How long, how short: how long does love live?

How long will we be together? It is unlikely that lovers will be found who would not be disturbed by this question. “I was married twice, and both times ended in divorce in the sixth year,” says 38-year-old Valentina, “but I do not lose hope of meeting someone with whom I can live my whole life.”

What determines the duration of our relationship? Biological laws say that romantic feeling is a fleeting chemical process, designed for three years. Our physical attraction to the object of passion is associated with increased testosterone and estrogen, falling in love with dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin.

“The chemical processes that take place in the brain seem to blind us,” says neuroscientist Lucie Vincent. “We don’t notice each other’s shortcomings, we feel integrity and completeness, and we are emotionally dependent on a partner.”

The strength of this feeling allowed the couple to stay together for millions of years for the survival of the child, and after about three years it faded away. “Passion, romantic infatuation inevitably ends,” comments anthropologist Helen Fisher, who has explored the nature of love for almost half a century. “Our body is simply not adapted to live in the heat of passion for a long time – it is energetically very costly.”

When we stop receiving “supportive” brain signals, we seem to wake up: the satellite no longer seems irresistible to us, on the contrary, we suddenly find many shortcomings in it. It seems that we were deceived or we made a mistake in choosing. And since the partner is experiencing about the same thing at this moment, there is a danger of a break. Mutual reproaches, dissatisfaction, claims undermine relationships. And this is just one of the risk factors.

Multilateral exchange

Chemistry alone is not enough to explain success or failure in a relationship. Personal and social experience matters just as much. After all, life together is multifaceted.

The two interact as economic partners – they run a joint household, earning a livelihood and maintaining the social status of the couple. They also engage in sexual contact, bonding physically and emotionally. In addition, the two unite on an unconscious level when their fantasies, anxieties and defense mechanisms enter into a dialogue. Finally, each of the partners realizes himself, his individuality – both in the family and in relationships with other people. All these levels form a complex system.

“Life together is confusing and ambiguous by definition,” notes psychoanalyst and anthropologist Eric Smadja. — Not only because we are potentially conflict-prone and critical of each other. Each partner goes through tumultuous turning points. Among these critical stages, I can name the beginning of a joint life, socialization: getting to know friends and relatives on both sides, the birth of a child: the transition to the status of parents, and so on. These crises can traumatize both men and women.”

withstand hate

Another difficulty of living together is in our illusory idea that real, living relationships should be based only on love. “Feelings are always ambivalent,” explains psychoanalyst Svetlana Fedorova. There is a place for both hatred and rejection in a relationship. For many of us, this thought is unacceptable: how can you have good feelings for another after you have hated him?

It is better to hide your negative emotions in every possible way, mask them so that your partner does not guess about them. In fact, how partners are able to cope with this ambivalence – withstand (sometimes) disgust for each other and still continue to love – largely depends on the strength of their union.

These mixed emotions awaken in us already in infancy, when we strive to merge with our beloved object (mother), to be a part of it, and at the same time we try to absorb it, to subdue it. And when it gets out of our control, jealousy wakes up in us, and with it – rage and aggression, a desire to bite, to seize.

And subsequently, forces, attraction and repulsion, continue to alternate, replacing each other depending on the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

“In a life together, the desire to hold, assign, inflict pain arises at certain moments, but it is impossible to predict them and establish clear time criteria due to their blurriness,” says Eric Smadzha. – Therefore, to say that love lasts three years or seven years is stupid and meaningless. In times of crisis, when we perceive the other as an enemy, hatred almost inevitably flares up. We see a pursuer in a partner, and we have a natural desire to play ahead of the curve and destroy the source of the threat.”

Is it easy to accept your partner’s negative feelings? Of course not. But it is easier for someone who knows how to cope with their own ambivalence. And this ability, according to psychoanalytic theory, depends on the infant’s experience, on how calmly the mother accepted the child’s aggression: she continued to love or pushed away, left, giving rise to the infant’s distrust of the world and the fear of showing his negative feelings to another.

accept differences

If we often experience strong anxiety, it is possible that we will be tempted to find a partner with whom communication does not threaten anything, does not promise any risk.

“Today, many enter into relationships built solely on respect and shared values,” notes Svetlana Fedorova. – For example, a narcissistically vulnerable person who has a sad experience of parting, rejection, chooses a safe partner for himself. They start a family, start going to theaters, cooking classes, running in the morning. They feel good together, but as children, as friends. At the same time, they in every possible way avoid the manifestation of sexuality or have sex simply “for health”.

Agreeing with each other in advance and seemingly not noticing the differences, such partners do not actually realize many of their desires. Such relationships gradually freeze, lose energy. It turns out that ambivalence is a necessary condition for the development of a couple. But what allows the two to keep in touch despite the intense destructive feelings that occasionally burst into their lives?

“Thanks to another person, we receive affection that embodies for us either paternal or maternal care,” says Eric Smadzha. “The intricate role-playing game begins: sometimes the father dominates, sometimes the mother.” Such relationships satisfy our need for protection and help to recover mentally.

empathize with each other

“Love can be called that only when people have gone through some kind of crisis, endured the inconsistency of each other’s feelings and learned to respect their differences,” continues the psychoanalyst. “It is our dissimilarity that all the time fuels sexual interest and the desire to know the other, to symbolically merge with him.”

Sexual contact gives us that blissful feeling of oneness with another, but only for a moment. The rest of the time we have to endure the uncertainty and otherness of the other.

“To love means not to limit, not to determine the other with your expectations, but to see him in some free space, to give him the opportunity for self-realization,” Svetlana Fedorova reflects. – When spouses come to see me with a tangle of mutual claims, I ask everyone to tell a story from childhood, when they felt as unhappy, scared, lonely, helpless as possible.

And if a partner, while listening, is able to join this story, show sympathy, share the pain of another, I see this as a sign of the couple’s viability. At such a moment, they stop interrupting each other and create space for the expression of the other, giving up their own selfishness.

Yes, we are all fundamentally self-centered. But we cannot develop ourselves if we are not curious about the other. Only in dialogue with others can we comprehend ourselves. Do not expect anything from a partner other than what he wants for himself, and rejoice with him in the realization of himself, his being – this is, perhaps, one of the complex and beautiful formulas for a long and happy relationship.