We express love in different ways: with kind words, long glances and fleeting touches, but also with gifts, flowers or hot pancakes for breakfast … What role do signs of love play in a couple’s life? And what traps lie in wait for us here?
Psychologies: Warmth, affection, care — words that are close in meaning. But when it comes to love relationships, shades of meaning are important …
Svetlana Fedorova: The word “care” is related to the Old Russian “zob”, which means “food, food” and “zobatisya” — “to eat”. «Zobota» once meant the desire to provide food, feed. And during courtship, we show the future partner that we are able to be good housewives or fathers of the family, that we will be able to feed the offspring.
Feeding is the creation of life and the first love we receive from a mother. Without this care, the baby will not survive. We also experience erotic experiences for the first time in the early child-mother relationship. These are hugs and strokes that are not related to the satisfaction of basic needs. Feeling the touch, the baby feels attractive to the mother, they both enjoy contact, tactile and visual.
How does our view of love change with age?
S.F.: As long as the child exists in merger with the mother, care and affection are two sides of the same coin. But the father opens the dyad “mother-baby”: he has his own relationship with the mother, which takes her away from the baby. The child is frustrated and tries to figure out how to have fun without the presence of the mother.
In intimate contact, one cannot ignore the feelings and needs of the other.
Gradually, he establishes connections with other people, by the age of 3-5 his imagination turns on, fantasies arise about a special connection between his parents, which is not at all like his relationship with his mother. His ability to explore his body and enjoy it translates into the ability to fantasize about an erotic connection between people and about the pleasure that can be obtained in contact with another.
Caring separates from erotica?
S.F.: You can say so. Care is associated with control and hierarchy: the one who is taken care of is in a weaker, more vulnerable position than the one who takes care of him. And sensual, sexual relations are dialogical. Care implies anxiety and troubles, and eroticism is almost not connected with anxiety, it is a space of mutual pleasure, exploration, play. Caring is often devoid of empathy. We can flawlessly care for a partner and still not try to understand what really bothers him.
And sexual contact is an emotional exchange, a kind of attunement to the desires and needs of another. Caressing each other, we enter into a dialogue, flirt: do you accept me? If one does something wrong, the partner will move away or otherwise make it clear that he does not like it. And vice versa. In intimate contact, one cannot ignore the feelings and needs of the other. Relations cannot be full and trusting if the partners do not care about each other.
It turns out that taking care of a partner is somehow different from taking care of a parent about a child?
S.F.: Certainly. Each of us sometimes gets tired, experiences severe stress, feels sick and helpless, and we need to understand that there is someone to rely on at such a moment.
The partner, who is enveloped in warmth and care like a cobweb, falls into an infantile position
But sometimes one of the partners takes a totally childish position, and the other, on the contrary, a parental one. For example, a girl, having fallen in love, begins to take care of a young man non-stop: cook, clean, care. Or the husband has been housekeeping for years, and the wife lies on the couch with a migraine and takes care of herself. Such relationships come to a standstill.
Why at a dead end, what hinders development?
S.F.: When one hopes to earn the love of another with his attention, such relations are akin to commodity-money, they do not provide an opportunity for development. And the partner, who is enveloped in warmth and care like a cobweb, falls into an infantile position. Even making a career, earning, he seems to remain at his mother’s breast. Doesn’t really mature.
Where do we get such scripts from?
S.F.: Overprotectiveness is often associated with childhood experiences where you had to work hard to earn the love of a parent. Mom said: clean the apartment, get a five, and I will give you …, buy … and even kiss. This is how we get used to earning love, and this scenario seems to be the most reliable.
We are afraid to try something else, it is more convenient for us to adapt to the needs of a partner. Unfortunately, such guardianship sometimes turns into hatred — when the guardian suddenly realizes that he will never receive a return. Because true love cannot be obtained for caring. The only path to love is the acceptance of the otherness of the other and the realization of one’s own separateness.
We want to be taken care of, but also respected for independence. How to maintain a balance?
S.F.: Timely talk about your desires, including sexual ones. The one who gives a lot, sooner or later begins to expect something in return. A woman who voluntarily irons her husband’s shirts day after day ends one day, she wakes up and hopes for reciprocal care, but instead she hears reproaches. She has resentment. But the reason is that all this time she did not even stutter about her interests.
Anyone who feels more and more unheard, unaccepted, should ask himself: at what point did I step on my desires? How can the situation be corrected? It is easier to listen to ourselves when we are in contact with our “I want” and “I can” — with our inner child, parent, adult.
The real help is not in doing everything for another, but in respect for his resources, inner strength
It is necessary that the partner was ready to take different positions. So that your request to “take it in your arms” does not sound: “What is this? I want too! Handle it yourself.» If someone in a couple does not feel his inner child, then he will not hear the desires of the other.
It would be nice to avoid the danger of weighing on the scales who took care of whom and to what extent!
S.F.: Yes, and therefore it is very useful to do something together: cook food, play sports, ski, raise children, travel. In joint projects, you can think about yourself and about something else, discuss, argue, find a compromise.
Old age, illness of one of the partners often puts the relationship into total custody mode …
S.F.: Uncertainty about the attractiveness of your aging body interferes with intimate contacts. But caress is needed: it helps to maintain the energy of life in each other. The pleasure of intimacy doesn’t exactly disappear with age. Yes, concern for another causes a desire to care, not to caress.
But real help isn’t about doing everything for someone else. And in respect for its resources, inner strength. In the ability to see not only his needs, but also his potential, aspirations of a higher order. The best that a lover can give is to allow the partner to cope with the routine to the maximum and live his life on his own. Such care is constructive.
What to read about it?
The Five Love Languages Gary Chapman
A family counselor and pastor has discovered that there are five main ways to express affection. Sometimes they do not match with partners. And then one does not understand the signs of the other. But mutual understanding can be restored.
(Bible for All, 2021)
1 2014 VTsIOM survey in the book «Two in Society: An Intimate Couple in the Modern World» (VTsIOM, 2020).