So cupid’s arrow has struck and the feeling of love is being felt. Chances are this feeling of love is intruding a bit into life the way it was being lived prior to its appearance. You may even have generated a few good rationalizations for ignoring or at least arguing against this new emotional event. Ultimately if the coast is clear and both parties are available there is little in the way of its impact. Let’s assume both people are emotionally prepared for love. What comes next? Our lovers are now faced with the option of putting some effort into sustaining the feeling. Once you have let the loved person know what you feel in words and/or actions the next step involves keeping the feeling alive. If your intentions are to have a love-life endure over time then you will need to know how to sustain the feeling of love for as long as possible perhaps for life. Sustaining love requires two essential practices in your love relationship, the practice of intimate verbal communication, and the practice of intimate mutual independence.
verbal communication in love
Communication has a long history in the advice columns concerning love-life matters. Most experts advise lovers to communicate to each other. Talking helps lovers resolve whatever differences and disagreements you may have. Standard stuff right? Let’s take this a step further and say that in order to sustain your love lovers need to talk about specific things to each other. I have two topics in mind that I think are particularly important when it comes to sustaining love in a love relationship. The first is the emotional effects of your respective families of origin, and the second is your mutual defensiveness.
I take very seriously the notion that a committed love relationship is an ideal place for both individuals to grow and mature. So seriously that I believe this is one of the important advantages to being in love. If it was just for pleasure or procreation there would be a lot less at stake. A committed love relationship offers lovers a chance to mature as a result of their mutual participation. This is the way it is supposed to be when it works right. This is all the more reason to appreciate the importance of a stable love relationship.
My old analyst used to say that in this culture women socialize men in a love relationship. What he meant was that a woman can show her man how to feel and express his feelings in ways that mature him as a person and a lover. Men in this culture get much less practice communicating emotions growing up. Women are far more advanced in this area at comparably younger ages. Perhaps men have something to teach women as well. Some men know what real independence is and encourage their partners to separate and individuate themselves in the course of a love relationship. In this culture women tend to experiment with greater emotional independence in middle-age, encouraged or not.
Talk is very important in a love relationship, but some talk is even more important than others. Talking about your family of origin to your partner is very important. Many of the problems that show up in a love relationship originate from experiences that took place in the family of origin. This is essentially the first place we learn about love. Whether or not what we learned is useful for our adult love-lives now is an open question. If the answer is yes sit back and enjoy the ride. Those earlier experiences of love will guide your current love-life. If the answer is no, the problem of repeating the past can only be corrected through consciousness and practice. In this case, love-life consciousness is enhanced by the practice of communication. The more you talk and reflect with the person who shares your love-life experiences, the more consciousness you develop for the topics involved.
The focus is the family of origin. I have never met a couple that did not project their families of origin in some way or another into their love relationship. The variations are too numerous to mention and are usually enacted with very little consciousness. Like when you expect your wife to love you like your mother did or didn’t. Or when you expect your husband to make up for the love your father couldn’t provide, to cite a couple of the more common examples. The hard part is these experiences are usually outside of consciousness. That means they are just below the level of consciousness you might have for what goes on in your everyday life. As such you don’t see them operating in your love-life importing thoughts, feelings, and actions that are out of date and not very constructive. You really don’t need unconscious out of date reactions in control of your love-life.
Sharing family of origin experiences with a lover creates healthy mutuality as things get reviewed by both of you for the good of the relationship. This is love-life communication at its best. Another equally important area for mutual exploration and review are the ways in which both of you are defensive with each other. This particular topic can be as difficult to talk about as the influence of our families of origin or more so in some instances. Most people don’t like to admit their efforts to control another person’s effects on them. We are all taught in one way or another not to be vulnerable. But remember, no vulnerability no love.
Defensiveness comes in all shapes and sizes. Thoughts, feelings, or actions can all be used to control our emotional lives especially our love-lives. Anything that blunts or numbs a person’s experiences can be commissioned for defensive purposes. Defensive behavior is directly responsible for more of the damage that occurs in a relationship than anything else. And it’s not just your defensiveness. No it’s also your tendency to defend your defensiveness. Most people fight tooth and nail against any effort to critique the way they defensively relate in love. It’s easily perceived as an attack. For example, I am not supposed to tell you that whenever we argue you make it harder for me to speak by yelling at me. The yelling is your way of cutting back on what might hurt you in our argument. But you believe you are not supposed to hear that let alone talk about it to a lover.
The only real hope we have against the negative effects of defensiveness is to humble ourselves and admit the need to protect ourselves from hurt. This usually changes the conversation, and if it doesn’t there is a deeper problem. Look at it this way, repairing a love relationship is very critical stuff. The loss of a lover can be very painful to say the least. Extreme measures may be needed to recover or rejuvenate what is dying. When it is time to talk, remember as far as love is concerned, vulnerability is your only hope to be listened to and understood. It is sometimes more important to talk about how you talk to each other or not talk to each other than what needs talking about.
independence in love
It appears counterintuitive to say that independence keeps a love relationship healthy and growing. I know people who would have you believe that it is dependency that keeps a love relationship together. Dependency in adulthood is just another way of saying that childhood needs for affection and love and their disappointment are alive and well and influencing an adult love-life. More specifically, healthy independence in love amounts to differentiating your love-life from everyone else’s, making the conscious choice to love somebody, and accepting your partner for who he or she is.
When you differentiate your love-life from everyone else’s love-life you are practicing your love-life independence. What I mean is you are becoming conscious of your dependency on other people’s love-lives so that eventually you can move on to having your own. A good example of this is when a child grows up and recreates his or her parents’ marriage. Whether good or bad, someone else’s love relationship unconsciously becomes the model or reference for your own. The obvious disadvantage to this is that you do not get a chance to have and enjoy your own love-life in a creative sense. Everyone should have a chance to create their very own love-life guided only by their individual wishes and desires. Once this tendency to depend on others in this way becomes conscious it is easier to change it in favor of your undeclared individuality.
The conscious choice to love a particular person is another example of independence in love. You might remind me that love is not a choice and clearly beyond our ability to control. Love as an emotion is certainly not under our control, but the choice to love is. What I mean is, once the feeling of love exists you have choices as to how to relate to that feeling. You can disregard it, fight with it, or encourage and strengthen it. Choosing to love someone when you are in love is a very fulfilling and gratifying commitment. The act of choosing establishes your individuality in your love-life. Choosing to love a particular person is a statement that you accept the feelings you are having and that you have committed yourself to them. To choose and stick with that choice is the foundation of a commitment to love.
Finally, the last item on our sustaining love through independence list is the act of accepting a particular partner. When I talk about acceptance I am assuming that whomever you are trying to accept is naturally treating you well. I am in no way suggesting you accept abusive treatment of any kind. If your partner loves you but you have not accepted who he or she is, this is our problem. When you accept someone in love you are sending that person the message that he or she is OK the way he or she is. No additions or subtractions are required. This is not only, generally speaking, an act of love but it is also, more importantly an act of independence. By that I mean you are giving up the need for your partner to conform to whatever image you have of the perfect partner. This is a big move in a love relationship.
Independence is there because you are giving up the fantasy for the reality of a real person in your life.
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