getting real love: part 1
How do we know our love is real?
When we first meet, our love is a fiery, passionate affair-we are literally mad for each other, the world changes into an acid trip of positivity and crazy goodness then…it fades.
So is this “madness” “real love” or is real love what comes next, that after-the-honeymoon settling into each other that is less about each other and more about creating a family, maintaining a job, paying into a pension or a mortgage. What is real love, and how do we know we’re really in love?
It feels real, but you can’t always trust your feelings can you? Can you?
How do we know that we’re not just fooling ourselves?
There is a model used by couple therapist, an…understanding really, called the “necessary illusions model” and it proposes that we fall in love with what we need from the other person, but what we need not only changes but is quite particular, in that it’s what we both got from our upbringing and what we didn’t get, so it completes us (the same is happening with the other person). So we fall in love with our unmet needs, and since it feels blissful to get our deepest needs met, it feels like love. It’s a necessary illusion. Nothing wrong with this-noted couples psychotherapist Henry Dicks thought of this as couples fit, and an essential part of this fit is unconscious, out of our awareness.
Is it real love, or is real love what comes up next?
The thing is, we’re both on our best behaviour at this point of madness, but once our needs are met, bliss fades into everyday life and living. And we no longer need our mate to fulfil us so we hunger for what we had. But there is no going back, only forwards after the illusions are gone.
Can we find love after this?
Can we have truly conscious realtionships?
This is pretty much what my professional life is concerned with: helping couples find real love.
Whatever that is….
