Often we perceive the first difficulties and disagreements with our partner as the beginning of an irreversible end. But in fact, it is just another stage of love, and it is necessary to survive it together.
In any, even the most passionate (at first) relationship, one day there comes a moment when the man of your dreams no longer seems so beautiful and smart, sex with him is no longer passionate, and you yourself, frankly speaking, attract him less.
Usually it is at this stage unions disintegrate - in some couples it comes earlier, and in some it can happen after ten years of life together. After going through a difficult breakup, we rush to find "the one" again. But as soon as we find him or her, the vicious cycle from delight to disappointment repeats itself.
What's the reason? Family psychologist and counselor Jed Diamond believes:
What we perceive as a point of no return is actually nothing more than the next stage of our relationship - and in some cases, even the beginning of a real, long and strong love.
And if we don't learn to recognize it in time and take control of our emotions, we risk stepping on the same rake again and again.
In total, according to the expert, any love relationship goes through five standard stages. The third one is the most difficult, but if you manage to survive it, in the final stage you will be able to roll mountains together.
Stage one: falling in love
Purely from a biological point of view, falling in love is just a trick of evolution to bring two people together to continue the human race. But when we are infatuated with someone, we think less about the intricacies of nature: mainly because we are under the influence of the hormones dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen. It's this explosive cocktail that gives us those "butterflies in the stomach" - when your heart beats faster and your breath catches.
The feeling of exhilaration is only intensified by the fact that we begin to unconsciously project on a new lover all their unrealized dreams and hopes. We begin to dream of a bright future with him: how all our desires will be fulfilled, how we will get all that we have not received in childhood, and will not face the disappointments that we experienced in past relationships. As cynical as it may sound, hormones do not allow us to think straight and logical, but this is not something to be ashamed of: after all, it is not for nothing that the feeling of falling in love is considered one of the most exciting in the emotional range of a person. It is not a sin to enjoy it at all.
Stage two: pairing
At this stage, the lovers' feelings grow deeper, they develop common goals and eventually form a strong couple (mostly through marriage). At the same time, they have children, buy a car and an apartment together, plan for the future, and demonstrate to the world that from now on they are, as they used to say, "a single unit of society.
This stage is a period of joy and pleasure that you just can be together. Hormones no longer have the same power, but you feel a deeper attachment. Sex also becomes, though less frequent and quieter, but more meaningful and just as satisfying. There is a sense of security, orderliness and grounding. At this point, many couples miss a little bit the past heat of emotions, but still they like this stage of their relationship much more, because now they feel that their love is more stable than ever, and nothing can change it.
But this is a big mistake.
Stage three: disappointment
Of course, no one said that relationships are easy, but you were clearly not ready for such difficulties. It seems that irritation and almost physical rejection of each other appeared in your couple out of the blue. Suddenly you realize that your ideal love is blackened to the core, and it has been going on for a long time. Or maybe there was no love at all?
Disillusionment is usually the stage during which most marriages break up. In different couples it goes differently: someone runs away from each other at the first serious spat, and someone lives with a sense of total dissatisfaction and latent hatred for years. At this point, we prefer to stay at work more often, quarrel over every trifle and, according to psychologist, even more often get sick. A difficult situation in the family leads to breakdowns at work, to a decrease in immunity, to absolute apathy, men may experience problems with erection and so on. Of course, all this does not contribute in any way to the treatment of relationships - and out of desperation, many lovers begin to look for ways to retreat.
What Happens. Many couples break up at this point because they mistakenly believe that being unhappy in a relationship is abnormal and illogical. And yet, it isn't. As with any organized system, marriages too can have breakdowns - so the first thing to do here is to fix the breakdown rather than throwing everything away. Dr. Diamond, who went through two divorces, realized this only the third time, when he and his wife made the decision to move on and not break up, no matter how much they wanted to.
The third stage of the relationship can be compared to a virus, having overcome which you will have many times increased resistance to irritants. At this point, lovers stop seeing in each other "ideal": in front of you appears an ordinary man, to love without the help of hormones and illusions of the previous two stages is not easy, but still possible.
In fact, only now we can talk about the fact that you build a real love, because only after the third stage you begin to accept each other as you really are. Wholly and completely.
Stage four: real, lasting love
After all the storms that accompanied the third stage have receded, the stage of deep and thorough reflection begins. Together, the two of you begin to carefully analyze what has happened to you before and why you were destabilized by what destabilized you. During this period, you get to know each other better than ever, because often the root of your mutual (but, fortunately, already past) misfortunes lies in your childhood.
At the fourth stage of the relationship, people are no longer so much in love as psychologists for each other. And that's right: many studies show that the traumas experienced in childhood (parental divorce, family violence, adultery) can directly influence the way a person will behave when he or she grows up.
At this stage, perhaps for the first time, your selfishness fades into the background: from now on, your affection for each other becomes so deep that you mutually begin to heal each other's wounds. And this not only makes the bond between you stronger - it nullifies any potential conflict, because you will both know exactly what provokes it and how to avoid it.
And this, according to Dr. Diamond, is the Absolute of love. Not everyone reaches this stage, because many couples who go through a crisis, prefer to remain at the fourth stage of the relationship for the rest of their lives. And this in its own way is not bad, but still if your love is so strong that it can extend to the entire world around you, it can not fail to inspire.
The logic here is this: the two of you have overcome so many problems and obstacles on the way to happiness and you haven't given up. So why not use your positive experiences to benefit others? This quiet wisdom pours out first into helping your own children, then other people's children, even later to charitable organizations, and so on. Your love is so mature that you have no need to nurture it - which is why it logically seeks outlets in other good deeds. It is this stage that is the summary of all the past decades of your relationship, when love becomes that poetic feeling that can truly change the world. By the way, it is at this stage that some couples begin to engage in joint creativity: they write co-authored books, create social projects, etc
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