Relationships in adulthood. When love is real, despite the number of years of marriage. Basic prerequisites for the formation of a mature couple
Feelings have no boundaries - neither age nor social status can stop love... So why so often you can hear about young hearts, kindled to each other with an unearthly passion, but about love in mature age is it not accepted to speak? Let it be very different from what a person experiences in distant youth, but this in no way negates all her charm.
disadvantages
As long as the children live nearby, the woman does not feel lonely. When do they go out in adult life and become independent, she remains alone with her thoughts, fears, desires. But the forgotten freedom comes back to it, with which it is necessary to do something. You can, of course, devote yourself to grandchildren, then and great-grandchildren, but what if you want to find a couple before it's too late?
Circle potential partners small at this age- this is the main drawback. All peers are most likely either married or of no interest. There are two ways out. Or agree to a relationship with a man who is older, and this essentially turns out to become a nurse near the bedside of an elderly husband. The second option is to expand the circle of acquaintances. All means are good here: dating sites, word of mouth, active social life. If you still want to enjoy love, do not neglect any chance to meet it anywhere.
The second disadvantage is it is difficult to come to terms with the fact that there will never be that intensity of passions that was in his youth. Passion in youth replaces love, but how your eyes burn from it, how your head is spinning. All the disadvantages of a partner are simply not noticed: hormones allow you to close your eyes to a lot. In adulthood, the look is too critical and will not allow one to plunge into the novel with ease and recklessness.
Dignity
The most important plus of love in adulthood is wisdom. Disappointment is unlikely, because, despite the fact that all the shortcomings are visible with the naked eye, you are able to accept a loved one with all the problems, because over the years there is tolerance for many things and the ability to forgive.
Well, and the most important advantage: life can still be started again taking into account all your mistakes. If you monitor your health, the period of activity will last for a very long time, which means, together with your new spouse, you will discover a lot of things that you never knew about before. New acquaintances, pleasant communication, dates - you cannot give yourself up or devote yourself to serving something, the time has come to remember yourself.
But no matter how it seems, in different ages feelings are different from each other. In adolescence, everything seems much brighter and simpler. Don't care about the little ones everyday problems, and what others will say. You love your soul mate only because she is with you, and this proves a lot, as it seems at that moment. A person is loved not for something, but simply because he is near. To a greater extent, at this age, they choose appearance, material status, popularity. After all, many young people meet only for ostentatious significance, and giving a certain authority.
More mature love is not so cloudless... It is not for nothing that there is such a proverb "You need to get married when you are young." This suggests that at a young age, feelings are much freer and not driven into frames. In adulthood, the realization comes that just love is not enough, the basic components of a reliable relationship are needed: trust, respect, understanding, the ability to compromise, support, these feelings are just as important as love itself. Maybe that's why, when they grow up, it is much more difficult to find a mate. Since they are guided not only by feeling, but also by attitude, attention. This can be checked very simply, help in difficult times, indicates a desire to support in a difficult situation, lend a shoulder, and be a reliable support. During illness, protect from all adversity. Material support, a desire to give all the best to your soulmate. All these proofs of love are valid in adulthood only when they are collected into a single whole. Love for a person without basic components is possible, but only it is not enough for a long time, and it quickly passes when faced with life's difficulties, problems quickly sober up and make you see.
A man who fell in love with a woman with a child, bears double responsibility. Since he must protect not only the beloved woman, but also the child. When choosing a chosen one, a woman with a child motivates her choice general attitude... Since he and the child are one, and the man must understand that the mother will not go against the will and welfare of her child. Everything that is good for the child will be good for the mother as well. You can’t impose yourself in any way. You need to gain trust, gain understanding. If the child sees that his mother is respected, loved, then he himself will reach out to you. If, on the contrary, then you will never be able to achieve positive result... Children feel everything on subconscious level, it is impossible to deceive them.
It's foolish to think that love only happens at a young age. Stronger and more reliable feelings arise in late age... They go through a kind of "selection" according to the components listed above. If such a person is found, this love will last forever, unlike youth. Therefore, do not hesitate to show feelings at any age, but do not forget about your loved ones, children, parents. They need to know that you are happy, that you are good. May they rejoice with you.
“All ages are submissive to love,” A.S. said many years ago. Pushkin. This is a truth that does not require proof: to love, deeply and faithfully, a person can at any age. And not once, as previously stated, but several times in his life. This love will have its own characteristics, its own unique emotional shades.
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“Love has its own laws of development, its own ages, like human life. It has its own splendid spring, its hot summer, autumn, which for some is warm, bright and fruitful, for others it is cold and barren, ”wrote V.G. Belinsky.
Marital relations also cannot remain the same, they are constantly evolving and changing. It is quite natural that in the relationship of spouses from time to time certain changes can occur, typical for the development of marriage over time. If we compare the periods of courtship and adolescence with the subsequent periods of development of the marital relationship, we see a typical transition from romantic love to a realistic understanding of marriage.
Honore de Balzac noted on this occasion that during a person's life, his love goes through an infinite number of transformations, before forever merging with our life and forever painting it in its fiery color. Love is a naive stream that flows over the pebbles, between grasses and flowers; but now it becomes a river, a river, changes its nature and appearance from each new tributary, then flows into a boundless ocean, in which imperfect minds see only monotony, and great souls plunge into endless contemplation.
In adulthood, love is usually more conscious, in youth it is more restless, from the age of 13-15, they begin to wait for it, fearing that it might pass by.
Most often, young people, having reached the age of 18, think that it is their time to love, that feelings are strong only in youth. They look with amazement at those who, having lived together for most of their lives, get divorced because they stopped loving each other, or even in their declining years still talk about love to their chosen ones. Only over the years is the truth learned: love is not a privilege of youth, it is characteristic of people at any age.
In youthful love, dreams of the future are usually not associated with family life. Lovers dream of traveling, of a future profession, of never leaving. Elements of fantasy are introduced into the image of a loved one.
First love is usually platonic. The object of love is treated with adoration; the problem of sexual intimacy as such does not arise for lovers. At this age, they strive to be together as often as possible, experiencing great pleasure from emotional closeness.
First love can suddenly disappear, moreover, without any external reason. In such cases, some young people may experience disappointment, disbelief in love. However, this state quickly passes, and an invaluable experience of emotional communication remains, which is used in future, "adult" love.
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A 19-year-old girl recalls how her first love developed: “We met at a competition at the beginning of the 10th grade. Began to meet. Three months after we met, he came to visit me with flowers. This pleasantly struck me and my parents, because chivalry has become so rare in our time! Parents liked him very much, I also liked everything about him. I was even going to marry him, but then abruptly changed my mind. I myself do not know why this happened. He is still puzzled, and so are my parents. They tell me that I'm windy, and that they don't do that with love. They might be right, but I couldn't help myself. Apparently, this is only my first feeling, and everything is ahead of me. "
At the same time, the first love, which most often a person experiences in his youth, leaves an indelible mark on the soul of any person. Youthful love is open, unprotected, fragile. Even ridicule can be destructive for her. Therefore, special care is required, caution in handling it. And those around them, and the lovers themselves, and especially those who cannot respond to the feelings addressed to them: the relationship of a person to himself, to other people, to the object of his mature love largely depends on how relationships develop in youthful love ... The most sensitive to the experience of first love are young men who for many years cannot part with their memories of how the girl reacted to their feelings - shared it with the young man or, conversely, rejected it.
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“First love,” writes A. Maurois in “Letters to a Stranger,” “leaves an imprint on a man's entire future life. If this love was happy, if a woman or girl who awakened the feelings of a young man responded to them and was faithful, a feeling of trust, clarity will become a companion of his whole life. If this first time, when he wanted to give himself and trust, he was rejected or betrayed, the wound will never heal to the end, and moral health it will be undermined for a long time ...
Very often, a man, being unhappy in his first love, dreams of a gentle and poetic woman all his life, combining in relation to him the qualities of a girl and a mother, friendship and sensual attraction, understanding and humility. He searches everywhere for this sylphide and is therefore constantly unfaithful. Instead of accepting women as they really are - imperfect, complex, but alive - he seeks, as the romantic poets said, an angel, and he himself becomes like an animal ... This is a terrible responsibility ... to be the first love ... ".
Almost all of this in equally refers not only to a man, but also to a woman.
First love is a tender and quivering charm of boys and girls, a feeling of the highest spiritual purity. It is more like falling in love, which passes rather quickly and is remembered forever because it is the first. In the first love, youth knows itself. This also happens when a person is in love himself, and when he condescendingly observes loving girlfriends and friends, admires his resistance to the attempts of the opposite sex to attract attention to himself, even philosophizes about this. This is the period when interest in opposite sex and desire to love. If the feeling does not come for a long time, anxiety ripens: “Will I really never meet anyone, love anyone? Why did love come to others, but not to me? Why is it not interesting with me to those with whom I want to be constantly? How can you change yourself to become attractive? " Young people begin to be active in winning sympathy. This is a time for a test of strength. Often these relationships remain at the level of play and search. With great humor in the ancient Indian "Kama" this period is said as follows: “The one about which I constantly think is indifferent to me; she strives for another, and he loves another. Meanwhile, another one dries over me. But they all failed: she, and that, and the God of love, and this, and myself! "
The first feeling is most often short-lived. It either ends in disappointment, or grows into true love... At the same time, the distance from first falling in love to real feelings is no less than, for example, from childish babble to brilliant poems of great poets.
Young lovers often want to seem better, more interesting, because they really want to please the one with whom they are passionate. But to seem does not mean to be. How long can you stand on tiptoe ?! It is from insincerity in the period of falling in love that the drama of love begins, which ends with the traditional reproaches: "I never thought you were like that!"
True love is natural and beautiful, like life itself. They recognize her right away, here everything is done according to the eternal ritual: first, the world will spin like on a merry-go-round, and only he or she flickers in it. A voice, a smile, details are constantly in my memory last meeting... It is already impossible to wait, I want to meet faster. "Inadvertent" meetings begin, the first awkward conversations... The desire to see the other is constantly growing, I want the beloved to quickly guess about the feeling for him, it is scary for this world permeated with trepidation.
First manifestations mutual love still timid, but they add to the emotionality of the lives of young people. The beginning of love is beautiful because it brings out the best in a person. In self-knowledge, self-discovery, a person seeks and develops what is important and pleasant to another.
If the feeling is mutual, the craving for each other increases, the desire to be together as often as possible grows. Common joy, shared experiences, and sometimes overcome difficulties and trials together are able to raise the incipient feeling to the level of great love.
Finally, the first confession: most often with eyes, a smile, embarrassment, a timid touch of hands, anxious anticipation of the upcoming meeting, unwillingness to part at the next date. At this moment, spiritual illumination comes - the lovers understand that they are reciprocated. Young people declare their love. Happiness seems complete.
But youthful love has its own characteristics. She is romantic, idealized. Young people, having fallen in love for the first time, believe that no one has ever had such love. Often they endow each other with the virtues that they want to see, and not those that actually are. They try to mechanically transfer the requirements for the ideal to the person they like. But more often it ends in disappointment. Someone before marriage, or even longer, lives in dreams about the nonexistent image of the beautiful Laura or his own, created by the imagination, Romeo. The other begins to take a sober look at his beloved and finds in him not so much confirmation of his ideal as contradictions with him. Much turns out not to be as it was imagined. The romantic notions of the beloved and the reality of life collide. If the contradiction is not resolved, love stops gaining strength and stops in its development. It happens that people test their feelings with time and separation. If the desire for new meetings with the chosen person dies out, others worry more, then you need to come to terms with the fact that disappointment has entered your heart. Wise people advise to let the heart suffer so that it is ripe for real feeling. The suffering of unfulfilled love prepares for future love, stronger and more beautiful.
Although youth gives love the power of passion, freshness of feelings, heightened perception of beauty, at the age of 14–17, rarely anyone succeeds in retaining love. At the same time, the experience of a large and wonderful feeling, which youthful love is, can spiritually and mentally enrich a person, often leaving wonderful memories for life. This kind of love can be a great preparation for later life, contribute to the development of sensitivity, responsiveness and empathy in young people.
If a young man said: “I love you!”, And the girl immediately replied with consent, if this was said during that period of charm, when everything seems so beautifully fabulous and you want to love everyone, this is not a guarantee of the strength and strength of the feeling. People say correctly: "Quick haste - people laugh." It is not enough for the feeling to arise, it is necessary to let it grow stronger, mature, blossom.
Separation becomes a serious test for youthful love. It seemed that they both loved, but now they parted for a while. At first they were sad, bored, then we lost the habit and gradually forgot. They began to pay attention to others. This means that there was love, not love.
Time and separation cleanse real love of everything superficial, only good and bright remains. The feeling becomes stable, strong, even.
But not everyone stands the test of separation and time. Waiting also has limits. In particular, physiological and psychological reasons aspirations of girls not to postpone marriage. She, more than a young man, is afraid of being left alone. With a long wait, not only life paths often diverge - the psychology of people, views, attitudes, habits also change. The main bonds of youthful love - moral and psychological compatibility - may be violated. Common points of view on life and love, marriage, family are created gradually, in constant communication. It is important not only to recognize each other's merits, but also to tolerate shortcomings. Long waiting times and separations sharpen the vision of flaws, not virtues. With strong mutual love, each helps the other to overcome them, and with immature love, disappointment sets in.
Youthful love is very fragile. Like a fragile tree, it can bend under the weight of life's difficulties, wither under unfavorable circumstances, break under the blows of fate.
Still fragile love and uncertainty arising for some reason in a loved one or in oneself, a feeling of insecurity in a relationship are destroying. Uncertainty breeds suspicion or jealousy, and these vices are destructive. When love ceases to be joy, it dies. Meanwhile, folk wisdom has always linked together love, hope and faith. Hope in love is its prospects, the conviction that the feeling will always be strong and beautiful. Faith is confidence in the future, in a loved one, in his loyalty, it is the exclusion of any suspicion, complete trust in each other. An optimistic position should dominate in love: a young man should proceed from the fact that a girl is the best for him, and a girl - that he is the most worthy for her. But in life, it often happens the other way around: everyone believes that he is the best among the best for another, made him happy with his attention, and forgets that love is the rise of the one who likes, and not himself, in front of the one who likes him. Life teaches young people that one must proceed from the principle of equality of dignity: raising a beloved or beloved, a person rises himself; humiliating, emphasizing his superiority, a person exposes his low culture and causes disrespect for himself. Optimism makes it easier to overcome the difficulties of everyday life. How many young families could not stand this test of strength, failing to overcome the disharmony between romance and emotional elevation of feelings, age-specific, and the routine, down-to-earthness of life, for which young people, as a rule, are not ready.
To maintain and strengthen love, a young family first of all needs a solid economic foundation under its feet. It is no coincidence that marriages entered into after acquiring a profession are more stable. You can, of course, live at the expense of your parents, but how long can this last? You will have to give up the main thing in love: independence and freedom of feelings, you will have to endure the inevitable interference of others in family affairs. You can't live your own life if you live at someone else's expense.
So that the poetry of love of young people is not destroyed by the prose of life, it is necessary not to waste time in vain from early youth, to develop will, intelligence, character, efficiency, hard work, skill. Then there will be enough strength, character, and experience to save love.
The first meeting with love means a lot in our life. Prudent and cautious people try to enter the sea of love feelings gradually, one step at a time, without risking falling under the wave. These enter adulthood literate, but not capable of deep and sincere feelings... No mental shock threatens them. Including love - it's a shock. A person who has taken a sip of real happiness - no matter what it costs him - will strive for only him all his life, not agreeing to anything else.
We fear early love, reckless love, irresponsible love, we try to avoid unwanted disappointment and suffering. One should not be afraid of love, but its absence, so that an emotional desert does not form in your soul.
Mature love is the sun at the zenith of a person's life. It is in adulthood that love is able to perform its functions to the highest degree: to elevate feelings, ennoble the heart, and encourage creativity. She instills confidence in her strengths in life's struggle and overcoming difficulties, makes the mind sharper, finer perception of the world, irreconcilable conscience, strengthens the fortitude of the spirit. Love ceases to be an end in itself, remaining the center of attraction for everything the spiritual world person. Loving in adulthood is as important as breathing. As soon as love leaves, old age begins, no matter how old you are - 30 or 70. Love for life in adulthood rests on love for a real person, primarily on love for your spouse and children. But the main feature of mature love is its connection with all other types of passionate attitude towards the world: love for the motherland, for work by vocation, for children, for the riches of nature and human culture. Love gives morality and usefulness to all hobbies of a person and is enriched by itself thanks to his beloved work, touching art, nature, friends, interesting people. It just seems that serious business people in adulthood they only work, argue about production problems. No, everything is present mature love, giving a person strength for labor, struggle and victory.
In adulthood, love comes in a different way, its signs are different. Youth adds love to its life, maturity gives it everything that it has. Mature love forgives a lot and will even take the blame of a loved one upon itself. She is proud, does not tolerate pity and humiliation, vulgarity and pettiness. At the same time, mature love is often associated with difficulties, which, instead of joy, give a person mental suffering. And most often the cause of this suffering is the family, which he cannot leave out of a sense of duty. This is how a woman writes about it, to whom love came at a fairly mature age, but she could not afford to leave for her beloved. The most difficult thing in this situation was that the woman was constantly tormented by doubts: whether she has the right to love and be loved if she has obligations to her family.
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“I fell in love at the age of 40. At the wrong time, at the wrong time. I fell in love not in spring - in autumn. There is slush all around, and I glow with happiness. Then I came to my senses, as if I stumbled on the run: I have a husband, almost adult children - what am I? ... He left, and many pounds of torment settled in my soul, a heaviness that I feel physically. And suddenly she doubted whether my sacrifice was needed? And whose advice could I take? "
Mature love is strong in reciprocity, it is not a sum, but a product of two virtues different people complementing each other! But this is also the division of the shortcomings of one into two.
Mature love is a strong and stable feeling. For some, it lasts all their lives, for others, for years, sometimes fading at times, then flaring up again. To successfully overcome the difficulties of life, the difficulties of your character, temptations and cooling, you need to have a high moral and volitional upbringing. That's why this essential for mature love has fidelity, decency, reliability of the spouses.
A new assessment and self-assessment of the feeling of love also occurs in the early years. life together married. In the union of lovers, tenderness, admiration for a loved one and constant all-encompassing gratitude to him, but that he loves, but that he is faithful, for the happiness that you constantly receive from just one feeling that he or she is near, usually grows over the years.
Enhances feelings and childbirth. Hegel said: “A mother loves a spouse in a child, and the latter loves a wife; both have in him their love before them. At the same time, as in property, unity is found only in the external thing, in children it is in a certain spiritual connection, in which the parents are loved, and which is loved by us. " If the birth of a child cools the feelings, destroys the spiritual connection of the parents, their conjugal love, this indicates only one thing: one of them simply did not love the other or lost respect for him already during married life. True love from the birth of a baby it becomes even stronger, brighter and more poetic. Failed love cannot stand the test of difficulties associated with the birth of a child, the family is destroyed.
Love must be endured so that it becomes more precious than anything else in the world. To suffer first of all by overcoming the bad in ourselves, ennobling those we love. When mature love comes, it must be sustained by constant words and deeds.
Of course, it is bad if one of the spouses says: “I will always find another one as good as you” or “I am still beautiful enough to be admired by others. Not one will fall in love with me yet. " It is even worse when you are interrogated every day: "Where have you been?", "Who are you talking to so affectionately on the phone with?" Distrust eats away love.
There is also a period of rest in love. It can last for years until something stirs up a feeling, and the spouses, under the impression of shock, suddenly feel how young their love is. Sometimes, busy with work and raising children, spouses can weaken their attention to each other - this is dangerous: the feeling can simply die without taking care of it.
In adulthood, even a short separation is dangerous and unnecessary. Communication with a spouse becomes the same necessity, need, like sleep and food: without him it is impossible to live for a long time. In mature love, they are afraid not for themselves, but for the other: "What if something happens to him?"
In mature love, the main difficulty is the combination of conjugal and parental love. The older the children, the more problems, and strength decreases over the years. There is only one way out: gradually to accustom growing children to independent decision, responsibility for their actions, not allowing their worries to completely absorb you, weaken your attention to your wife or husband. Children should be given as much attention as can strengthen conjugal love, but no more. The troubles of young people often arise because the elders think and decide for them, forgetting about their own life, which is given to them and in which they must be happy. Youth will solve its problems on its own, but the problems of parents are not given to it to solve. It is sometimes said that love is strong until old age comes. Is it so?
The practice of our counseling work with elderly couples and single elderly people shows that love does not lose its value for a person even in old age, at the end of life. This is confirmed by the lines from the work of the Czech author Jezef Zelenka "Love".
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“I watched her in the store. She stood in front of the mirror, small, strong, ugly. The new coat came down to her ankles, with only her fingertips sticking out of the sleeves. She looked insecure and very vulnerable.
“It suits you,” the old man repeated several times, going around her. He carefully straightened the fold, removed an invisible feather from his shoulder. Hem it a little, - he advised, - and it will be very good ...
“I can't do that, I'm so little,” the old woman said guiltily and turned her flushed face to the saleswoman, then looked at her husband. She wanted to be a little better in his eyes. The old man gave him an old coat to wrap.
“It's cold,” he remarked, paying.
I completely forgot why I came to the store. I followed them, drawn by some obscure force. The old man, holding his wife by the tips of his fingers protruding from long sleeve, led her down the street. I followed them for quite a long time, imperceptibly, but persistently, without saying a word. "
This example clearly demonstrates that even in adulthood, spouses can maintain deep feelings of love, affection and mutual care for each other.
It is no coincidence that centenarians are always happy in family life. As the poet said, love is alive as long as the earth lives, until a person perishes into the earth! Yes, people need love all their lives, and in old age it is no less beautiful than in youth.
Often, love flares up in people with big difference aged. As oddity, as eccentricity, or as a marriage of convenience, such married couples: he is 50 years old, she is half her age. And this is understandable: a young woman, not meeting among her peers who would meet her spiritual needs, reached out to someone who, over the years, did not lose the purity of his heart, but acquired clarity of mind, wisdom. Remember: Ch. Chaplin at the age of 60 married a 20-year-old actress, lived with her for 25 years, leaving the world with wonderful works of cinema and five children. The big difference in years between V.G. Korolenko and his wife did not prevent them from creating happy family... And there are many such examples.
Sometimes unspent tenderness and passion flare up with tremendous force in late, or in the last, love. The last love in life is rare. It is like a gift of fate and like a crown of thorns before the eternity of nothingness. This is both great happiness and great sorrow for man.
F. Koluntsev writes in his novel Morning, Afternoon, Evening: “The last love is always poisoned by the bitterness of repentance and is most often burdened with lies. First love mistakes are not fatal. The mistakes of the latter are irreparable. "
Belated and unequal love often carries with it great pain. Often, she is accompanied by remorse in front of another person with whom she has lived for many years. The natural ties of generations are torn: the life experience of lovers is too different, youth is not prepared for a long and strong feeling, and on the threshold of old age there is no opportunity for this.
Of course, marriage of people of the same age for mutual love is happier. But in life there are so many complex collisions, so many dissimilar situations that it is impossible to reduce everything to a single standard.
Love comes at any age and can go away both in youth and old age, if a person has not learned to take care of it.
How love is born
Love between a boy and a girl, between a man and a woman has its own dynamics, its own development. This is a process in which it is possible to distinguish periods of intense experiences, "passionate burning" and slow fading, up to the complete cooling of feelings in one or both partners. No matter how much we would like to preserve this amazing feeling for life, unfortunately, a person is powerless to dominate the element of love experiences. Love is the case when a person's feelings do not obey his mind. Eternal love, which is spoken about mainly in the language of poetry and art, is more an exception than a rule in the relationship between a man and a woman. When it comes to eternal love, they usually say that this is the love that, in its fullness, has never been realized.
At the same time, love appears and colors a person's life with a gamut of various experiences. She has her own laws, according to which she is born, lives and dies. In some cases, this life can be quite long, in others - too short, when a person, not having time to enjoy the happiness of love, loses it forever.
Just like the mystery of love itself, the laws of its origin and extinction still remain an amazing mystery for humanity. Experts in the field of psychology of emotions highlight some of the features of the development of love, which are most vividly described in Stendhal's work "On Love". The key concept, revealing the essence of the formation of the feeling of love, is "crystallization".
Speaking about the crystallization of love, Stendhal draws an analogy between what happens to a tree branch in salt mines, and a person's feelings, which intensify along with the increase in the virtues of the object of his love.
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“In the Salzburg salt mines, into the deserted depths of these mines, they throw a branch of a tree that has been exposed during the winter; two or three months later it is taken out, covered with shiny crystals; even the smallest twigs, which are no larger than the foot of a titmouse, are adorned with countless movable and dazzling diamonds; the old branch is unrecognizable ...
It gives us pleasure to decorate with a thousand perfections a woman in whose love we are sure; with endless joy we go through the details of our bliss. It boils down to the fact that we exaggerate the magnificent property that fell to us from heaven, which we do not yet know and of which we are sure of ...
What I call crystallization is a special activity of the mind, which from everything it encounters, extracts the discovery that the beloved object has new perfections. "
How is love born?
The first stage is admiration for the object of love. Something in another person attracts attention, amazes, makes you stop, feel admiration. Sometimes - beautiful appearance, gait, voice, sometimes - subtle judgment, deep thought, sometimes - deed, courage, nobility, kindness. Beauty, according to Stendhal, indispensable condition the birth of love: “Beauty for the birth of love is necessary as a signboard. It is necessary that the ugliness is not an obstacle. " A sign usually stops our gaze, attracts attention, and ugliness, on the contrary, can repel. However, beauty itself is not only external attractiveness, the beauty of the body. This is also the beauty of the mind, will, and spirit of a person. Thus, the beginning of the birth of love is associated with the separation of the future object of love from the environment and endowing it with an emotionally positive assessment. The experience of admiration gives a partner in our eyes exclusivity and makes him the center of our attention.
The second stage is the study of the subject of love, a comprehensive study of the partner, hypersensitivity to all his behavioral manifestations, appearance, judgments. There is no love here yet, there is only a benevolent interest in the personality of a partner and an unconscious sympathy due to admiration.
The third stage is the birth of love and the first crystallization of feelings. The origin of love is associated with the experience of pleasure from the sight of its object and communication with it. The first crystallization of feelings is of decisive importance for the development of love. Stendhal calls it a special activity of the mind aimed at endowing the object of love with all possible virtues. The partner's personality is systematically evaluated positively. Information about the partner undergoes special processing - exaggeration of the merits, ignoring or distorting the shortcomings (turning them into merits), which leads to the “concentration of merits and virtues” of the partner and idealization of his image. If there is no real intimacy and communication with a partner, crystallization of imaginary permission sets in.
The fourth stage is the birth of doubt. The idealization of the image of a partner at a certain moment turns the bearer of self-love and gives rise to doubt as to how much he himself is worthy of the love of his chosen one, such a respected, perfect and “godlike” being. This is the stage of the emergence of orientation towards oneself as a possible object of love, the beginning of the search for an answer to the question: "Why and for what am I loved?"
The fifth stage is the second crystallization of feelings. Receiving confirmation of the presence of reciprocal love directs the process of self-exploration and self-development of the individual in the direction of isolation and cultivation in oneself best qualities and the virtues that she already possesses, which she wants to see in herself and which she is endowed with by the object of love. The second crystallization of feelings is personal growth in the direction of developing those virtues in oneself that will make a person irresistible, chosen, loved. Main feature the fifth stage of love is the intense personal growth of the bearer of the feeling of love in the context of building a relationship with a significant other.
The sixth stage is the development of a relationship of love towards achieving complete intimacy and oneness with its object.
The stages of the first and second crystallization of the partner's image (the object of love) and one's own image are of key importance for understanding the psychological mechanisms of the influence of love relationships on personality development. Russian philosopher B.C. Soloviev viewed idealization in its positive meaning as the ability to see in a partner not only those properties and qualities that he already possesses, but also those that could be. The ability to see potential, still hidden from others, dignity and perfection in a partner and treat him as if they are already a reality, build your communication and behavior, already taking into account these potential dignities, is the great wisdom of love. "Deification of a beloved being" is necessary so that your perfections, still hidden not only from others, but also from yourself, existing as if in a project of what you could become, saw in you your partner and explained in close communication and activities, creating the necessary conditions for their transition to the internal state. The idealization of the image of a partner is a kind of "credit of trust" given to a loved one. It will bear positive results, provided that each of the partners will try to change in better side in order to correspond to the ideas of their chosen one about themselves as "perfection". If this does not happen, the mutual idealization of love (marriage) partners without an active attitude towards themselves will sooner or later lead to deep disappointment.
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About the danger that lies in wait for spouses in similar case, wrote A. Steinsaltz in the book “ Simple words":" Love is always accompanied by mutual idealization, and family relationships built only on it will not be a union of two real people but two phantoms created by fantasy. With a successful combination of circumstances, romantic love is replaced by a more lasting feeling for another person, accompanied by a willingness to put up with his shortcomings and fulfill his obligations towards him. If relations in the family do not receive such a development, it will remain so only nominally until it breaks up; its emotional foundation will not withstand emotional stress. The spouses will seek solace outside family circle changing partners in search of new love».
The second crystallization is the purposeful work of the individual on himself, realizing the goals of self-development and self-improvement. The psychological meaning of the first crystallization is that in the image of a partner and in his own image personality includes potential qualities and builds its relationship with a partner, focusing on these qualities as real. The meaning of the second crystallization is purposeful self-development, work to "raise oneself" to a partner.
With a general positive assessment of crystallization, which has an extreme idealization of the image of a partner, it is necessary to take into account the possible negative consequences of this process. Idealization can cause serious disturbances in interpersonal relationships and communication with a partner in the case when the idealized image conflicts with the real qualities of the partner or when crystallization is not accompanied real work personality for self-improvement.
Love as a strong, deep and stable feeling for another person in its development passes through a number of stages of stages: from simple sympathy to absolute emotional attachment and selfless devotion.
The first stage is interest, sympathy, attraction. We say: "I like him (her)." This is quite enough for a first approximation, for the appearance of friendship between a girl and a boy. These relationships can be long-term, unspecified, romantic or mundane, but they are always very pleasant. These relationships cheer up, although they are not yet binding on anything. In this case, the girl (girl, woman) takes more care of herself, more often looks in the mirror, preserves herself, does her hair, the boy cleans his shoes, ironing his trousers every day. It is very good when there is a person who likes you and who you like. It raises vitality, activates personal self-improvement actions.
The second stage is admiration, enthusiasm, love, passion. These feelings already create a certain tension and intensity, they always excite, but tire, knock out of the rhythm, require their permission. Live in a state passionate excitement it is difficult for a person. Passion must either be extinguished or be satisfied. If the feelings of one are warmed up and encouraged by the other, the possibility of turning the friendly relations of sympathetic men and women into love story becomes reality. Further, everything depends on upbringing, culture, volitional components, moral principles, etc., that is, on the personality itself.
The third stage is worship, respect, devotion. At this stage, love leads to marriage. You can experience passion as an obsession, but you cannot love without respecting a person.
Love that has gone through all three phases, developed into a powerful feeling, is individual love for life.
An integral component of the feeling of love is sympathy, attraction to another person. In this regard, the question arises about those factors that contribute to the emergence of sympathy and act as a condition for the attractiveness of a partner.
It usually starts with good looks. Ideal attractive appearance due to both cultural, historical, social conditions and subjective assessment criteria. The only common physical sign beauty for all cultures - musculature and growth in men. In addition, beautiful people communicate more often, and this property is more true for handsome men than for beautiful women. The benefit of communicating with the beautiful lies in the fact that at the same time it seems to increase own beauty... As a common type, the attribution of positive personality traits to the beautiful, and negative personality traits to the ugly is manifested. but beautiful woman positive qualities are more often attributed than handsome man... At the same time, women are more guided when choosing a love or marriage partner on beautiful appearance than men. At the same time, both men and women, confident in themselves, choose the most beautiful partner, and in the absence of such confidence, they are guided by the average or even low level physical attractiveness.
The external attractiveness of a person is determined not only by his assessment from the partner, but also in to a large extent his own self-esteem. If self-esteem is high and adequate, or even slightly exceeds the level of adequacy, then this is reflected in such features of personality behavior as confidence, benevolence, focus on establishing relationships and communication, contributing to greater self-disclosure of partners. An important factor contributing to the emergence of love are social characteristics partners, which can be attributed to belonging to a certain social level, status, profession, social success, etc. Success and luck enhance the sympathy and mutual attraction of partners, and failures repel (usually losers are avoided, and not only in love).
Attractive to others - these are people who have communication skills... Therefore, the level of development of communicative culture has important value in the emergence of the attractiveness of partners when meeting and the birth of love. Here, such qualities as the ability for open communication, self-disclosure, sincerity within the limits of preserving the intimate personal "safety space" of partners, the ability to express their feelings, to show an empathic attitude towards a partner are important. The absence or low level of a partner's communicative competence sharply negatively affects his attractiveness to another.
In the development of love relationships, which over time can lead to the creation of a family, an important factor is the similarity of attitudes, ideas, views, values of partners. This allows you to see in another person a like-minded person with whom you can fearlessly discuss issues of interest, receive psychological and moral support in vital situations.
In the inception of sympathy, and then the feeling of love, one should not exclude such a factor as the predictability, predictability of the partner's behavior. These characteristics are especially important in tense, stressful situations as well as in everyday communication. Unpredictability may not be frightening, but at the same time it complicates understanding of the partner's intentions and can lead to a breakdown in the relationship. Predictability should not be reduced to routine and stereotyped behavior. This refers to the "transparency" of the partner's actions and actions, which makes it easier to find contact with him and achieve mutual understanding, to respond appropriately to problems and difficulties that arise in his life.
In a love relationship, especially in their inception, important role situational factors play. These include the following: regularity of contacts, the possibility of implementation joint activities helping each other (caring, helping behavior). Psychologists have proven that the level of sympathy for the partner is higher for the person helping than for the person who is being helped. In other words, we become attached to the one whom we help the most or who needs our help and cannot do without it.
The joint experience of the danger of a threat to life also significantly affects the emergence of sympathy between partners. This factor explains the well-known phenomenon of increasing the level of cohesion of people when experiencing crisis situations(remember the proverb about the need to eat a pound of salt together in order to get to know each other and establish a truly harmonious relationship).
The factor of assessment on the part of partners allows us to take a closer look at each other and pay attention to the one whose assessment of our qualities largely coincides with our own, that is, there is no significant discrepancy between self-assessment and assessment on the part of the partner. This is especially important when the partner emphasizes our positive qualities and advantages, which we have no doubt about. Any person is pleased when someone from the outside points out his dignity; such a person immediately becomes attractive to us.
We love and admire the beauty of a loved one, his personal qualities and demeanor, we are enchanted by his voice and never tired of reciprocal recognition in his feelings for us. Reciprocity in love gives man and woman the highest joy and incomparable happiness. Therefore, the extinction of this wonderful feeling, disappointment in love becomes a real tragedy for former lovers. A person does not just lose a loved one, he loses the opportunity to satisfy his most significant needs, loses the joy of communicating with a loved one, feels useless, loses the meaning of existence and loses self-respect. Grief becomes inconsolable, life loses its meaning, not so much because they fell out of love, but because the rejected one was deprived of the opportunity to be himself. A person suddenly finds himself in a dead end, does not know where to go, what to do. Fight for already lost love, for the restoration of an already destroyed feeling is often doomed to failure. It only intensifies negative feelings, aggravates despair. If you stop loving, then you are disappointed in a person, in your dream, and have lost hope for a better future. One should not look for the reason in infidelity, often infidelity arises because a person himself was not able to change himself in accordance with the desires of his beloved or beloved. Cheating is not a cause, but a consequence of disappointment in love, therefore it cannot be explained only by an heightened sexual need, as it happens most often in those whose love relationship darkened by infidelity. Love is a multifaceted feeling, in it all facets of the human "I" rejoice and suffer.
Why does love most often disappear in marriage? The answer to this question was given by A.I. Herzen, who subtly noticed the features of those changes that occur with the feeling of love in family life. He believed that cohabitation under one roof is a terrible thing, on which half of the marriages collapsed. Living closely together, people come too close to each other, see each other in too much detail, too wide open and imperceptibly pluck all the flowers of the wreath around the petal, which surrounds the personality with poetry and grace.
For many, mature love is associated exclusively with psychology: readiness for a serious relationship, accumulated life experience, worldly wisdom. Others recall physiological features: decreased libido, decreased number of intercourse, improved quality of sexual life. Family psychologists, sexologists talk about the need to perceive this phenomenon in a complex. Relationships between partners always affect intimate life.
Psychologists about mature love
At one time, philosophers wrote about mature love. For example, the famous German specialist Erich Fromm. He meant by this concept a feeling in which there is no egoism, there is a mutual unification of life, interests (in many respects). But at the same time, the uniqueness of the personality of each lover is preserved. Subsequently, this concept was repeatedly considered by his students and followers.
Psychologists never tire of repeating: the discussed feeling is capable of visiting a person at any age. In the West, for example, you won't surprise anyone with weddings over the age of 60. At the same time, the age difference ceases to play a noticeable role: a marriage between a man who is 80 and a woman 50 years old is not so shocking, does not cause a strong resonance.
Public opinion is no longer essential. Among other things, people old age often retire. They manage to take place in terms of careers, make a business, and earn a fairly large amount of money.
Therefore, they may well devote time to their personal lives, leisure, hobbies, travel, pets. Many people admit that the quality of life is improving markedly. Therefore, there are much more opportunities for the manifestation of feelings. People are getting wiser. They are less inclined to maximalism, which can ruin the life of them and those around them, they weigh the words spoken more, and begin to be much more critical of their own actions. Mature age is a time for reevaluation, learning from mistakes.
But it cannot be said that the negotiated period hides only one positive sides... Only the number of years lived does not give wisdom. People often acquire luggage in the form of property, a certain position in society, connections, a circle of acquaintances, which they value. They are also rarely alone: relatives, friends, children, grandchildren, nephews. Therefore, the meeting of a new object for the senses sometimes causes conflicting emotions.
A good age can periodically lead to a crisis, a reassessment of one's own life path, the appearance of a feeling of internal discontent. Many try to make up for what they did not give themselves in their youth, refuse to perceive their age, try to behave as if they were 20, say, years old. Sometimes this behavior leads to the emergence of a new love, a bright flash of passion. But along with them comes an exacerbation of chronic diseases, nervous exhaustion, and disappointment. Such crises are quite dangerous, they can threaten already established family relationships.
Sexologists about mature love
Sexologists see no barriers to intimacy at almost any age. Weakened libido is much more often associated with psychogenic causes or diseases than with natural age-related extinction. However, the latter is quite possible to slow down. With a competent approach, mature love is able to give quite a lot of pleasures, to increase the tone of the body. The main thing is not to turn the bed into a testing ground, not to strive to prove something to yourself, to avoid the desire to compete.
The stereotype would be to imagine such love mainly between mature man and a young girl or vice versa. A similar feeling with multifaceted manifestations can appear between peers; many couples retain it throughout their lives. Therefore, at 50, 60 years old, the quality of intimacy is explained by a fairly good knowledge of each other. Long behind the grinding of character and family crises, people already know each other quite well. This affects the relationship.
Physiological side of the issue
After the onset of menopause, women do not always cool off to intimate life. Much is individual, often depends on the hormonal state of the body. However, today science has developed a fairly large number of different drugs and tools designed to facilitate the course of intimate life for a woman. The vagina produces much less lubrication due to age. But you can use special substitutes.
It is better to select drugs directly with your doctor. A gynecologist can help, sometimes it is rational to contact a sexologist.
Some funds not only improve the quality of intimate life, but also significantly contribute to the normalization of blood pressure, accelerate metabolism.
For men, a moderate intimate life will also bring a lot of positive things. In addition to endorphins (which have a beneficial effect on the condition of both sexes), sex brings a state of relaxation. They are a completely normal load on the cardiovascular system. If you do not overdo it, do not abuse tonic drugs, do not mix the latter with alcohol, then the risk of heart attack during sex is minimized.
Naturally, we must not forget that intercourse (and orgasm) is a positive stress. Therefore, in the presence of direct contraindications from an intimate life, it is worth refraining. True, doctors almost never forbid sexual intercourse at all. Most often, a specific time period is meant, the period of rehabilitation after the operation.
It is also advisable to take into account medical advice on the dosages in which libido-stimulating and sex-enhancing drugs can be used. Basic recommendations regarding the issue of compatibility of drugs with alcohol, other means must be borne in mind. With reasonable care, mature love can bring a lot of joyful discoveries.