPINION

Love formatting

When people choose each other from a multitude of men and women, they become the best in the eyes of another. This is one format of love. It follows the laws of psychological saturation: if you focus on a figure for a long time, then it gradually fades, loses its brightness and attractiveness. But over the course of long-term communication, people manage to combine their strengths and capabilities (children, mutual friends, household, plans and dreams have appeared). Now the partner is seen as a resource that is important for solving common problems. Caring, cooperation is a different form of love. If there is balance in this exchange, an atmosphere is created in which sexuality, humanity, and even the therapeutic nature of relationships develop (after all, everyone gets to know the other and themselves more and more deeply).

The external attributes of such love are created by people themselves gradually. Only they themselves decide how many touches, hugs, sex, words in their relationship … And only when the discomfort or suffering of one person becomes a common suffering, love turns out to be powerless and comes to naught.

Natalia KEDROVA, gestalt therapist, member of the European Association for Gestalt Therapy