In love relationships, the mechanism for their destruction was initially laid down, but this does not mean that every union will certainly fall apart. What can be done to avoid parting, says psychologist Vadim Petrovsky.
Psychologies: How inevitable is the fading of feelings in a couple?
Vadim Petrovsky: “Inevitably” is too strong a word. But we can say that such a development of events is natural. On the one hand, everyday problems play a role in this, everything that Mayakovsky described with the words “the love boat crashed into everyday life.” On the other hand, sexual cooling, which, according to many, comes over the years. But even aside from these obvious difficulties, there is a built-in mechanism in the love relationship itself that works to destroy it.
Love is the power of unification. And getting married, forming a couple, we experience the most joyful feelings: we believe that we have found our “other half”, we are completely identified with each other. To the question “What is he (what is she)?” lovers often answer: “Just the same (or the same) as me.” But time passes, and the experience of mutual differences gradually accumulates. We begin to understand that the person next to me is not at all like me. He is completely different, unlike me, and even my complete opposite.
But is it bad? After all, different people complement each other?
This is a common opinion, but it is far from the truth. According to this logic, if I am limping on my right leg, and you are on the left, then together we will be able to walk quickly and even run. On the contrary, the history of many marriages shows that it is not the difference that contributes to harmonious relationships in a couple, but the similarity of partners. Moreover, three main qualities have been identified, according to which it would be good for partners to coincide.
The first is heat or cold in the sense of temperament. If a man is hot, then his ideal partner should be hot, and not vice versa. If he is cold, then it is better for her to be the Snow Queen.
Talk, be sure to talk about each other and about your relationship
The second is the degree of openness. Even two very closed people understand each other better than a very closed and very open one.
And the third is how jealous the partners are. Jealous people perfectly find a common language. And their relationship can be as stormy as you like, but they turn out to be strong and lasting more often than the relationship of the jealous and the non-jealous. The union of two non-jealous people also has more prospects than the “mixed” options. But I have not seen studies that would objectively confirm that different people in a couple complement each other.
Let’s return to the “mechanism of destruction”. Partners, as you said, are aware that they are different.
And it’s quite natural! After all, everyone comes from his own world, from his home, from his parents. This home, parental world is most often seen as the only correct one. And suddenly, in a relationship with a loved one, we understand that everything is different for him: a house, parents and, therefore, the whole world in general!
The problem is that this understanding is usually followed by conscious or unconscious attempts to rebuild the partner’s world. Remake it for yourself – or adjust yourself. Breakage occurs on both sides. This is the second phase of relationship development.
Can partners discuss their differences at such a moment, speak directly about them?
Not only can, but must! On the one hand, this is the necessary removal, the definition of positions. And on the other hand, in such communication a new understanding of the partner is born, particles of the already common world: after all, synthesis, the creation of something new is impossible without analysis.
Such conversations are not a dissection of the relationship, it is the relationship itself. In addition, it gives us great pleasure to be able to analyze something together. Talk, be sure to talk about each other and about your relationship! Probably, the third stage of the relationship follows the second …
What is happening on it?
We come to the understanding that a person cannot be remade. We can neither change ourselves, nor, moreover, change a partner. And it remains either to part, or to reconcile and continue to live next to the inhabitant of a completely different world, no longer experiencing the same feelings for him. I’m afraid that such a mechanism for the development of love relationships is objective, like physical laws.
It is only when we feel that love is coming to an end that we begin to truly appreciate the other.
And that means that love is doomed, and any relationship in a couple is finite?
Not at all! Remember how existentialist philosophers realized the power, beauty, and majesty of life. They had to accept the absolute inevitability of death. The dangers that threaten love also need to be recognized: to recognize that love is moving towards the end from the very beginning, to accept the risk that is present in a relationship from the first day.
And when we clearly understand all this, a contrasting note suddenly begins to sound in a couple, which transforms the very melody of relationships, the melody of love. This melody becomes much more subtle and deeper than the frivolous delusion “we are one.” Only feeling that love is coming to an end, we begin to truly appreciate the other, his feelings, every moment is near. And this kind of love is capable, I am convinced, of lasting forever—as long as the lovers themselves are alive.
You speak in the words of a magician from the play by Evgeny Schwartz “An Ordinary Miracle”: “Glory to the brave men who dare to love, knowing that all this will come to an end” …
Yes Yes exactly! Such is the philosophy of love: it is in the mortality of this feeling that the possibility of its immortality lies.
About expert
Vadim Petrovsky — Psychologist, Doctor of Psychology, Rector of the Institute of Counseling Psychology, Professor of the Department of Psychology at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. More information about it can be found here.