Go crazy with love: why do we need it?

We decided that we are stronger than love. They tried to take control of her, domesticate her. We read articles that teach how to evaluate a potential partner, how to calculate risks.

We use dating sites to expand the circle and choose for sure. And some — not only men, but also women — try to insure against failures by abandoning long-term relationships.

But often they lose their heads from love. Romanticism elevated crazy love to the rank of shrine, and although times have changed, it is in no hurry to leave the pedestal. Perhaps the whole point is the thirst for the absolute, which is inherent in human nature itself. And our society, which has assimilated the values ​​of consumption, nevertheless has not put an end to love madness.

Everyone is at risk

“I didn’t meet her, I recognized her,” Ivan, who has been madly in love with Svetlana for several months, is trying to explain. This is usually the first symptom. Crazy love covers with a head. In these cases, we do not ask ourselves if this is love. We say: yes, it finally happened to me too. Even if the subject of passion is not to our taste, even if it is the complete opposite of the one who suits us, we “recognize” it. But at the same time, we stop recognizing ourselves. We can not resist, as if having suddenly lost our own will.

“Immediately, everything rushed forward at full speed,” Ivan continues. Everything was decided on the first night. Fate has bound us. It’s not in our power.» Svetlana is not yet 20 years old, and Ivan is 54, and he has three children, and the youngest of them is the same age as Svetlana. “When you are a normal, civilized, reasonable person,” he says, “you know that this is impossible. That you can’t do that. But you still go for it, because you can’t do otherwise. That’s the real madness.»

Everyone who has ever gone crazy with love chooses words from the realm of the supernatural: «magic», «enchantment», «miracle», «obsession» … There is no word to describe this experience, both sweet and terrifying — the feeling of losing oneself. The feeling that we suddenly became capable of everything — both the worst and the best, went beyond a certain limit.

When George suddenly appeared in Milena’s life, she was 35 years old. Married, calm mother of two children 3 and 7 years old. Never could she have foreseen this cataclysm. “From our very first meeting, I physically felt how something was penetrating me, how something was melting deep inside. For the sake of George, I was ready for anything. Sometimes at night I waited for everyone in the house to fall asleep and went on a date with him. We made love like our days were numbered. And then I came back like a thief, but without the slightest feeling of guilt.

Dependence on the body, on the heart, obsession, transformation… But also obsession, regression, hallucinations, paranoia… The whole psychiatric vocabulary can be drawn into the description. Elena, now 45, still wonders how she could wait for hours on the landing for Sergei, whom she “adored” and who drove her crazy with his secrets and unpredictable disappearances.

“He was my Grey, my wolf,” she recalls three years later. — Gloomy, wild, mysterious. Love at first sight on a dating site. He put off meeting in real life for a long time, once he even changed his account, but I found him. The longer I waited, the more I dreamed about him. The day we finally met, I already belonged to him entirely. My friends were worried. But not me. He came to me to make love. I didn’t know anything about him, neither his real name, nor his address, nor his place of work… He belonged completely to me while he was with me, but remained unpredictable and elusive. He closed the door behind him — and I did not know when he would return. Because of this, I was literally crazy about him. It was like an addiction and lasted for about a year. When he finally disappeared, I went through a real withdrawal.

Yes, love can make you crazy. It’s not too strong a word. Specialists in our deepest mechanisms (psychiatrists, biologists, etc.) confirm this. Even in the XNUMXst century, even on the Internet. True, the question of terms remains open.

“We often call love a period of passionate love, strong attraction, when we are essentially excited by our own imagination,” explains Jungian analyst and psychodramatherapist Tatyana Lyachina. “The mystery that envelops the object of our passion encourages us to finish its appearance in accordance with our own wishes — or fears and anticipations, which can be no less attractive. No one knows better than ourselves what traits and properties will excite us the most. That’s what we give beautiful strangers.»

No wonder we are ready to lose our heads over them. And with particular ease it is lost by those who considered themselves a model of rationality.

“I was sure that I would never fall in love, that I sensibly evaluate myself and possible partners,” says 24-year-old student of the Mekhmat, XNUMX-year-old Maria. — I was comfortable with online dating, I was proud of the fact that I approach dates “like a man”: I satisfy the need for physical intimacy and pleasant communication, avoiding difficulties. But recently I fell in love, completely lost my head and, frankly, I don’t know what to do now and how it will end. I am both happy and terribly unhappy at the same time, I am glad that this man is in my life, but I am wildly afraid of losing him! What if I’m just another online acquaintance for him?

The virtual world can protect us from others, but it does not protect us from ourselves, there is always a risk.

beyond the mind

But is there a greater danger in the world? Love makes us drop our defenses, stand upside down and experience an unprecedented rise … Yes — as long as we do not go beyond mild insanity, “banal neurosis”, objects psychiatrist-addictologist Michel Raynaud:

“We are talking about insanity because the biological state of the brain is really changing, it works in a super-mode: there is an increased activity of the pleasure-seeking zones in it and a decrease in the activity of the critical analysis zones … The state of complete concentration on a single object resembles the mechanisms of addiction: the only pleasure, the only person takes the whole place and becomes essential to our inner stability, responsible for all happiness and suffering. Far beyond the mind.

Most of us experience this at some point. And this is for the best, otherwise no one would leave their parents in their teens, and couples who entered into marriage would never break up … That is the value of such madness that it allows us to perform actions that we otherwise could not imagine would».

The allure of incipient love is genetically programmed into us to ensure the survival of the species, neuroscientists have proven. It takes a little madness to overcome the anxiety of communicating with a stranger and blindly attach to him. At least for the time it takes to have offspring and grow to an age when the child can stand on its own. Approximately three years, often less and only in rare cases more — to the great despair of «passion addicts».

“The prototype of this love,” continues Michel Reynaud, “probably the love of an infant and his mother is an intimate relationship without boundaries, consisting of dependence and absolute satisfaction. Perhaps it is to this original state that we aspire and regain it in mad love.

Our first connection. Vital. To be together, but merged together. A risky move, because psychotherapists warned us against the merger …

“If you feel that the other should belong to you, as if without him you were doomed to death or suffering, such “love” can become insidious,” explains Tatyana Lyachina. — Then it turns into an insatiable hunger, which gives rise to possessive feelings, jealousy and hatred. It is this kind of affect that can drive us to crime when our ability to control is reduced.”

This will end soon

What to do with it? Usually, passion subsides on its own, sometimes even before the notorious three years have passed. For some, this is the end of the novel, for others, the transition to love.

Love madness is usually short-lived. Except for borderline personalities, in whom a feeling can break all the brakes. Only those who already had a mental illness in a latent form really go crazy.

“Love evokes powerful emotions and can reveal weaknesses in the personality, provoking psychiatric pathologies,” explains Michel Reynaud. — Then the feeling of love turns into chronic delirium, paranoid confidence in the betrayal of a partner, delusions of jealousy (more common in men); delusional belief that a person who does not have feelings for you actually loves you — with erotomania (more often in women).

So, love is just a provoking factor.

“But it is very difficult to assess the risks in advance. It is always possible, for example after a suicide, to identify elements that would allow one to guess that this will happen. But who could have predicted this? Our abilities to withstand adversity or be broken by fate are endlessly varied. And psychiatry is not an exact science,” emphasizes Michel Reynaud.

Yes, this is not too reassuring: we have little chance of finding out in advance how vulnerable we are. But that’s no reason not to try. After all, we have a chance to find not only a crazy hobby, but also love for life.

“When we return projections, love madness passes, it may seem that love is over,” says Tatyana Lyachina, “but if the relationship continues, we recognize the other no longer as a reflection of our fantasies, but as a person, we see in him not God, but also not a friend, but a man or a woman. Erich Fromm writes about this feeling: “Immature love says, “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says, «I need you because I love you.» At the heart of this feeling is not a shortage, but an excess, a desire not to receive, but to share.