Dealing with love addiction
Our culture is imbued with the myths of romantic love., often contradictory: love is supposedly both blind and wise, and conquers all, and dies after three years. We can say that it provokes dependence on falling in love - but the good news is that you can get out of this situation. We analyze the most frequent scenarios and ways out of them.
Falling in love with someone inaccessible
It happens that a person has been in love with a phantom, a dream for many years. Sometimes this is a former partner whose relationship is long over, sometimes a distant acquaintance or acquaintance who occasionally flashes in the company and disappears for a long time from access. Or a married boss, a girlfriend, a colleague, or even a well-known person: an actor or an actress, a politician, a singer or a singer, or even a character in a series - and this is a fictional character. What unites these situations is that, in essence, a man in love is fascinated by a mirage, invented by him. He knows very little about the real subject of his aspirations, or this hero does not exist at all, or, as in the case of a former partner, the object of love could have changed a lot over a long time, and nothing is known about his present life.
What to do?
First ask yourself if you want to do anything at all. In love from afar for some quite comfortable state, which is especially common in adolescents and young people. Another thing, if, falling in love, you start to suffer from the inaccessibility of a person: here is the time to wonder what you find for yourself in this inaccessibility.
For example, can you imagine a real relationship with this person? Imagine that the boss is divorced or never married, the actor or actress met you in life, and the beautiful hero of Sherlock incarnated as a real person and handed you a glove. Imagine step by step how your acquaintance will develop and how you will conduct your first date. What is your hero or heroine keen on? What will you do at your leisure? What will your sex be? Will you live together and what will your couple be? What will you eat for breakfast and who will cook this breakfast?
Sometimes this mental exercise in itself removes the heat of feelings. Even in fictional relationships, it suddenly becomes obvious that a beautiful acquaintance at a distance is ten years older and looks at many things differently from this, and may turn out to be a bore. And he also has a daughter, and it is impossible to “see it out” in such a scenario. He will visit her on the weekend? If so, you will have to carry them separately. If not, what kind of monster is he who does not go to his own child?
Sometimes it happens that the imagination refuses already on the first questions: there are sweet sighs, but there is no contact even in fantasy. This is a good reason to reflect on how you in real life have been in contact with close people: with your mother, father, first partner, best friend or girlfriend. Were these relationships injuring, or unreliable, or pressing so much that it is now safer to fall in love with a mirage than to try again to come into close contact with a person of flesh and blood? It is not necessary to be afraid of this: injuries happen, and our psyche reacts to them in a certain way - tries to avoid them in the future. Another thing is that it would be a good idea to go through the stage of romantic love for mirages. You can try to do it in the office of a psychotherapist, in a safe and host environment.
Another useful topic for self-reflection: what qualities do you think are wonderful in your beloved or beloved and which ones would you like to possess? Falling in love, we project on the part of our ideas about the ideal. In this sense, the inaccessibility of the object of love is a metaphor for the inaccessibility of these desirable qualities for the person himself. How do you see your object of love? Creative, beautiful, easy-going, smart, good-natured, good-natured? And can you develop some of these qualities in yourself so that you don’t have to look so desperately for them in another person?
Love as a drug
In love for you - the native element. Sleepless nights, dreams of her or him, heart sinking when he or she enters a room. The feeling of euphoria that gives life meaningfulness. And then - rapid disappointment, bitterness and even depression. In short, you tend to fall in love very often. The process is uncontrollable: you fall into it quite suddenly and spend in this hectic phase from a few months to a year or two.
Then comes disappointment or a tiff - depending on whether you had any real relationship or just a wave of violent feelings. In principle, if the love "binge" lasts for a little longer, you can have time to start living with the subject of passion, or even register a relationship. The problem is that it will not be a weighted decision, but a spontaneous act in a state of euphoria, with all the ensuing consequences. Sometimes “serial” people in love have in parallel more stable relationships - but this does not save them from strong and sudden feelings for other people.
What to do?
Again, if the situation does not bother you, then you can enjoy the strong feelings that have fallen on your head. Another thing, if such love "binges" began to threaten work, long-term relationships, or simply replaced all other interests. It is difficult not to draw an analogy of falling in love with a drug or alcohol: after the euphoria and pleasant sensations, there is a hangover, and if time after time it gets stronger and more destructive, it would be good to do something. As in the case of potent substances, it is worth asking yourself what each time gives you such a spontaneous love or, perhaps, from what it protects. It is possible that marriage or long-term relationships have already exhausted themselves, but the passion for other people is distracting, saves from confrontation with this fact. A regular partner serves as a consolation after an unruly stormy romance (even if he does not know about it), and the feeling of guilt keeps him close.
Perhaps, apart from these regular love affairs, there is no longer a drive in life. All travels, adventures, merry parties with conversations until the morning and in general the feeling that something exciting awaits lies ahead. Find this drive again is not easy. The entire mass culture supports the conviction that in the life of a person who has passed his student days, adventures and interesting discoveries will no longer happen: there is a boring adult life and a dull mature age ahead. Being in love with such a coordinate system is almost the only legal way to experience something new and get a thrill. The only problem is that such an approach does not allow you to build your own interesting life, forcing you to look for exciting and interesting things outside and then lose it again and again.
It turns out that “loves / dislikes” in this case is the tenth question. Short-term euphoria and subsequent disappointment hide much more complex and timeless issues. What was my life like and do you want to see it that way? Why do I wake up with a feeling of joyful impatience only when I am in love and dream to see him or her? Why my work, relationships and hobbies do not bring strong positive feelings and can this be corrected?
No strength to part
You are in a difficult relationship: destructive, codependent, obviously destroying you. You are insulted, humiliated, beaten or intimidated, your self-esteem is crumbling. It is possible and not so terrible, but also not at all a sugar option, when the relationship has long ceased to satisfy both participants and apparently has no prospects. One of the partners wants children, and the other one realizes himself as childfree; one wants to leave the country, the second - to stay; the couple do not have joint activities and interest to each other, they are embarrassed to be together in public and are in constant irritation from each other, no longer having sex.
It seems that the attachment to a partner and the desire to preserve the “shell” of the couple and the former way of life prevail over the desire to end the relationship. And you suffer, walk in a circle, get tired of scandals or irritated silence, but remain in a relationship - with the thought that it would be good to get out of them.
What to do?
The most dangerous, of course, is the situation of physical or psychological violence. If you realize that this is happening in your relationship, as soon as possible enlist the support of someone (outside the relationship!) Who will not blame you and will be friendly towards you: mother, friend or friend, psychologist. If you doubt whether what is happening is violence or not, be sure to share it, without mentioning anything: usually such thoughts do not arise from scratch. Tell this loved one about what is happening and together make a plan of action to get out of a dangerous situation. Even if you want to hope that you can still fix it, and the abuser will change his mind and stop his behavior - unfortunately, this is a utopia. There is no good outcome for violence.
If violence does not occur, but the relationship is plunged into a quagmire, force events not worth it. While the decision is made at the intellectual level (lists of pros and cons, endless weighings for and against), this means that at the emotional level it has not yet matured. Perhaps your couple will not be prevented by the help of a family psychologist (he can help and disperse peacefully). An important question to ask yourself: is the life you want for yourself possible with this partner? If so, how does the partner agree with this? And if not, why not? And what, then, keeps you from parting?
Photo:Adam - stock.adobe.com, niradj - stock.adobe.com, Dmitri Stalnuhhin - stock.adobe.com
