Does Romantic Love Make A Couple Strong?
This is how we envision ideal love, or better yet, life with an ideal partner. But don’t we know that relationships will never be just romantic and that sitting around waiting will only lead to bitter disappointments?
Until death do us part? We should relearn what falling in love is and put aside the fairytale scenes that shape our conception.
Goodbye to idealizing the bond of love
The belief in the permanence of romantic love has a whole host of concepts that need revision, let’s look at the most important ones:
- Love at first sight: if we understand love, we will know that we cannot develop this feeling like one-two-three. You may be attracted to someone at first sight or you may experience a longing for them, but love really does take some time to discover those qualities worth loving, to create mutual and enriching satisfaction.
- Being madly in love is another expression we often hear (and say!). However, the infatuation phase or “temporary craziness” cannot be sustained for long. This is because we simply cannot adapt to this permanently, not on a physiological level (constant change) and not on a social-personal level (by constantly thinking about the loved one or being with him, we neglect a lot of other things).
- True love is like fairytale love: Cinderella is a good story; it’s fun and metaphorical, but it does contain an unhealthy rational image. In real life, the handsome Prince and the beautiful Cinderella will have very different roles and will probably find that their circumstances are so different that conflicts will regularly arise.
- Good men fix things in the house and good women do the laundry: Fortunately, we are becoming more aware of these rigid gender stereotypes and are increasingly fighting them. We need to break through these boxes and emphasize individuality and equality, essential points on which a relationship should rest.
In defense of real relationships
An ideal couple is a couple in which the partners share the same ideals, the same qualities, the same ability to think and to experience feelings and emotions. That is, an ideal couple builds itself up.
It often seems wrong for someone not to live up to these standards and tell us that it is not right to say ‘without you I am nothing’. But if you think about it for a moment, you will realize that this is an image that indeed undermines our autonomy and our relationships.
A couple can be exactly how it decides to be and it is the uniqueness of the relationship that makes the relationship real. As long as these exchanges are based on respect for the development of both members, the couple is on the right track.
Every person has special characteristics and with these characteristics we forge a distinctive love. True love is not romantic; it stands for freedom and mutual affection. That is, it is that feeling that gives us wings to fly and reasons to stay.
The importance of emotional independence
‘I can not live without you’. “I would die if you left me.” Few statements can be as dangerous in a relationship as these… More »
