“Let’s start by stopping saying we were made for each other”

The word love is on each other’s lips and is named after a feeling, an emotional state that affects us that isolates us from other people and the environment. Throughout development, we learn to recognize the different expressions of love and to whom they are pointed. Love is not unconditional. The first condition occurs in choosing the subject to be invested in that affective state.

Furthermore, the love expressed to a child is not the same as love to a partner or to a father or a mother. The word “love” —as a feeling and an action— specialization is needed and requires actions that express it. Love without behavioral expression raises speculations: receiving a loving hug is not the same as thinking “he’s not loving, but I know he loves me”.

Although, when it comes to love, the first and most named is “romantic love”. One that allows couples to choose with each other and that is marked by genetic, physical, sexual and cultural factors, which tend to maintain procreation. An idea that has been, and continues to be, widely studied and questioned.

Be the one for the other?

The still valid belief in complementarity between the parties with the maximum “We are for each other” has done a lot of damage to couplesWhy? Because of the lack of symmetry or fairness inherent in this cohesive union. Rather, a condition that healthy love must have is that it is based on the unwillingness to let union equality be removed by a suffocating link.

It is believed that this type of love appears in the newborn’s first attachment to the mother and then conforms to the typical romantic love relationship. From this type of attachment arose the idea of ​​complementarity, of the physiological and affective need for this fundamental relationship.

Fortunately — although despite many defending nature as the sole ruler of sexuality — humans have evolved, moving away from the rules of this species to take the power to make decisions about our intentions and actions.

More than love, frenzy

So, why is romantic love associated with a sense of frenzy? What happens is that this kind of love has biological bases that support it and goes from the genes that control attraction, to the hormones and neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin that stimulate attachment.

The parts of the brain associated with reward are activated to enhance the bond as an addictive connection. And, like all emotions set by biology and evolution, they limit human sexual behavior to intercourse.

The butterflies in the stomach, the state of strangeness where everything is an illusion, the immediate desires to be with other people and the feeling that leads us to feel that we are “made for each other” relieves us of a moment of need. individuality and autonomy.

At the same time, not only these positive emotions are experienced, but also annoying manifestations similar to addictions, hypomania (a mild form of bipolar arousal), depression and obsessions.

The dangers of trying to prolong the whirlwind of romantic love

And, after the climax of that revelation, what’s next? Monogamous pair bonds have emerged in all human societies and even in some mammals and are characterized by single human selection, two parents caring for offspring, aggression on strangers, and interrelated behavior. behavior in the pair.

However, in the times in which we live, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain this kind of love. We are more willing to regulate old-fashioned expressions and, although they are there, they are altered by lived experiences along with social and cultural changes.

An article published in Limitations of Psychology (2020), reviewing studies published to date on the behaviors of couples after meeting, show that The first years of the newlyweds are predictions of what will happen next.

Research into the biological systems involved such as reward circuit (via the neurotransmitter dopamine) shows that, over time, this mechanism stops arousal when the individual is exposed to familiar faces or positive effects, seeking rewards or pleasure in other people or activities.

The findings also suggest that reward systems may remain very active, at the level of desire, seeking the presence of others as the only reward in the so -called dependency love. Where romantic love becomes a motivational drive similar to what happens with addictions. This is a possessive, controlling, excessive, passionate, risky and limiting love of one’s own freedom and the other person.

Three good reasons why romantic love dies

In the first place, this love is found within passions, where has the highest visibility ranging from 18 months to 3 years (depending on which study was mentioned) and then calm down to become less intense and feel urgent.

Second, this kind of love it is uneven. It is marked by biology and heteronormative norms, it is men who have taken a role of dominance over women.

Third, as we move away from primitive determinants and toward the world of social patterns, countless new options that expand the field of marital relationships: respect, inclusion, agreements, personal autonomy, equality, raising and caring for shared children, new forms of relationships such as homoparentality, single parenthood, open relationships; all changes questioning and accelerating changes to pre -established standards.

Fight the “effect of failure”

After the enthusiasm and desire to be together, why do so many couples become bitter, with little communication and start looking for pleasure outside of the bond? Explanations for this “romantic love decline” include the “effect of failure”stress and conflicts, monotony, loss of sexual desire, habituation, the flattening of intimacy and lack of positive effect.

Therefore, the loving intensity activated in the early years must give way to a sentimental love, more calm and controlled by desires. If the circuits of romantic love remain very active, the need to be together becomes a compelling one and limits the need for individual action. This is the basis of dependency love and addictive love.

On the other extreme, the loss of romantic love can be an extreme fall into dissatisfaction and boredom, maintained only by nostalgia for wild days. I always say: “love is not enough, you have to make love into actionOtherwise, everything remains in a feeling that is assumed, but not expressed. ”Love is not altruistic.

Love is therefore not altruisticwe cannot place our whole being, our being at the mercy of a bond, nor can we expect others to do so. Healthy love requires “healthy selfishness”that is, a defense of individuality, personal standards, the autonomy of each subject.

In other words, romantic love has a positive side if we stick to the feelings of attraction that appear in the beginning. We all remember those first loves full of intensity and illusions; but, at the same time, the need to control, to possess man, to perceive them as a necessary, essential “food”, is also beginning to emerge.

Healthy love sets its conditions from the very fact that each person participating does it with their stories, their personal desires, their ways of thinking about life, their ways of feeling and expressing love. A) Yes, the magic of healthy love It happens when these two people engage with each other, respect each other, share, project and reconcile even in the midst of conflicts. All without losing individuality.

Walter Ghedin, psychiatrist, psychotherapist, clinical sexologist and author of Heterosexuality came out of the closet (ed. Lea).