1 There is no unified answer to love.
When it comes to love, an China person may think of butterfly lovers, an Englishman may think of Romeo and Juliet, and then both of them may think of Titanic, and a sentence rings in their hearts: You jump and I jump!
There are many love-related materials in the world, such as love TV series/movies, love music/songs, love novels/comics, love poems, love true stories, and love research (scientific and non-scientific).
Although there are so many love materials in the world, we have no unified answer to the definition of love.
In the field of psychology, Robert Jeffrey Sternberg put forward the famous love ternary theory, which holds that love has three components: passion, intimacy and commitment. According to these three components, eight love states can be distinguished:
None of the three ingredients = no love.
(2) Only intimacy, lack of passion and commitment = love.
Only passion, lack of intimacy and commitment = spoony love.
Only commitment, lack of passion and intimacy = empty love.
⑤ Passion+intimacy, lack of commitment = romantic love.
6. Passion+commitment, lack of intimacy = stupid love.
⑦ Intimacy+commitment, lack of passion = accompanying love.
8 Passion+Intimacy+Commitment = Perfect Love
Love trilogy is one of the mainstream theories about love in the field of psychology, but it is only Robert Jeffrey Sternberg's view, which is not recognized by everyone, and it is not the only answer to love.
In fact, love existed before Robert Jeffrey Sternberg. In the Book of Songs in the East, there is a saying that "a pigeon passes, a gentle and graceful lady in the river, and a gentleman is good". Shakespeare in the west said, "Love is smoke blown by a sigh, there is a spark of purification in the lover's eyes, and the tears of the lover are the waves it arouses. This is the smartest madness.
After Robert Jeffrey Sternberg, there was love. Few people in the world know about love trio, but many people taste love. Love is a national game for human beings. There is a question "What is love" in Zhihu, and there are 1978 answers below. There is no consensus on the definition of love.
Love that begins with fantasy.
The definition of love is different, and everyone has a personalized definition of love.
Even if everyone knows this in their hearts, everyone's expectation/understanding of love is different.
But in reality, love is not two people sitting together, exchanging their views/definitions of love, and starting to fall in love after friendly communication/negotiation.
Love often begins with "feeling", sometimes called calling, feeling, seeing the right eye ... or to put it mildly, Cupid's arrow fell on my heart only because I took one more look at you in the crowd ~
If we explore this "feeling" in more detail, we will find that this "feeling" that makes love begin is actually an inner fantasy. When a person says that ta is in love with someone, it is almost equivalent to saying that ta is in love with his imaginary partner illusion.
Ta saw a person, who happened to correspond to the companion illusion in Ta's heart, so Ta's heart automatically put this illusion on this person, and then fell in love with this "real person".
Love begins with fantasy, which is not a problem, but a normal state. Everyone is like this. This is also the only way to love. After all, when a person falls in love with another person, it is impossible for ta to fully understand another person, so it is necessary to rely on the power provided by fantasy to enter a relationship.
3 Fantasy manufacturing company: family/parents
Everyone's fantasy has its own characteristics, just like a person's face. Although they are all five senses, they all have their own characteristics. Our faces are inherited from our parents, and our fantasies are actually produced in the family.
Psychology does not believe that there is an invisible fate to arrange everyone's intimate relationship, but believes that intimate relationship is "destiny takes a hand". Family is the fate of a person's intimate relationship, which is not completely determined, but it has a very significant impact.
People are born in a state that they must be taken care of to survive. They are weak, pitiful and helpless, so they must keep close relationship with their parents/caregivers. In this close relationship, people are bound to be shaped by their parents, or newborns, the weaker side, must adapt to their parents (if parents are unwilling to adapt to that baby).
Therefore, we often encourage parents to accept the nature of the newborn, raise ta in a way that adapts to the nature of the newborn, and love it as it is.
But this is just an ideal state. Even if you know some psychological knowledge, it is impossible to provide perfect parenting for newborns, not to mention that most parents lack enough psychological knowledge at this stage, and many people feel normal when they are injured in parenting.
The younger you are, the more cowardly you are, and the more you accept/adapt. Therefore, the upbringing of parents has a greater impact on young children. With growth, personal strength begins to grow, and the space for choice and resistance increases.
Having said that, it is difficult for children to hit their parents head-on, so generally speaking, as long as they live with their parents and interact with each other, they will continue to be influenced by their parents.
Interacting with other people besides parents, such as teachers, classmates, friends and other relatives, will also provide some new experiences, which will allow us to go beyond the limitations provided by parents. But parents are always the most influential.
On the one hand, people are shaped in the relationship with their parents. Parents are the templates of others in his heart.
Whether parents make children feel safe and reliable directly affects children's judgment on whether others are safe and reliable.
At the same time, it will also affect children's views on themselves. If parents love ta as it is, then ta may feel that she is cute and worthy of being loved, and there is no need to do anything special to prove this, and vice versa.
On the other hand, the interaction between parents, that is, the intimate relationship between parents, will also affect a person's inner fantasy of intimate relationship.
Bandura calls it observational learning, which can be an experience that one has no personal experience. If a person always sees an derailed father when growing up, a mother who is so sad but does not divorce or even accept her father's return after several years, then it is not surprising that ta has grown into a person who thinks that cheating is nothing and submits to humiliation.
Although I have repeatedly stressed the influence of parents, I don't want parents to be bound when raising children, so I want to add a few words.
1. Just try your best to respect and understand children and love them. Children can repair some minor setbacks/injuries, which are not provided by perfect parenting.
The intimate relationship between parents has an inevitable influence on children. Therefore, if you want your child's intimate relationship to be happy in the future, you must first become a good example for observation and learning.
4 Love that must be disillusioned
People start a relationship from fantasy, driven by fantasy. This illusion comes from that person's own family and life experience, which is summed up by ta's countless experiences in life, so it is real for ta, just like "the sun will rise and then set".
But fantasy is bound to come to its end-disillusionment. As the relationship continues and people meet for a long time, they will surely find that ta's partner is different from ta's fantasy partner illusion. For example, a person's mother will take care of ta in every possible way, making ta feel that meticulous care is love. When ta entered the relationship with her partner, the partner did not provide such care for ta, and ta experienced disillusionment: this real partner is different from what I imagined.
At this time, ta will be very painful, and there may be such a voice in my heart: huh? Why not play cards according to the routine?
No matter what a person's fantasy of love is, as long as it is disillusioned, it will feel painful.
Suppose a person's fantasy is bad, t a thinks that "there is no such thing as love, people just can't be trusted, and whoever believes is hurt".
Ta met a trustworthy partner. This partner is very loyal, does not lie to ta, and loves ta very much.
This is a good thing in reality, but that person may "run away" from this good thing-leave from a beautiful relationship. Because for ta, people can't be trusted. This situation is very familiar, just like the sun rises and sets. Others can be trusted, but they are not familiar. Trying to change takes risks. It is better to leave than to take risks.
5. The great transformation project after disillusionment.
Fantasy is doomed to disillusionment. After disillusionment, people often face a choice. Do I love the way I am now, or do I change ta? How familiar this choice is, exactly the same as what ta's parents faced in those years.
But we all know that the original appearance of loving it is ideal/poem and distance, and the reality/immediate dilemma is often to change ta, which is also the first choice of more people.
Then began a long process of mutual transformation, the core goal of this transformation process is to transform partners, real non-ideal partners into ideal partners.
Why do you always leave your slippers everywhere?
Can you play less games and spend more time with me?
Can you watch less brain-dead idol dramas and spend some time cleaning them up?
Can you be more considerate of me and my parents?
Can you stop working overtime all the time? I want you to stay with the children.
Can you be more romantic and surprise me? ...
Well, a long transformation process, mutual transformation. At this time, it is inappropriate to say disillusionment. It should be said that after disillusionment, people will hope that their illusions will not be disillusioned and devote themselves to transforming reality into their own, so this accompanying transformation project has come into being.
We all know that people are not easy to change, and it is not easy to change themselves, let alone others. Therefore, this great transformation process has been going on for several years.
It's hard to change yourself. It is actually more difficult to change others' self, because they may refuse to change. So there will be conflicts.
Why do you always leave your slippers everywhere? -What's wrong with putting them here?
Can you play less games and spend more time with me-can't I just relax?
Can you watch less brain-dead idol dramas and spend some time cleaning-tell me about playing games yourself?
Can you be more considerate of me and my parents-every day, your parents, why don't you be considerate of me?
Can you stop working overtime all the time? I want you to stay with the children. -I don't work. Does the whole family eat northwest wind?
Can you be more romantic and surprise me-you knew I was like this when you met me! ……
Years of conflict.
A lot of feelings died here. I'm tired of quarreling, I don't want to quarrel, I feel uncomfortable. Forget it. Let's change people ...
Some relationships are stuck here, and they don't want to quarrel when they are tired. It's a little hard to give up when we are apart, so take a rest. After a while, I still feel uncomfortable. Let's fight again, back and forth. ...
Some of them are stuck directly, really noisy and tired, and have experienced too many failures, but they don't want to be separated for various reasons, so they live a life of silence and unhappiness. Euphemistically called plain, psychologically called pseudo-intimacy. ...
Love it as it is.
Compared with years of conflicts, nothing has changed, and some partners are better at benign conflicts.
The so-called benign conflict is mainly compared with the ineffective conflict. The problem reappears after invalid conflict, noise, no change or short-term change.
A benign conflict means that some changes occur in the conflict, and finally an agreement is reached through friendly negotiation to solve the problem.
However, there are always a few parts that can be changed through friendly negotiation. Goldman's marriage research found that 69% of conflicts will always exist, that is to say, if a couple is willing, the conflict over where to put slippers can last a lifetime.
In other words, in the end, to a great extent, we need to accept that our partner is different from our ideal partner.
The first is to see clearly, that is, to see your partner's real appearance and distinguish the difference between your real partner and your imaginary partner, such as:
A's partner should take care of himself in every possible way and be very sensitive to his own needs. He doesn't need to ask, and his partner can satisfy, but a real partner is not so sensitive. He needs ta to make demands, give clear guidance, and provide the satisfaction that ta needs.
The partner in B's heart doesn't really love himself, but only covets his own money, body or other values before he continues to be with himself, but the real partner loves ta very much, even if ta is not so rich and can't satisfy his partner's sexual needs every time, he still loves Ta; ……
Seeing clearly is the first step. After seeing it clearly, we have to make a choice: accept or change?
As the saying goes: change what I can change, accept what I can't change, and distinguish the two with wisdom.
Because religion rarely encourages divorce, there are only two choices, change or accept. In fact, of course, there is at least one choice, which is to leave/put down.
If one party thinks that work is the most important way to realize personal value, ta chooses to work hard and seldom pays for his family, while the other party thinks that family is the most important part of life and everything else has to give in.
After communication, the two sides fully understood each other, but could not reach an agreement. Then it is the right choice to let go of your joy and wish the other person find a suitable new life partner.
Separation does not mean the failure of the relationship, but also the growth of the two. Because I know what I want, I realize that the other person is really not suitable for me, so I decided to forget about it. This can also be called a benign breakup.
If those unchangeable differences are not so big, and the two sides still hope to go on together in the future, then maybe they can reach the last step of a relationship: love is so. The first is to see the real thing, treat it as it is, and then make a conscious choice: just love it.
Love is a choice. When a person has seen the true face of the other half, he still decides to love ta. Of course, this time it has changed from the kind of love that I fell in love with ta. At that time, I loved the fantasy in my heart. Now I love the real ta.
Write it at the end
Loving it sounds like the final state of this relationship. But in fact, this is not a feeling that life has finally come to an end, nor is it a fairy tale happy ending that will not change after that.
Because the relationship is composed of two people, and people's lives are constantly changing, so the relationship is naturally changing. Just because you love it now doesn't mean it will be the same in three years.
It can't be said that it is wrong to hold the mentality of reaching the finish line, but it is only the expectation of one person/both parties and may not be successful.
The most important significance of a relationship to an individual is that everyone in the relationship has fully tasted the rich experience brought by the relationship. No matter what the relationship is in the end, I will definitely not regret it.
Text/Guangzhou Mangrove Psychological Counseling Center Liang Qiaohui