How Does Time Affect Relationships?

A love relationship usually begins with a myriad of butterflies in your stomach, but we know nothing can make those butterflies stay in your life forever. There may be a good reason for this after all.

Your partner isn't the person you fell in love with. But you fell in love with him or her for a reason! (jlp)

Unfulfilled needs from childhood

 

The reason why two people fall in love with each other transcends physical attractiveness, a desire to socialize and even the similarity of values, goals and interests. Psychologists claim that it goes deep and has roots in the unfulfilled needs and wounds from childhood. What they have in mind aren't the traumas due to sexual abuse or physical violence in childhood or the negative consequences suffered because of the parent's divorce, their death or alcoholism in the family. What they have in mind are unpleasant experiences which we aren't even aware of but which still exert an influence on us over the years. We're talking about all of our unfulfilled cravings for safety and gentleness on our way from childhood into adulthood. Even if we grew up in a safe and warm environment, our psyche was still imprinted with invisible scars, as no parents, even the most loving ones, are capable of fully gratifying all of their child's needs.

 

The lost self and the unreal self

 

The second type of emotional wounds were inflicted on us in the process of socialization, through all the messages we were getting from our environment about who we are and what should we become. These wounds play an important role in our love relationships, too, but they do that concealed from our eyes. Every society has formed a system of behavioral patterns, rules, beliefs and values. In spite of the best intentions of the people around us, the messages we get about ourselves are often bitter. We aren't allowed to have certain thoughts and feelings, we have to give up some natural ways of behaving and renounce some of our abilities and tendencies.

That's how our lost self is created, that part of ourselves which we have repressed due to the requirements of our environment. Our lost self represents our abilities which have been deleted from our consciousness. These are still a part of us, but at the moment they're not part of our consciousness and it seems we don't have them. To fill in the void, we develop a facade, our unreal self behind which we can hide. The unreal self's task is to cover the repressed part of our real self and thus protect us from more emotional wounds. Our original perfection, that wonderful and loving nature that was us, is increasingly concealed behind negative characteristics which came into being due to pain and which represent our defense mechanism that helps us get through the complicated and sometimes hostile world.

 

When romantic love comes to an end, we realize we're quite incompatible with our partner. However, this isn't that bad, actually. Our partner is there to help us grow as a person. (jlp)

The intoxicating quality of romantic love

 

Unconsciously, we try to heal our emotional wounds from childhood. Because they originate in relationships, they can be healed only in relationships. We're looking for someone who'll help us complete and finish our childhood, who'll help us heal our wounds and achieve perfection again. In order for this to happen, we need someone who resembles those people who hurt us when we were very young.

But nobody in his or her senses would pick someone who has similarly negative traits as the persons who've hurt him or her in the past. That's why nature came up with romantic love. The latter intoxicates us temporarily and hides from our consciousness the negative characteristics of our partner. It creates in us an expectation that our unsatisfied needs will be gratified at last and our old wounds cured. We remain in this state until we're long enough in the relationship to get deeply connected with our partner. Romantic love is therefore a possibility for us to connect with someone who will in time turn out to be "incompatible" with us in a very special way that is important to us.

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