Falling in love is a magical experience that happens between two people. So why do people fall in
love?
All love stories are frustration stories… To fall in love is to be reminded of a frustration that you didn't know you had (of one’s formative frustrations, and of one’s attempted self-cures for them); you wanted someone, you felt deprived of something, and then it seems to be there. And what is renewed in that experience is an intensity of frustration, and an intensity of satisfaction. It is as if, oddly, you were waiting for someone but you didn't know who they were until they arrived. Whether or not you were aware that there was something missing in your life, you will be when you meet the person you want. What psychoanalysis will add to this love story is that the person you fall in love with really is the man or woman of your dreams; that you have dreamed them up before you met them; not out of nothing — nothing comes of nothing — but out of prior experience, both real and wished for. You recognize them with such certainty because you already, in a certain sense, know them; and because you have quite literally been expecting them, you feel as though you have known them for ever, and yet, at the same time, they are quite foreign to you. They are familiar foreign bodies.
Have you ever been enamored? I have. It's fun! some people ask, "Have you ever been in love?" and you get the chance to say, "Yes. Yes I have." There's other good stuff, too, as well, yet I don't need to disclose that to you.
The following are questions and answer that will offer you out as you some assistance with starting your trip of affection, furthermore the summary of the four most exceedingly bad things we all do instantly after we experience passionate feelings for others (Falling in love).
I've been infatuated, lust and 'heart broken', and I've taken in a couple of things I can impart to you about the idiotic things individuals do when they fall in love. Trust me...Here we are!!!
Q: What motivates people to seek out love?
A: Our primary motivation as human beings is to expand the self and to increase our abilities and our effectiveness. One of the ways we accomplish this is through our relationships with other people. We have learned in our research that it is important to feel that you have the ability to be an effective person, especially in our relationships.
Q: How does this theory of self-expansion explain the process of falling in love?
A: Usually, we fall in love with a person that we find attractive and appropriate for us, but also someone who demonstrates that they are attracted to us. This creates a situation where a great opportunity is open to us for self-expansion. The fact that they are attracted to us offers a significant opportunity — when we perceive this, we feel a surge of exhilaration!
Q: Does it always work this way?
A: No, an interesting exception to this occurs if we feel badly about ourselves. The process gets thrown off if we can't believe that another persons finds us attractive — like the Groucho Marx joke where we don't want to belong to a club that would have us for a member. We tend to miss out on opportunities for falling in love if we don't feel good about ourselves.
Q: What conditions are best for meeting someone and falling in love?
A: When you meet someone under conditions that are highly arousing — a political demonstration, turbulence on a plane, a stimulating performance — a time when the body is stirred up and excited, we tend to experience attraction at a heightened level. This effect is well documented but the explanations for it are very controversial. I tend to believe that we come to associate the arousal of the situation with this person and our own self-expansion.
Q: When do we fall in love?
A: Contrary to what most people think, the statistics show that most people fall in love with someone that they have known for a while. People only report falling in love quickly about 1/3 to 40 percent of the time. Of course, this varies from culture to culture. Falling in love happens differently between cultures but it does occur in most cultures.
Q: How does our appearance factor into the equation of falling in love?
A: This is interesting; we have found that if you are very unattractive, it can hurt you a lot in forming romantic relationships. However, being attractive doesn't help that much.
Q: How do you explain that?
A: We have found that two important characteristics, kindness and intelligence, are extremely important in the process of falling in love. And attractiveness is not connected to these things. These two attributes are things that people learn about someone from knowing them over time. Intelligence is important in all aspects of life, especially in love. But kindness is the strongest indicator for a successful long-term relationship.
Love itself is as close as human beings can come to being selfless. People will make sacrifices for love. They will make compromises. What makes you fall in love? Sure, the person you are in love with is definitely the cause. But have you ever wondered how an outside force can have such an effect on you? Some believe that love is a tangible, ethereal substance and the substance linking one person to another is what makes loving a person possible.
The 4 Worst Things We Do Immediately After Falling in Love
1. Think We Can't Live Without Them
I don't want to seem heartless. I'm not. Despite all my rhetoric and vitriol, I'm an optimist and I believe in love, but there is something that all lovers feel and say that isn't particularly helpful: "I can't live without you."
I have felt that in my life. That feeling is real. It exists. It's important, but it's not something you should think too much about. And as horrible as that sounds to say, I think I can prove my point. We know the world is sharp and difficult and filled with loss. Forget about divorce or breaking up -- let's think about death. Death steals loved ones and lovers from us all the time, and no one can minimize the grief and pain. But would you ever tell a widow, "You're right. You can't live without him. You should probably kill yourself now." Of course not. That would be just about the coldest, harshest, most terrible thing you could say.
Why? Because you know that life has value in itself, and that no matter how unspeakable the pain that comes from the death of a loved one, you still have a life to lead -- a life that deserves to exist. A life that is not defined only by its relationship to another.
You are you, and when you fall in love, you will be you in love. Another person might make you smarter and kinder, and hopefully you will be with that person forever, but believing that your existence ends with theirs won't help you be a better person or lover.
2. Make Sacrifices We Resent
It's helpful to figure out what you do and don't love about a person, and it's healthy and wise not to delude yourself about things that won't change, but now we come to the tricky part: If you decide to be with someone despite certain obstacles, then that's your choice. You can't resent someone for the sacrifice you've decided to make. That defeats the purpose of sacrifice. And even more importantly, what if no one asked you to make that sacrifice?
Marriages are sloppy and hard and complicated, so let's use a simpler example. Did you ever have a friend who wants to "come with"? Like maybe you and some of the guys decided to hit the Extreme Wings Sports Bar by the mall and you didn't think to invite your buddy Henry, because even though you like Henry, he hates sports and spicy food. It was nothing personal. Anyway, Henry's like "Hey, guys, what's going on?" and you tell him and he decides he wants to come, and he decides to do what it takes to be with you -- specifically, watch sports and eat wings.
"Great," you think, because you're a big fan of Henry and you enjoy his company as much as you like watching sports and eating wings, and now you have both. So next week, you invite Henry to come out with the gang, and he does. Then again, each and every week, until one day he turns to you in the middle of the mall parking lot and screams:
"I have done everything for this relationship! Everything to make this relationship work. If it weren't for my willingness to eat wings and watch sports, we wouldn't have even spent this time together!"
And y'know what? Henry's right. And it just doesn't matter, because Henry's sacrifice was a lot more like a lie. One he never needed to tell.
Let's be clear. We're not talking about lovers who sacrifice for each other. That's what love's about. Someone gets sick and the other one plays nurse. Someone is sad and the other stays in to play cheerleader. Someone is messy and the other one plays $exy French maid. Sorry, ignore that last one. I just started thinking about slutty Halloween costumes.
The point is, true love is all about sacrifice and doing for one another, but those sacrifices can't be made in secret at the start of a relationship and then whipped out as a debt to be paid.
3. Ignore Flaws, or Imagine They'll Change
So you got your partner, and he/she is awesome ... mostly. Well, that makes sense. After all, no one's perfect, and even if you're not looking for perfection, no one's perfectly imperfect in the exact way you are, so, yeah, the best you can hope for is "awesome mostly." But you have to be careful about the parts that aren't right. I mean, are you just upset that your boyfriend hates sandwiches when you're all about picnics? Then yeah, I'm pretty sure you two will soldier through that one.
But what if it's something more? What if only one of you wants kids or one of you is a hard-drinking, carousing bastard or one of you rarely bathes?
Then that might be a more serious problem. And yet we're so content with the rest of our special little friend that we make excuses. "Oh, he'll grow out of it," or "Well, she probably won't be like this forever," or "I'm sure one day her vestigial penis will fall off and there'll be a perfectly functional vagina there." These are the kinds of rationalizations that only lovers make. Unfortunately, they're also the exact kind of lies that ultimately destroy love.
Don't walk into a commitment with expectations of change. This is it. This is who you're going to commit to. If that's not good enough, shut up and get going.
4. Look for Flaws in the People We're Not Dating
So you and your boyfriend/girlfriend have been together for a while now and things are going really well. Super. You're starting to think this could be it. It's time to commit. It's time to settle down with this special person who likes Shaun of the Dead just as much as you, who also hates peanut butter and jelly, who likes it when you do that thing with the thing in bed.
Now what? Well, if you're like most people, you're going to start wondering about the possibility of never being with someone else romantically ever again. This is it. This is the one for you. You're getting married and you can't have anyone else. So what do you do? How do you ensure that your mate is the best person for you? Well, one option is looking at everyone else around you and quickly discerning why they're not as cool as the person you love.
You can scan the subways like the Terminator: "Fat ass, annoying laugh, weird teeth, grating voice, selfish demeanor, rude, too tall, too short, likes Dave Matthews Band ..."
I don't really have to explain why this is stupid, do I? Quite simply, if you need to tear down every other possible mate who crosses your line of vision, then you have some serious misgivings about your partner, or you're not emotionally mature enough to be committing to someone. It's true, there are other hot, kind, funny people out there besides the person you're dating:
But that's not the point. You're never going to get clarity about your future mate by tearing other people down. The only things that matter are you and your potential partner and how you work together. For example, knowing that you hate tofu and vegetables will only get you so far in your decision about whether or not to eat chicken parm every night for the rest of your life. (The metaphor was sponsored by the American Society for the Frequent Eating of Chicken Parm.)
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