This article is authorized to be reproduced from the Good Mood Spiritual Psychology Platform (ID: haoxqi)
Wen/Lian Qin, columnist of Cao Huaining Psychological Counseling Studio
1. The confusion of falling in love outside of marriage
A female friend of mine was upset lately because she met a mature intellectual middle-aged man because of her work relationship. In the process of getting along, I found that the growth experience of the two people was extremely similar, and there were many common topics, so they often talked about the world together, but they fell in love with each other for a long time.
But the man is married and the woman is married, and both of them restrain their feelings and only maintain spiritual communication. "After meeting him, I felt the taste of love again, and unconsciously fell in love, is this true love? Is it worth giving up marriage for this? She came with this obsession to seek enlightenment.
In fact, regarding the difference between falling in love and true love, American psychologist M. Scott Pike has a detailed answer as early as "The Road Less Walked". Scott believes that there is a great misunderstanding about "true love", the most common is to fall in love between men and women, especially to fall in love as true love, in fact, falling in love is just a subjective desire.
2. Psychological self-boundaries
To understand the nature of falling in love, it is necessary to understand the so-called "self-boundary" in psychology: self-boundary refers to the individual's clear understanding of the scope of responsibilities and rights of individuals and others in interpersonal relationships.
From the perspective of psychological development, a person's self-boundaries are gradually formed from birth. The process of a person's growth is also the process of psychological separation from important others (often the mother). The more you divide, the better you grow.
Unfortunately, many people grow up in a situation where one part of the mother is separated and the other part is still together, which is an unsafe growth. For a person in this situation, the boundary between his ego and his important other is unclear.
This situation of unclear boundaries is projected onto all his relationships. On the one hand, he will reveal his inner world too much in front of others, excessively eager for others to understand himself, and excessively dependent on others; on the other hand, he will want to understand the inner world of others too much in order to obtain a feeling of being one with others.
3. Loneliness in marriage produces longing
Living forever in the "self-boundary" will only bring loneliness to people, and loneliness is feared and avoided by human nature. Everyone has a strong desire for love and wants to achieve a deep connection between people.
In long-term marriage relationships, many people, especially women, are prone to experience loneliness: between husband and wife, although there are no big quarrels and contradictions, they are more and more speechless when they are together, obviously together, but they often feel lonely in their hearts, and their emotional needs are not met.
Partial women are also a creature with rich emotional needs, when the emotional needs of being respected, considerate, listened to, and loved are disappointed again and again, they will strive to survive, seek emotional satisfaction outward, and seek their true selves to be seen and cherished.
And once a person feels seen and accepted, it is easy to fall in love, because falling into a love network means that a certain part of the self-boundary suddenly collapses, feels that they are integrated with others, and experiences the feeling of omnipotence when they are a child, so they are excited, and it is easy to make people have the illusion of encountering true love.
4. The essence of falling in love
However, Scott pointed out with his research that this kind of "love" that fell into love will not last long, no matter who the object of love is, sooner or later we will "crawl out" from the bondage of the love network. Admittedly, this does not mean that we no longer love each other, no longer love the people with whom we fall in love, but the dizzying love affair will one day disappear completely, which is like a bright flower, which is bound to wither and wither.
Because falling in love is essentially a temporary collapse of the boundaries of the self, a temporary satisfaction. Wait until you calm down and discover each other's problems, and then understand that each other's boundaries are not integrated, and their respective self-boundaries are closed again.
There is an essential difference between falling in love and true love, as Scott said, love is the willingness to constantly broaden the boundaries of the self and improve the self, self-improvement, need to pay enough effort, falling into the love network may not require strength. When the experience of falling in love is over, the good times are over, the boundaries of the self must return to their original state, all you feel is loss and disillusionment, and the soul will never grow.
Why does that person feel like he's in love? This is actually a typical physiological and psychological response produced by human intrinsic needs and extrinsic stimuli, and the significance is to increase human reproductive opportunities and promote the reproduction and survival of species.
In other words, falling in love is the conquest of human reason by human genes, making us willingly fall into the marriage "trap". If non-primitive genes are at work, I don't know how many lovers or spouses (including happy people and unhappy people) will feel confused because they think of the reality they will face after marriage before entering the marriage hall, and they just want to run away!
5. Learn to get along with your partner
Many women are in marriage after the "crawl" with their partners out of the love network, in the face of marital loneliness, emotional needs of women in the inability to get a partner emotional response, often consciously or unconsciously seek satisfaction, into the next emotional cycle, just like my female friends.
How do you break the loop and avoid the illusory satisfaction of falling in love all the time? This requires us to learn a little emotional psychology and grasp the true meaning of getting along with our partners.
Emotional psychology believes that any feeling has a process of continuous development and change. In the early stage of the relationship, we experience more of a romantic love, its biggest feature is that we feel strong intimacy and passion, let people have a feeling of falling into love.
But after the relationship is stable, we experience more of a kind of companion love, when the main characteristic of the feeling is no longer passion, but closeness, communication, sharing, and continuous and long-term investment in the feeling. And these are precisely what many of us often overlook. In the relationship, we pay too much attention to romance and love, and rarely think about how to get along and accompany, and over time it will make people feel lonely.
To eliminate loneliness, we must first learn true companionship, in addition to the physical togetherness of two people, it is more important to have the exchange of feelings and the common communication of hearts. For example, when talking about a thing, communicate more about each other's feelings.
If there is not even a dialogue about feelings in the relationship, the communication between two people carries the meaning of emotional isolation and cannot communicate with each other's hearts.
We need to improve the quality of companionship, and the quality of companionship is not the length of time, but the feeling of getting along. If two people are busy together and have no emotional communication, even if they are tired of being together every day, they are not companions. If two people can communicate fully and happily together, even a short time together is far better than a whole day of meaningless time together.
6. If communication with your partner is fruitless, how to resolve it?
The friend asked, what if the other half refuses to give real companionship, is always busy with his work and career, and refuses his wife's emotional needs with a posture of "holding a brick but can't accompany you"?
This kind of question actually involves the game of marriage morality and personal life morality, which is an extremely personalized question, there is no standard answer, and it must be considered in conjunction with the marriage relationship of each couple.
If your partner is enlightened, you can choose to enter into a good marriage contract with your partner and seek the freedom to meet emotional needs above the borders. You can also transfer your emotional needs to your children (but don't raise them to be mommy boys) or to your work career.
In addition, a person who always needs others to meet his emotional needs also reflects his personality imperfection to a certain extent. As the psychologist Fromm said, true love is to give rather than demand, and true love only appears between two people with independent personalities, which is a state of independence and integration. You may wish to try to improve your own mind, first pursuing the growth of personality and soul, and then pursuing true love.
Maybe when the time comes, you will be surprised to find that the one in the marriage is your true love. No matter how you choose, the most important thing is that you can be prepared for the consequences of your choices, let yourself feel at ease, and let the other person in the relationship feel at ease.
About author:Lian Qin, post-90s half-time housewife, columnist of Cao Huaining Psychology Studio, loves psychology, pays attention to marriage and child-rearing, and self-growth.