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If our love stories lead one after another to a dead end, then we are following an unconscious script that has developed since childhood. Having deciphered it, you can change the role and start the story with a happy ending.
She always meets men who are not prone to serious relationships. He constantly runs into selfish women who use him. The repetition of these disappointments and unsuccessful romances sometimes gives the impression that the same play is being played out again and again, in which only the actors change, and the roles remain the same.
Some of them are easily recognizable. “Daddy” – they love him only as long as he is generous; the “breadwinner” from morning to night is busy providing for an eternally dissatisfied family; “Good Samaritan” saves those suffering from depression; “lonely soul” unsuccessfully, but stubbornly trying to make up for the lack of love.
The latter category includes, for example, 30-year-old Albina, editor of a fashion magazine. “I am recovering from three passionate love affairs that happened one after the other. Each time it was love, in which you merge with your loved one, and each time it was doomed.
It’s like it was said about me: “In love, no one deceives us, except ourselves.” When meeting a person, something inside me seems to detect in advance in him the ability to cause trouble. In love, more than anywhere else, we are victims first of all of ourselves, and not of anyone else.
Don’t consider yourself a victim
“The main lesson of history is that we do not learn from it,” says transactional analyst Vadim Petrovsky. – This statement is fully applicable to our love stories. We tend to climb to the edge of a cliff, and even jump off it, as if we were attracted by an unknown force.
What kind of power is this? Psychologists use the term “script”. It arises as a result of our unconscious decisions that we make in childhood, up to 13 years. At the heart of the script is our relationship with our parents and the relationship our parents have with each other.”
Seeing, for example, that father and mother quarrel every day, and having no other examples before their eyes, the child can conclude that mutual hostility is normal for any family, and decide to himself: I don’t want that, it’s better if I don’t have any there will be families.
If everyone stops considering themselves a victim, refuses this sweet and sour role, then the craving for suffering will weaken.
“There are other sources of predetermined disappointment,” continues Vadim Petrovsky. – For example, the betrayal of a close friend or girlfriend, which was experienced in childhood. Sudden death of a loved one. Breakups beyond our control—for example, a father is assigned to another city, a family moves, and friendships are broken.
All these events sink into the heart of the child. And they can be interpreted like this: “Do not enter into close relationships, they will end in failure anyway.” Then, as adults, we will unconsciously choose partners who keep their distance, remain emotionally unavailable. And the relationship will not develop again and again. But we do not see what role we play in this ourselves, and we complain: “I always come across the same ones!”
Psychotherapist Maryse Vaillant does not recognize such determinism: “If everyone ceases to consider himself a victim, refuses this sweet and sour role and admits – without self-blame – himself in part responsible for his failures, then the desire for suffering will weaken. To get out of the endless repetition, it is important to stop being afraid of it. It can be a negative experience, but it’s also possible that it prepares us for true love.”
When sadness guards
Some life stages can be a source of great fears: adolescence, when we are looking for our place in life, or old age, when we are afraid of losing it. The fear of living and the fear of dying continuously replace each other. Our love worries can mask anxiety and alleviate it when it becomes too painful. Like a tree beyond which the forest is not visible, they relieve us of anxiety on other occasions related to the very essence of our being.
“There is nothing more hurtful for a person than to wonder about the world and about their place in it,” explains psychoanalyst Catherine Bergeret-Amselek. “Death, that is, the realization of the finiteness of one’s life, and the fact that a person is always either a man or a woman, but not both together, that is, the realization of one’s incompleteness, upset us to the core.”
Thinking about the state of our planet, about wars, about diseases, can be the source of the same deep anxiety. In this context, the difficulties we face in love affairs can soothe us and help us feel alive. But it is important then to settle these difficulties in order to live a real, full life.
End the Oedipal Conflict
The meeting of lovers is exactly the moment when two unconscious people meet, recognize and choose each other, getting the opportunity to make up for what each of them so painfully lacked. However, until we realize what we need, what we suffer from, the change of partner does not make sense: we will only reproduce the same scenarios and experience failures.
According to psychoanalyst Catherine Bergeret-Amselek, even a good relationship with parents can become a source of love disappointments in the future: “When, having already become adults, we still remain captive to our oedipal complex, our love for a father or mother, we provoke failure in relationships with a partner. Because deep down we don’t really want to meet another person. On the contrary, we are trying to rediscover the connection with our beloved parent that we had in childhood, that is, such relationships that we already know and give us confidence.
“I have never been able to correctly assess the men with whom I dealt,” confirms Albina. “I wanted them to keep me at a distance, strong enough and independent, and at the same time weak enough to need me.” Later, she realized that it was the lack of motherly love that she felt so strongly from childhood that pushed her to participate in these unfulfilling relationships. In relationships with men, she sought to relive this feeling of absence – because she simply had no other experience of love.
“Without realizing it, we reproduce our earliest childhood experiences associated with parting with our mother,” explains Vadim Petrovsky. – Parents always return, but then leave again, so closeness for a child is always associated with parting. As we descend the stairs of the past, we involuntarily recall our childhood experience. Albina repeatedly lost relations on the principle of “closer-further” – a kind of love Tyanitolkay.
The repetition of situations can be beneficial to us if we eventually recognize it as a pattern.
50-year-old Pavel, an employee of the commercial department, has just gone through a divorce. He admits that he himself destroyed all the novels that happened to him. “At first everything is wonderful, but over time, as if to spite someone, I start to spoil everything and I can’t do anything about it,” says Pavel. “I become withdrawn, secretive, aggressive.”
Paul eventually noticed that he was reproducing the inability to communicate that he had observed in his childhood in his parents. “I was amazed when I realized that I was recreating the same situation – perhaps in order to overcome it one day. But it always comes out the same – I can’t do it. ”
According to Catherine Bergeret-Amselek, “Many of us identify ourselves with the parental couple. Regardless of our Oedipus complex, we can try to reproduce the same relationship that was between our parents, if we consider them good. Or we go from the opposite: if the relationship in the parental couple seems terrible to us, we sometimes want to correct this picture, reproduce the relationship that did not work out, in order to then try to fix it.
The repetition of situations can be useful for us if we eventually become aware of it as a pattern and can establish a distance between ourselves and this situation. At 20 years old and at 40 years old, we experience not the same thing, and each stage opens up new opportunities.
Help a stranger
A young actress, 26-year-old Ksenia falls more into the category of “good Samaritans”: “I often fell in love with men who needed help or suffered from depression. But I was different every time, and I grew up helping them. I hate it when they tell me: “Think of yourself, you are too kind, stop doing others!” But what if this participation – helping them – helps me myself? But what if I like this role of “savior”? I hate the thought of having to fight my repetitive love tendencies. First of all, because it is never possible to repeat the relationship exactly – each new meeting is unique. Some of them move me forward, even through pain. So, how about avoiding them?”
“Giving up a relationship is not necessary, but it would be interesting to ask yourself the question: why do I need such connections that hurt me?” – reflects the psychotherapist and sexologist Alain Eril.
“It is fortunate that there are people who are ready to help others,” says Maryse Vaillant. — What would become of this world if it were inhabited only by egoists? I don’t like this politically correct cliché: in order to love another, you must first of all love yourself. Say that to a truly generous woman and you will offend her. Although, of course, on this path you need to remember about yourself.
Forget about perfect love
“Our unfinished romances also indicate that we are afraid of a successful romance,” notes Alain Eril. For some, happy love, paradoxically, overturns the patterns of relationships in a couple that have been familiar since childhood. After all, even if these schemes cause unbearable pain, we are already used to them.
These are neurotic landmarks that give us confidence, and we prefer to cling to them instead of going towards happy love. Some are ready to do anything to not have to go through this experience, they are so afraid of losing themselves …
If our desire to make a romance successful becomes an obsession, we increase the risk of failure.
“The myth of perfect love has become part of our culture,” says Alain Eril. – The famous philosopher of Antiquity, Plato, created a kind of fantasy about merging: supposedly somewhere on earth there is our second “half”, which could complement us and give us everything that is missing. But just when we fail to distinguish between ourselves and others, love becomes destructive. And the couple turns into an oxymoron – into “gentle violence.”
A rather surprising conclusion follows from this: if our desire to make a novel successful becomes an obsession, we increase the risk of failure. Because in this case, the loved one becomes a means of our own movement towards perfection, and there is no place left for love itself.
“It is important not to condemn yourself for the “wrong” desires, but only to try to understand what they are.”
Vadim Petrovsky — psychologist, Doctor of Psychology
“There are no clues on this path,” Vadim Petrovsky explains, “no one can teach us how to get out of an unsuccessful life scenario. But it is in our power to create the necessary conditions for this.”
It is necessary to understand that the repetition of love failures is not accidental, and to accept at least part of the responsibility for this. That is, say to yourself: “Not only my partners, but I am doing something to ensure that everything happens the way it happens.” Ask yourself: what do I really want? What do I expect from a relationship? Do I really want them to last, or am I just pretending to? Here it is important not to condemn yourself for “wrong” desires, but only to try to understand what they are.
Do the exercise in front of a mirror. It can reveal things you didn’t notice about yourself before.
1. Go to the mirror and take a good look at yourself. Now imagine that now your mentor is next to you – a sage whose opinion you really value.
2. Then imagine that there is a person nearby who is passionately in love with you, and you cannot answer him. You will notice how your facial expression changes: your eyes look differently, your lips are folded differently. Describe these changes, note the differences, think about them.
3. Look in the mirror again and imagine that this time the one you love is next to you. You will understand how you want to look in his eyes. Maybe you expect to be seen as brave, or caring, or accommodating. Ask yourself: what traits of character I, on the contrary, try not to show? What is it – timidity, selfishness, stubbornness? Sometimes the very thing we are trying to hide is what others notice about us first.
Talk to a loved one you trust. Ask him to be your “mirror” and describe in detail how he sees you, from eye color and other external details to suggestions about what feelings are most often reflected on your face. This feedback may be a hint for you in which direction to move. But do not try to change the usual course of action to the exact opposite: this will be an anti-script, not a way out of it.
Look for your path. Understanding your true desires and goals is a much more effective means of change than a hasty decision to “do things differently.”