How mirages of love are born

“For five years I was in love with my colleague and had no doubt that he was not indifferent to him. He looked for me with his eyes, smiled at me with a special smile, touched, as if by chance, my clothes … When the authorities decided to transfer him to another unit, I was afraid that I would lose him, and ventured to confess. With a sinking heart, she invited him to visit her. But he didn’t come. In the following days, he avoided me, and I felt humiliated, crushed. But this catastrophe opened my eyes: our “great love” existed only in my imagination!” 27-year-old Elena is annoyed.

She is not alone in her disappointment: such one-sided romances are not uncommon. Many women in their dreams create their own «cinema», appointing a man who feels only friendly sympathy or polite indifference for the role of Prince Charming. And sincerely believe in the power of this invented love.

(Not) safe distance

Some prefer to keep in themselves for years the ideal passion that they themselves have created, because in fact they are afraid of the intensity of feelings at a real meeting, they are afraid of being absorbed, destroyed by their desire. The invented romance protects against the need to act, against a reality that can be too frightening. Some of us perceive the decrease in the distance between ourselves and a potential partner as a danger, and imaginary love allows us to keep the object of our feelings at a distance.

“Elena, having invited a colleague to her home, reduced the distance between them too sharply,” explains Marina Baskakova, a Gestalt therapist. — From the looks and smiles immediately into the intimate space — the house. For a man, her proposal most likely looked sudden and unmotivated. And Elena herself was not prepared for such a transition: she was very open and was not protected, hence such a painful experience of rejection.

We learn to set a distance between ourselves and others in childhood. “The girl sits on her father’s lap, he carries her in his arms, she tries: now closer, now farther,” continues Marina Baskakova. — Later, in adolescence, when she has female forms, the distance changes, new rules of communication are established. Thanks to this experience, becoming an adult, a woman intuitively feels at what distance it is convenient for her to communicate with a man, when to shorten it, and when to increase it.

However, not everyone has this opportunity. If a girl does not know her father, does not see him, or the father is estranged and does not take part in the life of the family, she fails to experience «approach and distance». Having matured, she may feel insecure and insecure in communicating with men, and the place of real relationships may be taken by invented love.

Education of the senses

“I was twenty-five, I studied at the screenwriting course and fell in love with my teacher. We met to discuss my work, it was extremely interesting with him. I dreamed that he would kiss me, but I did not dare to take the first step. For a few more years we met rarely and on business — and I carefully composed all these “cases”. He never gave me reason to think that he felt for me anything but friendly sympathy. But it took me 9 years to figure it out. I could have gotten married a long time ago and given birth to children, if not for my “immortal passion,” 35-year-old Galina regrets the lost time.

Jungian analyst Lev Khegai admits that this time was not wasted: “Love is a kind of training of feelings. In reality, almost nothing happens, all events unfold in the inner world. Without taking any action, we delve into the shades of our experiences. By building a relationship with our ideal in dreams, we build our own personality. In adolescence, almost everyone experiences such platonic love, this is a necessary stage of self-knowledge and formation. That is why romantic infatuation often arises during a midlife crisis, indicating a new direction in personality development.

The question is to distinguish the line that separates fantasy from self-deception, so that dreams enrich reality rather than obscure it.

Illusion of unity

“The darkness of low truths is dearer to me than the uplifting deception,” wrote Pushkin. And he asked his beloved: “But pretend /…./ I myself am glad to be deceived!” Often we compose both our feelings and the feelings of our partner. And our passions are born from misunderstandings. Marilyn Monroe said that she fell madly in love with Arthur Miller, as he was the first man who did not offer her to sleep with him immediately. Later, he confessed to her that he did not make any attempts, because he was terribly afraid! What she took for tact turned out to be a fear of failure. This union turned out to be the strongest among her marriages and lasted more than four years.

No one is immune from misinterpretations. Each of us throws a chaste veil over those traits that he does not like in a partner, and tries to close his eyes to the difficulties and unpleasant sides of the relationship. But here it all depends on the sense of proportion. When we deny the reality of another in order to continue to love him, the relationship becomes painful. Catherine for three years hoped for an affair with a man who avoided her.

“The morning after our very first night, Igor warned me: “I’m not in love with you!” But I didn’t believe him. Instead, I began to interpret his behavior «in terms of psychology», to explain it in any way I wanted: he defends himself because of previous love failures; he doubts my feelings… and so on. He seemed to me a shy person, unable to express his feelings. I was convinced that eventually the magic of my love would cause him to be reborn. The more he moved away from me, the more I became attached to him. I acted against all logic!”

Moving away from the pain of a breakup, we “cut off the tail piece by piece”, dooming ourselves to the appearance of new emotional wounds that cause serious damage to our self-esteem.

Loss of a foothold

Parting is sad and brings suffering, even when it happens on our initiative. If the pain exceeds our ability to survive it, we try to stop time in order to artificially support the existence of a non-existent passion.

This happened to Larisa, the former mistress of a married politician. Ten years after the breakup, she talks about him as if nothing has been decided yet. Despite their separation, the fact that he recently became a father, a whole string of other mistresses, Larisa continues to call him, she is still sure that they are on the same wavelength and he still loves her.

According to Marina Baskakova, if we are well aware of “who we are, what we are capable of, what our values ​​and needs are, in the event of a break in relations, we recover easier and faster. A true self-image is the core of our personality. It, like the spine, gives us stability and flexibility. However, we do not always find this confidence in the families in which we grow up.

If the father and mother have a strained relationship, the child does not feel safe, not even understanding what the matter is. Or a girl often receives double messages, in which love is combined with disapproval (“You are not beautiful, but my favorite”), or depreciating (“Nothing works for you …”), she does not develop a stable image of herself myself».

Then parting with a loved one for her is not just separation from a loved one, but also the loss of a foothold. And it may seem that an illusory support is better than an endless sense of uncertainty.

It takes two to love

Behind love misunderstandings lies an unconscious need to avoid suffering. In this sense, fictional love has non-fictional advantages. If we suffer in it, then we do it at our own discretion, although we rarely realize this.

“Ideal love is not subject to change, unlike a real feeling,” emphasizes Lev Khegay. — After all, this is love not for a real person, but for an image created by our imagination. This is a pure romantic experience, purged of any other motives: self-interest, sex, plans for the future. It is immortal — and this is our particle of eternity: we feel that in ourselves there is something timeless. This is the best we can do — the standard of our love. And, like any standard, it serves as a measure for other attachments, we compare them with this “pure sample”.

Marina Baskakova adds that the ideal is convenient because it is clear how to handle it: “sit in the tower and wait. But a real person’s mood changes, he can get tired, get sick, be out of sorts — and what to do with him? Unclear!»

In love relationships there is always a share of unpredictability and uncertainty. Fantasies save us from risk and disappointment — but at the same time from the inexhaustible creative possibilities hidden in the experience of mutual feeling. It is wonderful to know the tenderness, attention, kindness of another person! We discover mutual attraction, realize and express it. We find in each other an inexhaustible source of novelty and joy. And all this is real.

Take a step towards

“Rapprochement is always some risk,” says Gestalt therapist Marina Baskakova. “And sometimes the need for security is so high that it begins to interfere with contact. Does this mean that you need to withdraw and not communicate with anyone? Of course not. You need to pay more attention to your safety.

Let us make sure that the first steps towards the other are small, gradual. There are different stages of rapprochement: acquaintance — friendship — flirting — close relationships. We never pass from one stage to another «finally and irrevocably», we kind of oscillate between them, from time to time returning to the previous one.

Courtship rituals, not only among humans, but also among birds and animals, are based on a change in distance, on approach and distance. This is the erotic game: what if I come a little closer? And a little more? If the other is against it, I will back off a bit, wait, and then try again. Idealizing love knows no limits: “I will give you everything!” But the other, perhaps, is not ready for our “everything”. And we experience it as a crushing defeat: too much is rejected.

Therefore, it is better to save for ourselves the opportunity to retreat to those relationships in which we feel more confident. Watching the reactions of the other and sensitively capturing our own impulses, we examine ourselves: “here I am calm, here I am a little anxious — but I manage with this, now I better take a step back; and now I, perhaps, dare to risk.