Someone asked: What is it like to love and be loved?
In literary and artistic works such as novels and movies, "love" is a highly romanticized existence; In Dr. Gary Chapman's theory, "love" is described as five specific actions.
In life, hobbies are like some kind of concoction. Sometimes it gives you a punch, and sometimes it gives you a sweet date.
In this issue, we invite psychological counselors Li Qinghua, Wang Sha, and Dai Chuntao to talk about what love is and how to love people?
Li Qinghua: Love is a kind of self-reorganization
"Love" has been a complex, mysterious, and unpredictable theme since ancient times. The high degree of uncertainty of love determines that the nature of love is often inevitably associated with "wounding".
Huang Yimei in the recently popular TV series "The Story of Rose", she is very special in that in the face of every love, she is so "selfless", so devoted, she can make a lot of self-space for the "other", allow others to influence and change herself, allow herself to be "hurt" in every relationship, and at the same time restructure herself.
▷ "The Story of the Rose"
I think a lot of the intimacy crisis that people are experiencing right now is because our hearts aren't ready for negative experiences or allow ourselves to be hurt. We become cautious, calculating, self-defensive, guarding our territory, unwilling to compromise or compromise any ego.
As a highly integrated relationship, the "other" will gradually infiltrate our self and inevitably threaten our original self-order, and this process will require us to sacrifice our own subjectivity to adapt to the invasion of the other. If we always want positive experiences and reject any negative ones, we are rejecting love itself.
In this age of consumerism and hedonism, our understanding and definition of love is also quietly changing. Most of the time the love we crave is to "make me peaceful", "make me whole", "I am seen", and perhaps our expectations of relationships are becoming more and more "starting with me" and "working for me", full of the principle of "taking".
Han Byung-chul profoundly exposes this point in "The Death of Love": our expectation of "satisfaction" makes everything full of consumption of "self-service". Love is also inevitably a consumable product of "self-satisfaction" and "self-service".
For Ficino, love is "I love you, and you love me, I find me in you, and you miss me, I give myself up, I come into you, and you accept me, and I find myself." If we can forget ourselves in love, and this forgetfulness helps us to find ourselves again, to have ourselves again, this is the "gift of the Other."
In my understanding, love requires us to give up certain parts of ourselves, such as our original beliefs or fantasies, to experience it "selflessly", to fully connect with the other person, and to go deep into the other person's world and spirit. You are willing to try to step out of yourself, grow, realize, and restructure yourself in the collision with another person.
Wang Sha: Love is what I want to hold your hand,
but it hurts you with a strong grip
There is a highly-rated cartoon called "Robot Dream", which is about the love and separation between a puppy and a robot.
In the film, love is that I want to hold your hand, but it hurts you vigorously. It is also a gentle touch when you actively hold back after the pain has subsided. Love is to provide you with shelter from the wind, watch you grow up, and help you learn to fly again and again; Love is the warmth of hugging me for a long time when you grow up and leave; Love is that you swapped places while you were walking, and I found you standing between me and danger.
▷ "Robot Dream"
What can love bring? I'm thinking of someone who is "securely attached."
Mary Ainsworth's experiments with strange situations found that children who were well responded to and cared for were more likely to face up to their attachment needs, tolerate loneliness better, be more independent, and be more exploratory. In short, love can bring security and courage.
But what happens without love?
The Second World War left huge numbers of children from their homes, listless, depressed and sick. However, the mortality rate of children who are accompanied by relatives is significantly reduced.
In real life, love can be a very mixed feeling. Because it comes with cultural connotations and social relations, it is restricted by the environment, economy, and system.
For example, although "Robot Dream" conceals gender, age, blood, and race to convey love, what cannot be hidden is power and environment.
Puppies always have more power. The robot is selected and bought back by the puppy, and the robot has no choice. The treatment of the robot also depends on the buyer. In the private car, the same robot has been kicked and beaten, and his face is full of sadness.
Even if there is love between the robot and the puppy, it is still possible to be separated by an iron bar.
▷ "Robot Dream"
That fence is like the factors that constrain us in real life.
For example, the economic downturn, environmental involution, and the time/space cost of making and maintaining friends will become higher...... Most people are either busy making ends meet or worrying about their families. Commuting, billing, children's education...... We do all kinds of daily chores for love, but we rarely express and feel love directly.
But the feeling of love is that even if we don't love for a while, we are all learning how to love. Even if power is not equal, I know that you will not use power to hurt me. Even if life doesn't go our way, we can find a way to face it together. We know that the iron fence can't separate you from me, and one day it will be opened by everyone.
Dai Chuntao: How to love someone? We often think that loving someone is not "unconditional love" if we accept whatever the other person does, and only have a positive emotional experience. When parents beat and scold their children for making mistakes, they are not allowed to cry because it is out of love, out of "good for the child"; Children are taught that "only honoring their parents is love", otherwise they are immature and ignorant. In many similar situations, the person's experience is denied and ignored, and is often constrained by certain social rules or culture. Usually in the face of such love, we are speechless, and can only be silent or attack ourselves inwardly, causing feelings of guilt, shame and other feelings, thinking that we are not good. As adults, when faced with the other person in an intimate relationship, we are accustomed to dealing with conflicts and conflicts in ways such as anger, avoidance, and forbearance, and ignore our own discomfort when dealing with them in these ways. If we can't face up to our experiences in relationships with others, we can't truly love someone. If you want to learn to love someone, you must first pay attention to your own feelings, what are the feelings caused by a certain behavior of the other person? Name the feeling. For example, if your partner says something inappropriate or does something out of bounds, pay attention to and name the emotion you feel as anger, grievance, blame, or any other appropriate description. Second, explore how this feeling relates to your own values. It's the tone or content of your speech that makes you feel