With all the sexual freedom, young couples today strive to build strong relationships. Although there is a great risk that life together will not meet their high expectations.
Everyone had to think about why the feeling of love is so fickle, and relationships require effort. But if the flame goes out, is our will enough to revive it? After all, there is something in love that is beyond our control. Can we make a decision and be happy together? And most importantly, why are we not satisfied with what we have?
In our time, when only love can justify a life together, we probably expect too much from a couple: harmony, joint development, stability for many years. “Indeed, from a rational point of view, marriage today does not make sense,” confirms family therapist Anna Varga. – But the brain does not solve anything here – we have a biological need to enter into close relationships. Another thing is that the emotional connection remained practically the only function of marital unions. And so marriage becomes more difficult. Increasingly, the reason for divorce is not betrayal or disagreement, but the search for a more “warm”, interesting, rich, personal interaction.”
How do you reconcile the desire for personal development and self-realization with working on relationships? Usually we are absorbed in the whirlwind of everyday life and try not to think about it, do not talk about it with a partner, do not look for solutions. “In a world where the economic situation and professional life are a source of stress, the couple is neglected, but they also seek refuge from adversity and disappointment,” explains psychoanalyst Jean-Michel Hirt (Jean-Michel Hirt).
Obsolete models
Many psychotherapists note that they are increasingly being approached by couples with little experience. “Sometimes they come after a year or two of marriage,” says Jean-Michel Hirt. “They are not interested in running away, they are looking for a way to stay together.” Apparently, the modern generation has lost the keys to life together. Just fall in love? We were all in love. But how to come to terms with the fact that for the sake of obligations it is necessary to voluntarily give up a lot? “We are experiencing an anthropological revolution,” says the psychoanalyst. “Traditional models are outdated and young people are sure to invent new ways to live together. In the meantime, this confusion causes anger in my patients, the reasons for which they do not really understand. Anna Varga sees one of these reasons in the change in communication technologies: “In the era of “fluid modernity” (this is how the philosopher Sigmund Bauman describes our time), people have become interchangeable. You can order sex on the Internet, find a partner for one night, get support on social networks for any issue … And this causes anxiety within the couple. Entering into a relationship, each seeks to be a unique companion for the other — a friend, parent, child, teacher, «vest» … Partners try to become closer in order to satisfy all the needs of the other. And you have to pay for this merger with a loss of attraction. After all, if there is no distance between us, air, then my companion is not a sexual partner. It turns out that it is the feeling of trust that we have always strived for that becomes the cause of the fragility of couples.
Inflated expectations inspire us in the media, TV shows, serials or porn films. Society demands that we become more and more happy, more in love, more desirable. How to distract from this ideal image, in comparison with which our couple is always not good enough?
- Being together: 12 books about harmony in a couple
Love does not tolerate mediocrity
Partners have a lot to rethink. For example, it is courageous to admit that some aspects of life in a couple do not really satisfy them, but they can be openly discussed and tried to overcome. Only we have the right to decide whether we want to remain disappointed or are determined to create together the story that we want to live.
“Love does not tolerate mediocrity,” says Jean-Michel Hirt. You love? Then choose high goals, set them together with your beloved (oh) — and go ahead, because we only have one life, and it is given to us now! And brilliant examples of literature, painting, music can serve as inspiration for us. They allow you to look at love as an art and recognize that it consists of rapture and pain, and that it is thanks to this that it can become unforgettable.
“The purpose of the love game is not to achieve harmony, but to prolong the languor,” says Jean-Michel Hirt. – There is a war of the sexes, and serenity is impossible in it. But this is a knightly battle, without the dead, but with the wounded, who, being defeated, rise nobly, recognize the beauty of the blow and feel that the fight deserves to continue.