Contents
Couples therapist and best-selling author of Captive Breeding, Esther Perel, who has counseled couples for many years, has come to the conclusion that our failures in love are due to uncompromising feelings. She voices the most common misconceptions that prevent real love from being found.
1. Loving spouses always tell each other the truth.
Is it worth telling your loved one that he has extra pounds and wrinkles? Or humiliate your spouse with a confession about an old affair? Honesty can be very cruel, and knowledge can hurt.
I recommend that clients do not tell their partners about things that they are unlikely to quickly digest and forget. Before you lay out all the ins and outs, evaluate the possible damage from your words. In addition, maximum openness reduces our mutual attraction and creates the notorious “close relatives” effect.
2. Sexual problems indicate relationship problems.
It is generally accepted that emotionally healthy couples lead an active sex life, and the lack of sex is necessarily associated with a decline in the sphere of feelings. It is not always so.
Love and desire can be related, but they can also conflict or develop in parallel, and this is the paradox of erotic attraction. Two people can be very attached to each other outside the bedroom, but their sex life can be very insipid or simply non-existent.
3. Love and passion go hand in hand
For centuries, sex in marriage was perceived as a «marital duty.» Now we marry for love and after the wedding we expect that passion and attraction will not leave us for many more years. Couples cultivate a sense of emotional intimacy, expecting it to make their sex life even brighter.
For some people, this is true. Security, trust, comfort, constancy stimulate their attraction. But for many things are different. Close emotional contact kills passion: it is awakened by a sense of mystery, discovery, crossing some invisible bridge.
The reconciliation of eroticism and everyday life is not a problem that we must solve, it is a paradox that must be accepted. The art is to learn how to be «far and near» in marriage at the same time. This can be achieved by creating your own personal space (intellectual, physical, emotional) — your secret garden, into which no one enters.
4. Male and female sexuality are inherently different.
Many believe that male sexuality is primitive and more determined by instincts than emotions, and female desire is changeable and requires special conditions.
In reality, male sexuality is just as emotionally involved as female sexuality. Depression, anxiety, anger, or, conversely, the feeling of falling in love strongly affect sexual drive. Yes, men are more likely to use sex as an anti-stress and mood regulator. But at the same time, they are very worried about their own viability and the fear of not pleasing their partner.
Don’t think of men as biorobots: they are just as emotionally involved as you are.
5. The ideal union is based on equality
In happy unions, people complement each other, and do not fight for equal rights and opportunities. They exalt the unique qualities of their partners without trying to prove their superiority to them.
We live in an era of self-criticism and spend too much time indulging in self-flagellation and looking for imperfections in people and relationships. But for the sake of our own good, it is worth learning to criticize less and appreciate more what we have — ourselves, our lives, our partners and our marriage.