The reason why partners quarrel and demand too much from each other is often because they understand love differently. Psychologist Alexander Kolmanovsky helps to sort out a difficult feeling and explains why admitting one’s own weaknesses will help strengthen the union.
We will start unexpectedly with work on the dictionary. Our psyche is very verbalized. People think in words, although they do not realize it. To understand the complexities of relations between men and women, we must agree on what we will call love. There are many different opinions and descriptions of this feeling. But there is such an idea of love in which everyone agrees and understands it in the same way — love for oneself.
When do we realize that we are loved? When a person in love comes exactly when it is very necessary, and goes into the shadows when we feel good. He rejoices in the pleasures that we receive from life, no matter how much they are associated with it. When he experiences our failures with us and reacts to our emotions. This is the feeling in the focus of which any «I» would definitely like to be.
It happens the other way around: at a meeting, a person immediately begins to speak out and describe today’s circumstances, without looking into our eyes, without asking how we are doing. Or asks the question: “Where are you without me?” Or he claims that you somehow communicate with his mother in a wrong way. This is not a feeling that any «I» would like to be the object of. This ratio is perceived with a minus sign. No matter how a person comments on it to friends or a psychologist, none of us will consider it really love towards ourselves. And so we see that in our interactions there are these two completely different beginnings.
Most love problems and mismatches are due to the fact that we do not call a spade a spade. Let’s agree: by love we will understand the feeling referred to in the first example. That is, our need for a partner to feel good in a relationship.
The second feeling is the need for ourselves to be comfortable, it must be called differently. To find the exact definition, let’s look at what feelings the need to take care of, take care of looks like. It is easy to see that this is close to the feelings of an ideal parent. Why ideal? Because there are no those among us who do not need anything in return for themselves. But this feeling, this love, we will call a mature feeling.
Continuing the analogy, it is easy to see that the need for guardianship is very close to children. It is not natural for a child, when he meets a parent in the evening, to first look into the parent’s eyes and ask if he is tired. The child begins to speak immediately. He gets frustrated when a parent gets sick. How did it get sick? You are a parent, you must. This second feeling is called infantile.
The need to take care of me, to take care of me, to do well, is natural for any living organism. And the problem is not in it, but in substitution. When a person says: “I love you so much, but you don’t even call me.” The problem is when we don’t say to a person: «You know, I feel like I’m using you more than I’m giving you, and I’m very grateful that you are holding such a blow.»
Women and men turn to psychologists with problems and claims to each other. It is clear that they rarely come to a specialist to share their joy.
And with all the variety of plots, the presence of one of the main mechanisms that determine the success or failure of relationships (especially long-term ones) becomes noticeable — the feeling that drives each of us.
In real life, in any person there are both principles: to take and to give. Even the most self-sufficient person cannot be free from the need to receive something. Conversely, the most selfish person sometimes feels the need to share something with others. The question is proportion.
It is very easy to distinguish between these two beginnings in oneself. An infantile feeling makes you react to the actions of a partner, and a mature one — to the emotions that moved him. The easiest way to understand this is in relationships with children. When a three-year-old child is naughty, rude and throws objects, we understand that he is not bad, but he is bad. We understand that he is tired, sleepy or hungry. We are trying to meet his needs. This means responding not to actions, but to feelings.
Imagine that you are talking to someone in your hearts on the phone. This person causes you a lot of tension and says unpleasant words. He «started» you, and you acted incorrectly — you threw a smoking pipe. And suddenly, with peripheral vision, you notice that a loved one saw and heard it. What is the most comfortable reaction in this situation can be imagined? In one case, he says: “What do you allow yourself, how do you talk to people?” This is an obvious reaction with a minus sign. Reaction with a plus sign: “What, did she get you so much? Was it unpleasant? This is a reaction not to actions, but to feelings.
The ability to participate more than to wait or demand participation, to question and listen more than to speak out, is connected not only with the mysterious coincidence of two people, but also with the so-called chemistry. This possibility or its absence is connected with general life tone. The more a person is satisfied with his life, the more opportunities he has to give up momentary interests or desires and pay tribute to the desires and interests of his neighbor. And vice versa, the more he is exhausted, the more difficult it is for him to step over himself. This can be compared to physical pain: when something hurts a lot, even an innocent question can cause irritation.
To put this knowledge into practice, take a piece of paper. Divide it in half with a vertical bar. In the upper left half, briefly describe the misconduct: some kind of puncture in a relationship when you ignored someone or insisted on something capriciously. On the right, write what your partner’s reaction would be ideal for you. Then, in the left column under the first entry, just as succinctly describe the offensive act of your partner: some phrase, some expressive manifestation of inattention. In the right column, try to describe how you could respond to this in an ideal form, if you had time to think about the feelings that moved him.
To be able to rise above your own feelings, give them up and pay tribute to the feelings of a partner, you need not only understanding and analytical skill. This requires strength. The presence or absence of such a resource is determined by the general vital tone of a person. How satisfied he is with his life in general, how often he experiences an upsurge and how long he stays in this state. And here self-acceptance plays a big role, as far as we are able to recognize our weaknesses and not blame ourselves for them.
People with high and low self-acceptance are easily distinguished by their tolerance and criticality. People with high self-acceptance condemn the braggart, not the braggart, the mess, but not the slob. This means that they are able to condemn their own shortcomings in their own inner plane, without extending this condemnation to themselves as a whole.
People with low self-acceptance do not condemn weaknesses, but their carriers. For them, people themselves are divided into good and bad, and not their qualities.
Because of such an internal state, a person is in conflict, in a situation of contradiction, and it is difficult for him to pay tribute to his partner. He will do his best to insist on his own. And not because he looks at things differently, it’s just that he is very afraid to be once again convicted of being wrong.
Therefore, for the prospects of relations, it is important to pay attention to self-acceptance, inner fulfillment, practice tolerance and fight one’s criticality. Self-acceptance, pleasure or displeasure from oneself, is not such a tricky thing. From time immemorial, it has been customary to look at the psyche as something vague and mystical. In fact, the psyche is one of the life support systems of the body. The same as the musculoskeletal, circulatory, digestive and other systems. And like all these systems, it was formed over millions of years of evolution and natural selection, adapting the individual in an optimal way to the conditions of existence of the species. And for the existence of the species, it was very important that all individuals interact positively and constructively with each other.
Since those ancient evolutionary times, the human psyche has been «sharpened» in such a way that an individual is good only when it is good for those around him. Therefore, to increase your own self-acceptance, you need to look at how comfortable you are with your immediate environment.