In the history of Chinese Peking Opera, there is such a woman, beautiful, cold, born with a good voice, so that she is popular all over China.
Even Zhang Ziyi said: "I am obsessed with this legendary woman, she is the first female student in China. She loved Mei Lanfang so much, but she left him, this kind of realm is difficult for ordinary people to achieve. ”
She dares to love and dare to hate, and is known as the "Winter Emperor" by the outside world.
However, at the beginning of the love sinus, she was also displaced on the road of feelings.
Behind being disappointed by the people she loves deeply and resolutely leaving is also a new journey she has embarked on to find herself.
From the person he loves to the person who loves himself, from Meng Xiaodong's emotional experience of tossing and turning for half a lifetime, he can't help but think:
In intimate relationships, how should you choose?
The beginning of the love sinus:
Blindly believe in love, love to the point of not having yourself
From the title of Winter Emperor, it can be seen that Meng Xiaodong had a rare heroic spirit of women in the era when feminism was generally low at that time.
And Meng Xiaodong, in the development of Peking Opera, bold and smooth, did not transfer to the development of private feelings.
Before the intimate relationship, the Winter Emperor was also a little girl who longed for love, and with her fantasies about love, she did not have much understanding of her actual needs in the relationship.
When she first entered the love scene, she was also like us, longing for someone to care for, someone to cherish, and to find her ideal dream lover.
In the first marriage, she was married to Mei Lanfang, a beautiful Peking Opera woman who was also popular at that time.
Although she was regarded as a good story by everyone at that time, in fact, in the marriage relationship, she was more like a party who bent for love.
At that time, Mei Lanfang already had two wives, but under the man's pleading and maneuvering, she became Mei Lanfang's third wife because she loved to put down the figure of a famous man.
After four years of suffering, she obeyed the man's wish that she would not put her head down after marriage and put down her stage and talent.
But even so, it could not get the recognition of the Mei family, and even staged a "palace fight drama" in which Mei Lanfang's other wife and Meng Xiaodong were forced to die.
In the end, Meng Xiaodong was greatly disappointed by Mei Lanfang's deception and irresponsibility, and ended the relationship in discouragement.
It can be seen that her love in her first marriage was humble, but it did not get the result she desired.
At this stage of life, she is not familiar with her own needs in intimate relationships, which is also the state we will have at the beginning when exploring intimate relationships, relying on blind faith in love, which often makes us bleed.
Perhaps there is a very important assumption in our collective subconscious: "As long as I am cooperative enough, I can get the love I expect." ”
We strive to make ourselves an amoeba, eager to adapt to each other's expectations, even if we regard our own needs as dust, and only hope that the people we love are willing to be with us.
This concept of "equating love with the whole of their own life" is built in the hearts of many people, as if love is the only goal and meaning of life, they can abandon all hobbies and things for love.
However, once love has deteriorated, it will face the crisis of self-collapse.
This is because, at this stage of intimacy, we don't really want to explore: Who are we? What is needed?
Wake up after the injury,
Explore the real needs and boundaries of intimate relationships
In the second marriage, Meng Xiaodong married Du Yuesheng, a person who loved her for a long time.
At that time, it was during the War of Resistance Against Japan, social turmoil was unstable, and she had just lost her marriage and some of her dared not believe in love anymore, just like everyone who had suffered in love.
In the face of such Meng Xiaodong, Du Yuesheng gave her financial and moral support, allowing Meng Xiaodong to pursue the further study of Peking Opera without distraction.
It was also at this moment that Meng Xiaodong realized that she could also have herself in love.
Therefore, she opened her scarred heart and accepted Du Yuesheng.
When we have experienced failed feelings, in the face of new relationships, we will more or less become timid and withdrawn, and no longer dare to give love easily.
But those scars make sense for our growth.
It gives us, who have never examined our own needs, an opportunity to reflect on what exactly our needs are in the relationship.
Just like Meng Xiaodong, in her marriage to Mei Lanfang, she gave up her favorite career for love, endlessly compromised, but in the end she still could not get inner happiness.
Until she entered the marriage with Du Yuesheng, she began to defend her self-boundaries, and Du Yuesheng also gave her enough autonomy to realize the partnership of "I love you, you are free".
This is the experience that Meng Xiaodong has exchanged after experiencing pain: he has actively chosen a partner who loves himself and is willing to give space for his own existence.
In the next 10 years, what accompanied Meng Xiaodong in this relationship was her gradually clear self-awareness and happy love outline.
Therefore, after Du Yuesheng's death, although she felt grief-
In her later years, she established a deep relationship with the famous painter Zhang Daqian, whom she met in Hong Kong, and at the same time, she was filled with a sense of inner value, which also allowed her to live a full life.
Although there is no human-female relationship, the two communicate with each other's soul talents, singing and painting.
In her later years, she lost all her lead and let go of the worldly standards of life, only because she recognized herself more clearly, knew her self-worth, and did not need to rely on sacrifice and dependence on the economy and status given by others to feel her value.
As the famous British comedian mentioned in "Write to Yourself for Your Seventieth Birthday":
"When I started to really love myself, I started to stay away from everything that wasn't healthy.
Whether it's food and characters, or things and circumstances, I'm away from everything that keeps me away from the real thing.
I used to call this "selfishness in the pursuit of health," but today I understand that it's "self-love." ”
Three relationships, we see the stage of Meng Xiaodong's love, from love to self-love, and then to giving love, is a woman's feelings and awareness of love and herself after a thousand sails.
True intimacy:
It begins with self-love and matures with self-knowledge
In any relationship, whether you choose to love yourself or your own love partner, the core is actually whether you know yourself first.
Well-known singer Rene Liu once shared her emotional view of experience and learning after losing herself in a relationship:
She will never be a full-time wife, she will have to keep herself in the relationship freely, but also find a partner who can accept herself.
She once asked her husband Zhong Shi: "If you marry a wife who has many interests and hobbies, will you feel very bad?" ”
Zhong Shi said, "It is because you are so rich and so interesting that I married you; if I marry you back, you will only wash and cook for me at home, and I will feel that I have lost!" ”
This kind of love is a more open and mature love based on self-love, without sacrificing one's own needs, without calculating who loves whom, who has the upper hand and who suffers losses.
Everything is frank and sincere.
Just like Meng Xiaodong's exploration and transformation in the three intimate relationships.
From the initial blind giving and sacrifice, confused by the pursuit of their own imaginary fairy tales, to the experience of heavy trauma, began to realize that people must be able to love themselves and know themselves first.
With enough self-awareness and self-love, you can enter a healthy intimate relationship with a more mature mindset.
So how can you fully recognize yourself and see your needs in intimate relationships?
I suggest that you try the idea of free association, and first go and quickly outline the ideal intimacy in your heart.
You can try asking yourself:
Can you imagine what your ideal day will look like ten years from now?
Who's in your life?
What are you doing?
Are you married?
Where do you live?
Do you have children?
What is your lifestyle like?
What does a relationship with a partner look like?
Record these associations in a notebook.
The deeper and more detailed you imagine the future of intimacy, the more you can understand what kind of life and intimacy you really desire, as well as your value orientations and preferences in all aspects of life.
This understanding, in turn, can help you re-understand yourself.
If, when we sketch, when our minds are blank, we have to be alert, is it that we don't know anything about our needs and blueprints in the relationship? So as to become aware and explore.
When we are faced with a new object, we can also take out our notebook and compare it to our blueprint for the future to see if the person in front of us fits into our blueprint.
Also see if your blueprint needs to be adjusted because you are ambitious, or if you may have blind spots and ignore the person in front of you and are not compatible with the blueprint.
This process may be lengthy and painful, but when you go through confusion, inquiry, frustration, and re-inquiry, we will gradually outline the blueprint of our intimate relationship that is becoming clearer and clearer, and we will become more and more real and mature.
Dear ones, as Teacher Defen said, there is no one else out there, only yourself.
When your relationship with yourself is handled well, all kinds of external relationships will also flow down the river.
If the flowers bloom, the butterflies come, if the people are wonderful, the sky arranges itself.
May we all know ourselves better, love ourselves, and find the "right" person in the relationship.
*This article is co-authored by the author and Zhang Defen Space's main writer group, if you need to reprint, please contact the authorization.
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