Become one - and you will be happy. Or will not? Esther Perel, an expert on relationships with 30 years of experience and author of the book "Reproduction in captivity," tells how to make a long-term relationship with a partner happy.
As soon as the first love falls, the couple faces the first difficulties: growing misunderstanding, there are mutual claims and reproaches, somewhere there is lost the romance, inspiration and the feeling of butterflies in the abdomen. Many believe that these problems are due to the lack of proximity of partners. However, the experience of Esther Perel allows her to assert the opposite. The intimacy is too ... much!
Love story. Start
When we get acquainted with a person, we are fascinated by the fleur of mystery. What kind of person is this? What does he like and hate? With what thoughts does he wake up in the morning and what worries him at night? Gradually, we more and more recognize a person and experience a powerful sense of physical and emotional fusion. But the trick is that while it is not dangerous yet: real borders are not yet broken. Due to the fact that the partner is still "terra incognita" for us - uncharted land - we can not seriously enter his personal space. Relations are not spoiled by routine and constancy, people still remain two independent figures. And it is space that allows them to dream, fantasize, enjoy their senses and experience ecstasy.
But time goes by, and each one gradually penetrates into the secret world of another. The rushing feelings are still gripping, but you are scared. You do not want it to end. And then the search for ways to make love more predictable, stable, reliable begins. You exchange your first vows and promises, buying a little persistence at the expense of personal freedom. No, not all. You give a little bit of personal freedom. But over the years it needs more and more. Partners get to know each other better and better. But that sense of flight, which accompanied the first months of meetings, goes away. It was only because both felt uncertainty, mystery, mystery. Now they become so close that they choke on lack of spontaneity and freedom of action. Proximity captures everything.
Golden mean
Love balances on two pillars: willingness to yield, that is, at the right time to compromise, and independence from each other. Falling in love, we want to be constantly next to a person, to feel the warmth of his hands and breath, to chat about everything and just admire. And at the same time, everyone needs a bit of free space. One can not exist without the other.
Open, share, open, open even more, become transparent ... And what's next? If the distance is too great, it is impossible to establish an emotional connection. If the distance is absent and the partners merge into one, independence disappears. This merger absorbs its own territory of personality - there is no other world of another person, that secret place where his partner seeks to get to. And since the two become something, the connection is lost: why connect the one that already has the whole? It turns out that some disunity is an obligatory and indispensable condition for the emergence of communication, emotional, romantic and intimate. This is the key paradox that lies at the heart of a happy relationship.
Happinnes exists
The dynamics of relations in any case involves the participation of two parties. Only man and woman can create their own blooming garden - a garden where love, tenderness and unlimited happiness are cultivated. For the same reason, one can not say that someone is to blame for something - for example, in the loss of the former desire and the flame - both partners bring their own something to the relationship that affects the outcome. Women intuitively feel it, but sometimes they interpret it wrong, refusing everything in favor of love. It is not right. Casting all the forces to create harmonious, it seems to her, relations, the partner completely forgets about her hobbies - she does not go to the pool anymore ("Darling does not like to swim!") And throws her vocals ("My bunny has an allergy to the stage!") refuses to meet with friends, and with some and completely interrupts communication. All these attempts are aimed at rapprochement with the beloved. What is her surprise, when everything is exactly the opposite. Her ardent desire to make a partner nice and give up anything reduces the distance to a minimum and strangles the romantic component. What is the interest of being with a person who is ready to do anything, if only you were satisfied? The instinct of the conqueror in men wakes up in 99% of cases. They crave resistance and tension. They want to take away this woman from someone, and not get on a silver platter.
Recipe for happy families
And romantic, and erotic blooms in free space. If you notice that the relationship is becoming duller, try to restore your own independence. You do not have to build life around the second half. Remember that you like where you would like to go and what to do. The fear of losing a person and trying to compensate for his lack of one's own freedom can not turn into your favor - so you can really lose a loved one. Raise a low, thin, but a wall between you. At least for a while. And you will understand that you do not have to renounce yourself in order to earn love. You are already worthy of it. Love without loss of freedom is possible. Moreover, it is she who guarantees a happy and long relationship. Try to keep free space between you and the partner - and be surprised by the result! Based on the book "Reproduction in captivity"