Romantic love can spring from infatuation and sexual attraction alone, but the deepest love between partners depends on shared emotional resonance over features of life they both consider most significant. The irony of this loving relationship--commonly identified as friendship--is that the two persons often find their common value while searching for value itself; they discover themselves in a meeting of minds engaged in the same quest.
Awesome definition. She took the vague and intuitive ideas I have about this unseeing entity and came up with such a fitting description of love (:
Having established what love is about, it does seem like the way many idealistic people go about searching for it is through their preconceived perceptions of a soulmate. However, there are problems to this concept of the soulmate, the greatest of which is expectations. By formulating the image of a perfect partner with ideal attributes, such high expectations are often subconsciously or consciously imposed onto reality. We expect our partners to adhere to the qualities of our imaginary soulmate, and when they don't, we may feel shortchanged and disillusioned, qualities that will definitely hurt a relationship. haha looking at what I have just written, it sounds like I am experienced or something, but it's really just the potent combination of imagination and empathy.
Anyway, I found an article that (to borrow one of my favourite words) resonates with my thoughts and here are some choice pickings that are interesting.
The reality is that few marriages or partnerships consistently live up to this ideal. The result is a commitment limbo, in which we care deeply for our partner but keep one stealthy foot out the door of our hearts. In so doing, we subject the relationship to constant review: Would I be happier, smarter, a better person with someone else? It's a painful modern quandary. "Nothing has produced more unhappiness than the concept of the soul mate," says Atlanta psychiatrist Frank Pittman.
Coleman says that the constant cultural pressure to have it all—a great sex life, a wonderful family—has made people ashamed of their less-than-perfect relationships and question whether such unions are worth hanging on to. Feelings of dissatisfaction or disappointment are natural, but they can seem intolerable when standards are sky-high.
In fact, argue psychologists and marital advocates, there's no such thing as true compatibility. "Marriage is a disagreement machine," says Diane Sollee, founder of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education. "All couples disagree about all the same things. We have a highly romanticized notion that if we were with the right person, we wouldn't fight."
"There is a mythology of 'the wrong person,'" agrees Pittman. "All marriages are incompatible. All marriages are between people from different families, people who have a different view of things. The magic is to develop binocular vision, to see life through your partner's eyes as well as through your own."
"The paradox of intimacy is that our ability to stay close rests on our ability to tolerate solitude inside a relationship," he says. "A central aspect of grown-up love is grief. All of us long for—and think we deserve—perfection."
A committed relationship allows you to drop pretenses and seductions, expose your weaknesses, be yourself—and know that you will be loved, warts and all. "A real relationship is the collision of my humanity and yours, in all its joy and limitations," says Real. "How partners handle that collision is what determines the quality of their relationship."
Great Expectations in PsychologyToday
Coleman says that the constant cultural pressure to have it all—a great sex life, a wonderful family—has made people ashamed of their less-than-perfect relationships and question whether such unions are worth hanging on to. Feelings of dissatisfaction or disappointment are natural, but they can seem intolerable when standards are sky-high.
In fact, argue psychologists and marital advocates, there's no such thing as true compatibility. "Marriage is a disagreement machine," says Diane Sollee, founder of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education. "All couples disagree about all the same things. We have a highly romanticized notion that if we were with the right person, we wouldn't fight."
"There is a mythology of 'the wrong person,'" agrees Pittman. "All marriages are incompatible. All marriages are between people from different families, people who have a different view of things. The magic is to develop binocular vision, to see life through your partner's eyes as well as through your own."
"The paradox of intimacy is that our ability to stay close rests on our ability to tolerate solitude inside a relationship," he says. "A central aspect of grown-up love is grief. All of us long for—and think we deserve—perfection."
A committed relationship allows you to drop pretenses and seductions, expose your weaknesses, be yourself—and know that you will be loved, warts and all. "A real relationship is the collision of my humanity and yours, in all its joy and limitations," says Real. "How partners handle that collision is what determines the quality of their relationship."
Great Expectations in PsychologyToday
I love the last paragraph that I have quoted (:
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