Maxim Vlasov
love addiction
One should fear violent love just as one should fear hatred. When love is strong, it is always clear and calm.
Henry David Thoreau
One of the most common problems with which people turn to psychologists for help is love addiction. This is a rather serious problem, since such an addiction, like many other addictions, often leads a person to severe suffering and great unjustified sacrifices. If a person is sick with love, has become dependent on it, then he will not simply get out of this state, without qualified outside help. He, of course, can completely recover from this disease, but while this happens, the person will have time to do a lot of stupid things in his life, which will then be impossible to correct. Therefore, it is better not to start this state and look for opportunities to get out of it as quickly as possible. In this article I will share with you my experience in solving this problem. I hope my information will help both the victims of love addiction themselves and the specialists involved in solving this problem to cope with it with dignity and fully.
What is love addiction?
Let's start with the definition of this state, because definition is everything to us. The correct definition allows you to immediately understand the essence of the problem. And here it’s worth saying right away that those people who have experienced love addiction and those who study it can understand it differently. On the one hand, everything seems obvious, we are talking about the dependence of a lover on the one he loves. He, in love and at the same time dependent on his love, is overcome by a strong passion, he becomes attached to the object of love, thinks about him constantly, cannot live without him, is jealous of him at every pillar, and so on. In other words, a person dependent on love depends on his feelings, and not on his mind. All this is true, this is exactly what happens to people addicted to love. But I have a more, let’s say, deeper definition of love addiction, which not only gives an understanding of what this phenomenon is, but also allows us to see the reason for its occurrence. Let me share it with you.
I’ll start from afar so that you can clearly and clearly understand the very essence of love addiction. Your solution to this problem will depend on this. Look, we humans are looking for happiness in this life. And our happiness consists of those sensations that we experience at a specific period of time. We cannot stock up on sensations for future use; we either experience them here and now or they simply do not exist. We live by feelings and sensations, and love is one of those feelings that gives us great pleasure. That's why we want love, we look for love, we dream about it, we fight for it. Moreover, each person can understand love in his own way, it does not matter. What matters are the sensations that we experience thanks to love. These are the ones that are valuable to us.
And then our brain comes into action, which, by going through various combinations, creates for us a plan for achieving our goals, which will allow us to experience the desired feelings and sensations, and enjoy life. Starting from the search for food, water, shelter and other benefits necessary for survival to an interest in knowledge, admiration for art and sincere pure love for another person, our brain is looking for an opportunity to obtain all the resources we need to satisfy our desires and needs. Love allows you to satisfy many different needs. At a young age, by love, people mainly understand sexual attraction to the opposite sex [in the case of traditional orientation], for the sake of receiving pleasure from bodily sensations. For them, love is nothing more than raging hormones, nothing more than chemistry. They are not yet ready to bear responsibility for a loved one, cherish them, think about them as much as about themselves. At a young age, love is selfish, it encourages a person to take everything for himself, to think only about himself, about his desires and needs. At a more mature age, love is no longer limited to sexual desire; it begins to include many other needs that are satisfied with the help of a loved one. This includes receiving certain material benefits, spiritual comfort, awareness of your need and importance, and the joy of having a person nearby who can listen to you, understand, support, encourage you, and so on. And what is especially important, mature love allows you to enjoy taking care of your loved one, from giving him your love, from his joy and his happiness. Mature love is more altruistic, but at the same time reasonable; it is based not only on feelings, but also on reason. So mature love includes many joyful and happy moments, many different benefits. And all these benefits and joys, all the happiness from the feelings and sensations experienced by a loving person, begin to come down to the image of the one he loves. In other words, the object of love becomes an exclusive source of happiness for the lover.
It would seem that this is how it should be. This is true love, when we associate all the good things in our lives with our loved one, and that’s why we love him. And the more we are connected with him, the stronger our love for him will be. And if, thanks to us, he experiences a lot of joy and happiness, and he also has a lot in common with us, then our love will turn out to be mutual and very strong. So everything is quite logical, the more another person gives us, the stronger our love for him. This, one might say, is a simple and understandable formula of love. When a man is not just a breadwinner for a woman, and a woman is not only and not even so much a sexual partner for a man, but much more, then there are more reasons for true pure love. But there is one nuance that distinguishes love addiction from love.
Let's, before we consider this nuance, think about why dependence, no matter what exactly, is generally a problem in itself? Why are alcohol, tobacco, and drug addictions a problem for us? Because these addictions hurt us, right? If there was no harm from them, we wouldn’t worry about them too much. And with love too. When it begins to harm us, it becomes a problem for us, and we define it accordingly, beginning to consider it an addiction, meaning by this addiction a problem that causes certain harm to the loving person. Pain, suffering, worries, crazy actions, including those motivated by jealousy, complete submission to a loved one who uses self-love against the lover - he begins to exploit him, mock him, use him. This is what love addiction is expressed in. It is impossible not to depend on love, just as it is impossible not to depend on food, water, oxygen, shelter, because we need all of this. But when the consumption of these goods begins to cause us problems, when our desire for them causes us harm, we talk about addiction. For us, addiction equals a problem, and we see the problem as the damage it causes us. For example, overeating is a problem, but our need for food is not.
So, the problem of dependence on love arises when the harm from this great and bright feeling becomes greater than the benefit. In what cases does this usually happen? When love is not mutual and one partner uses the other, taking advantage of his love for himself. When a lover does not trust the one he loves, for various reasons, and when he expects from his partner’s love what he is not able to give. When the experience of past relationships is superimposed on relationships in the present, in particular problems and grievances from the past, and so on. What is important here is not the reason, but how the person who loves him perceives it. If love turns into pain and suffering for him, if he cannot enjoy life thanks to it, then he does not experience this feeling, but is sick with it.
Maximum harm and minimum benefit, or its complete absence, is what distinguishes love from love addiction. With healthy love, we adequately evaluate our loved one, seeing in him not only advantages, but also disadvantages, and we expect a reasonable return from our love for him. And we perceive our love not only with our hearts, but also with our minds, understanding that it should lead to joy and happiness, and not to pain and suffering. It may sound selfish, but we have the right to count on a normal attitude towards ourselves from the one we love. And love addiction blinds a loving person, it makes him see good in bad, ideal in far from ideal, because of it he allows his loved one to treat himself poorly, considering this the norm, and in some cases, a manifestation of reciprocal love. In other words, the image of a loved one in case of love addiction becomes inadequately ideal and meaningful for the lover. He sees perfection in the object of his love, for which he is ready to do anything. Dependence here manifests itself in the same way as in any other cases when a person sacrifices too much for the sake of dubious pleasure.
From all of the above, my definition of love addiction follows. I believe that love addiction is an inadequate perception by a loving person of the image of a loved one. Or we can also say that love addiction is a condition in which the victim of this addiction receives from his love a minimum of joy and happiness, and a maximum of pain and suffering. In any case, the main thing here is that the image of a loved one in the eyes of an addict does not correspond to reality. You cannot love someone who does not deserve love, just as you cannot experience joy from something that kills you [tobacco, alcohol, drugs]. Therefore, love addiction is a consequence of the limitations of the lover. Just as all roads lead to Rome, he begins to see all the good that a loving person needs in the one he loves, even if this good is not in him. Ask such a person why he loves his partner, and he either will not be able to clearly answer this question or will begin to list the virtues of his loved one, which he either does not possess at all, or they are very poorly developed in him. That’s why they say that they love not for something, but in spite of it. This means that you love a person not for what others see in him, but for what only you see in him. And it turns out that everyone doesn’t like certain qualities in him, but you love it. Why do you love it? But because you associate your happiness, your well-being, your joy, your pleasure, your needs and desires with it. And when all your hopes for happiness are connected with one single person, you will naturally depend on him, turning a blind eye to all his shortcomings. Others will see him as the devil, and you will see him as the one and only. So I repeat my thought, dependence on love arises due to a person’s limited perception of life. The narrower your view of the world, the higher the likelihood that you will become dependent on something. And this is natural, because the very desire to live is connected with what we get from life. And if you receive little, and even from a limited number of sources, then your desire to live will depend on these sources.
For a long time I brought you to my definition of love addiction. But now you see how the tangle of this problem gets tangled, which means it will be easier for you to understand the way to unravel it. But before we move on to solving this problem, let's take a closer look at the cause of its occurrence.
Why does love addiction occur?
Let's take a closer look at the causes of love addiction, including the one that I have already indicated above, so that you understand all the intricacies of this problem.
Think about it, why does any kind of addiction arise at all? I believe that addiction arises primarily due to a person’s too narrow perception of this world. He looks at it through a tiny window and simply doesn’t see much. This is largely due to the narrowness and limitations of his thinking and, as a consequence, his worldview. Over time, such a person withdraws into his own little world, with a limited number of sources of pleasure and joy. And the more limited his lifestyle becomes, the more he closes himself off from the outside world, the higher the likelihood that he will become dependent on something, including love. Because he will have few paths to pleasure and joy, and he will cherish each of them. Thus, addiction is directly related to a person’s worldview and lifestyle. If this worldview is very limited, and the lifestyle is too closed, then the prerequisites for dependence are much greater than if a person lived what is called a full life.
Well, naturally, in the lives of such people, love, even if it is defective or fictitious, can become a great event that brings great joy. Imagine that you have few friends, that you rarely communicate with people, including people of the opposite sex, although you feel a natural need for this and almost no one pays attention to you, as a man or as a woman, depending from your gender. What will happen if a person appears in your life who becomes interested in you, as a man or as a woman, and begins to pay attention to you, will strive in every possible way to please you and will allow you to satisfy at least part of your needs related to communication with the opposite sex? Most likely, you will become attached to this person and over time, and perhaps immediately, fall in love with him. You will see in this person someone who can give you everything that you need from a relationship and from love, but that you cannot get from other people due to the characteristics of your character. And we all experience the need for love, or rather, for everything that it gives to a person. Of course, quite sociable people who have many admirers and admirers are not immune from crazy love. They become addicted to love for other reasons. We'll talk more about them below. But those people whose relationships with the opposite sex are very limited or completely absent are more vulnerable to such dependence.
We must understand that love lives in each of us. Many people, perhaps everyone, want to love and be loved. This is a natural and very strong human need. And it must be satisfied, for man does not live by bread alone. Therefore, when a person wants and can love, he needs to pour out his love on someone and become loved for someone. But if he fails to do this for a long time, then the thirst for love increases, and he becomes less picky in choosing the object of love. This in itself puts him on the path of dependence on this feeling. As a result, we are drawn to those who fulfill our desires related to our needs, even if these desires are not fully fulfilled. If I want to love, but I have no one to love, I can love anyone, even the devil himself. When love overwhelms your heart, you become too sensual and your mind becomes dull, so your love becomes crazy. And it’s easy to become dependent on your own madness.
Another reason why people often fall into love addiction is their dislike for themselves. Self-love is a basic state of love, on which a person’s overall ability to love depends. After all, we love for a reason, but in order to experience joy and be happy, to reunite with other people, to be one with them and to give new life to this world. Love is the connection of the soul, mind and body, it is the ability and desire to give, sacrifice, care for the sake of higher goals. And when you don’t love yourself, your love does not develop and over time begins to take on a perverted form. You will not be able to love fully, correctly, wisely, because your love will not originate from self-love, but from its absence. A person who does not love himself is looking for someone in this life who can give him the love that he cannot give to himself. He falls in love with everyone who is at least somewhat interested in him and very quickly becomes attached to such people. The love he experiences forces him to serve other people, rather than build equal, open, pure relationships with them, based on mutual respect and understanding. Instead of a beautiful flower of love, such a person grows a tough weed that entwines his soul, not allowing it to open up and soar with happiness.
A person may not love himself for many reasons. One of the main reasons is the lack of parental warmth and love that he experienced in childhood. Because of this, he has too low self-esteem and does not believe that there is anything to love him for. Therefore, he may be too susceptible to any manifestation of a good attitude towards him, in which he will see the love that he lacked and lacks. He can fall in love with a person who will give him not so much love itself as its illusion, because for him even this illusion will be a rare occurrence. And what is rare is, as we know, valuable. So such people are generally very amorous, and if they become attached to someone, then it will be very difficult for them to cope with this attachment. They are ready to forget about themselves, just to be with someone who is at least a little interested in them and needs them for something.
Failures in their personal lives and in other important matters also prevent people from fully loving themselves. For example, a person who for a long time fails to build normal relationships with the opposite sex and through them to satisfy a number of his needs, as a rule, begins to lose self-confidence. His self-esteem decreases, he becomes dissatisfied with himself and his life, and as a result, he stops loving himself, and in some cases does not even begin to love himself. And when a person does not love himself, then he becomes less valuable to other people. Therefore, few people communicate with him, few people are interested in him, few people appreciate him. As a result, a vicious circle results - a person does not love himself because no one loves him, and no one loves him because he does not love himself. Sad picture. And where should such a person put his love if he doesn’t even have anything to love himself for? He will give it to the one who will pay special attention to him more than others. He will love someone who allows him to love himself. And I must say that it is very easy to make a person who does not love himself fall in love with you, by showing him your interest in him, showing him some care and giving him a little warmth and respect, which he needs, like air. As a result, he may fall into a love addiction that will blind and stupefy him.
That is why many lovers turn a blind eye to the bad and even terrible attitude towards themselves on the part of the one with whom they are in love. What matters to them is not how they are treated, but the fact that there is someone in their life who is interested in them and who they think needs them. If this person does not exist, then what awaits them, loneliness, emptiness in the soul, a complete lack of relationships with the opposite sex? Loneliness scares people, it is worse than love addiction, because there is nothing in it, only dark emptiness and cold. Therefore, some kind of love holds people tightly in its arms. Of course, they can and often suffer from such love, they experience pain, jealousy, resentment, depending on how the person they love treats them. But they hope for the best, because they have nothing else left, from their point of view. Maybe someday their loved one will change, become better, kinder, but for now they can love him like that, because there is no one else. Or, if the love is non-reciprocal, then the loving person believes that someday it will become so, someday in the future, when their partner appreciates all that they have done for him. And if we are talking about a departed husband or a departed wife, then there is hope that he or she will return and everything will be as before. The desired future holds a person in its grip, and hope lives in his heart, as the source of the joy that he finds even in the pain and suffering with which his love is filled. Even though he is dependent on her, for him this is not such a serious problem as the complete absence in his life of various sensations that saturate it and make it interesting.
There is another, rarely discussed, but very serious reason why some people not only fall into love, but want to be addicted to love. This is the oversaturation of their life or its dullness, because of which they want to experience new, unusual, vibrant sensations. In this sense, love addiction is attractive in its own way, just as any other addiction is attractive, allowing you to enjoy things that are harmful to your health and psyche. It allows a person to immerse himself in another world. There is no responsibility in it, there is no thinking necessary to make wise decisions, there is no need to constantly limit yourself. It is enough for a person to simply completely surrender to the power of his feelings, follow his passion, his madness, his secret desires and ride their wave with the flow, not controlling anything, but only enjoying moments of happiness. And despite the fact that a person often experiences mental pain due to love addiction, his life becomes more interesting. Like many other sensations that we experience in this life from unusual things, suffering from love gives it a certain taste. This taste is especially valuable in cases where a person has nothing else in life, which may be similar in sensations to such imperfect love, but saturated with all kinds of sensations, or when he is oversaturated with his life and wants to surrender to his passions completely and completely, so that experience something new and unusual.
A person who is tired of a life that is too regular, too measured or too bland, has a desire to experience something that will take him beyond the limits of certainty. He wants to look beyond the boundaries of the familiar and understandable, he dares to allow his feelings to completely absorb himself in order to experience incredible sensations from his madness, from his unbridled passion and attraction. Even though we are talking about addiction, which often causes suffering, causes anxiety, forces a person to suffer and torment the one he loves, but how many unusual things appear in his life, how much poignancy, brightness, excitement he experiences that not everyone who loves, but at the same time, a person who is not dependent on love can experience. This human craving for human madness cannot be underestimated.
Some people, including experts in human relations, argue that love should only bring joy, but there should be no suffering and pain in it. Love is supposedly only positive feelings, which, as they say, inspire. I don't entirely agree with this. In my opinion, this understanding of love is too superficial and, to some extent, even naive. In my opinion, this is how love is described only in books. In real life, people very often cry and suffer from love, and from real love, from the kind for which a person is ready to do anything. And this, I think, is natural for her. Suffering makes love complete, real, true. They make love attractive. A person in this life wants to experience a variety of feelings in order to feel the taste of life. You could even say that people want to experience all possible feelings and sensations, regardless of whether they feel good or bad at the moment. They will never be satisfied with a life in which everything is fine for them. Constantly experiencing joy will not make them happy. We need different feelings to gain satisfaction from life. We need joy and pleasure more than suffering and pain, because thanks to them we want to live and realize our potential. But this does not mean that we do not need suffering and pain at all. We need these feelings, experiences, sensations in certain quantities, because they, like a pinch of salt in a soup, give life a special taste.
In general, the path to joy and pleasure lies through pain and suffering, therefore, without them, full-fledged love is impossible. Just as it is impossible to truly enjoy a glass of water if you are not thirsty, it is impossible to experience all the delights of love if there is no certain amount of suffering and pain in it. Well, think for yourself what kind of love this is, without tears. Is it possible to experience intense joy without first going to the opposite extreme? In love, contrasts are important, not monotony. There shouldn't be too much good in love, otherwise it will get boring. In addition, a person is designed in such a way that he highly values what he gets with difficulty and what he has to carefully guard so as not to lose it. If love is too accessible and simple, if there is complete certainty in it and there is no fear of losing it, then it will lose its attractiveness.
But in the case of love addiction, in the life of the addict, because of this love, there may be too much pain and suffering, due to which love turns into a poison that poisons the soul and body. A person may not eat, not sleep, not enjoy life because of his love. He will be constantly jealous, nervous, worried, suffering, thinking about his loved one and being afraid of losing him. Such love, like over-salted soup, is simply spoiled. It also has its own charm, and some people strive for this charm. Only they do not always realize what price they have to pay for the pleasure of such love.
How to get rid of love addiction?
Now let's talk about how to get rid of love addiction. Understanding the nature and causes of this problem, for which we talked so much about it above, it will be much easier for us to do this.
First, it is necessary to take into account one important idea for us, according to which, very often, love addiction is not love at all. This is an addiction, but not a love one, since there may be no talk of any kind of love. I have noticed this many times while working on solving this problem. For example, a man may be addicted to sex with a woman, but not to love that woman. Therefore, it turns out to be a sexual addiction, but not a love addiction. Ask such a man what the woman on whom he claims to depend gives him, and he can list several things that are important to him in this woman. But in reality, one could start with sex and end there, and a man doesn’t need anything else, or he can easily find a replacement for it. Do you understand what's going on here? Love should not be confused with attachment to the need to satisfy one of your instincts. So in this example there is no love addiction, if, of course, you agree with me that love is not sex and not only sex.
As for women, in some cases they, too, may not have a love dependence on men as such. A woman may have a financial dependence on a man, or she may depend on his attention to herself, which few people pay to her, or on his, some kind of concern for her, which she values, and in some cases, on the passion that a woman experiences when in the company of a certain man. But in such cases there is no smell of love either. There is something that a woman herself calls love, but which is not it. In general, women, as well as some men, can simply get used to their partner, no more and no less. But habit is not love; completely different behavioral mechanisms are involved here. Therefore, the approach to solving such dependence should be different. Women also tend to idealize men, although they often deny this, so in some cases they imagine love for a certain man who is ideal in their eyes, but do not experience it in reality. This must be recognized before treating love addiction in such women. To do this, you need to crush a woman’s thoughts and feelings while communicating with her in order to find what she really depends on, what she herself calls love. Only after this can you move on, inviting her to think about solving her problems, which she is currently solving with the help of her beloved man, in other ways.
I will repeat because this is very important. Before solving the problem of love addiction, you need to find out whether there is love at all in this or that addiction, or whether there is a dependence on a specific need, habit, task, desire, whatever you want to call it. Usually, when there is no love, and, consequently, dependence on it, a person supposedly dependent on love thinks quite selfishly, one might say, in a consumerist attitude towards his partner, all the time talking about himself and his desires, needs, interests, and his partner considering them solely as a means of satisfying them.
Dismemberment of love
If love still exists and a person dependent on it cannot imagine life without the one he loves, then in this case we need to help him decompose this great feeling into its component parts. I call this procedure “dismemberment of love.” This is my own name for such an operation. I bring to your attention this method of working with love addiction among the first because I myself always strive to use it first to solve this problem. If love can be dismembered, the result will be amazing; believe me, a person dependent on love will be transformed before our eyes.
Let's see how and why we need to dissect love. Let's start with why we do this. We dissect love in order to try to understand how it works, what its meaning and strength are. In fact, it is not so important for us to really understand why we ourselves or someone else loves someone. There can be many reasons, they do not interest us. It's not a matter of reasons or motives. Here it is important to switch the mind of a person addicted to love from the unconscious feelings and sensations that he experiences and experiences to more or less explainable and specific desires and needs that he satisfies or seeks to satisfy with the help of his love. Simply put, a person must understand why, why, for what or for what reason he loves the one he loves. I repeat, this does not necessarily have to be a true understanding of his love; it can be an illusion of understanding, which will simply allow a person to switch his attention from feelings to thoughts. It is important for us to ensure that a person immerses himself in his thoughts as deeply as possible and thus deprives his inner feelings and experiences of energy. Then his crazy love will lose the necessary resources and weaken.
Now let's talk about how we can do this. To dissect love means to think about what it is based on and then question each of the elements of this basis. To do this, you need to ask questions [or ask them to a person addicted to love] about the reasons, purpose, meaning, patterns of your love. The more questions like these you ask yourself or someone you want to help get rid of love addiction, the better. A person must look for an explanation for this feeling. It is impossible for him to talk and think about love as something whole and inexplicable. Love consists of many elements, and they are understandable. This is how anyone who wants to cope with their addiction should think.
For example, you need something and because of this you experience certain feelings, in our case this is a feeling of love. Your love is the desire to obtain certain sensations and resources from life with the help of the object of love. By realizing your needs and desires that you seek to satisfy in this way and thinking about alternative options for satisfying them, you will neutralize the blind quality of love and make it a completely understandable and explainable phenomenon. And this understanding, this awareness, will deprive your love of the power that it possesses due to its sensual nature. That is, you will simply switch your attention from emotions to reason, which will give your love a completely reasonable explanation. After this, it will be much easier for you to abandon the person to whom you were attached with your love, since all the mystery, all the mystery, inexplicability, unidentification of this feeling will collapse, and your obsession will disappear. You will immediately begin to notice other people around you who can give you the same and even more that you received from the person you blindly loved. You will grind love into powder by turning it into a consumer tool with which he satisfies his various needs. So break down love, yours or someone else’s, with questions about its causes, goals, meaning, in order to try to understand, and maybe really understand, what caused it and how it works, in order to thus turn it from a feeling into a logically explicable phenomenon that can be controlled from the side of the mind. Thoughts are easier to control than feelings, so love addiction should move from the sensory sphere to the sphere of the mind.
But, friends, keep in mind that in practice I have not always been able to cope with my clients’ love addiction in exactly this way. The fact is that not all people want to analyze their love, delve into its essence, understand its meaning, decompose this feeling into its component parts and rationalize it. This is not easy mental work that requires patience and persistence. Quite often, people perceive this feeling as something whole and inexplicable, spontaneous and incomprehensible, which is difficult or even impossible to cope with. Therefore, they refuse to dismember their love and destroy it piece by piece. We have to resort to other methods, which will be discussed below.
Expanding your horizons
Above, we found out that one of the main reasons for the emergence of love addiction is a person’s too narrow perception of this world, because of which his ability to satisfy his needs and enjoy life can be significantly limited. Therefore, it is necessary to broaden the horizons of an addicted person in order to help him get out of the closed space in which he resides, looking at the world around him through the small window of his consciousness. A person must feel the taste of life, realizing the opportunities available to him, which he is able to take advantage of. We need to help him expand his framework of perception in order to see different ways to become happy, and not just with the help of the person for whom he feels a not entirely healthy love.
What can and should be done? First of all, you need to establish communication with people. If you yourself are addicted to love, you need to expand your circle of acquaintances, start going out in public more often, and meet new people, including those of the opposite sex. If there are any problems with this, you need to solve them so that they do not hinder you in this matter. Deal with all your complexes and fears that prevent you from meeting and communicating with new people. Psychologists will help you with this. In general, the worst thing for a person addicted to love is to close himself off from everyone, withdraw into himself, stop communicating with others, stop meeting new people. By doing this, he will only strengthen his dependence, because he will deprive himself of many opportunities to experience joy. Therefore, there should be more communication in your life. You need to help do the same thing to another person whom you want to help cope with love addiction. Take him out in public, offer him various options for communicating with people of the opposite sex, ask him about what opportunities he sees for expanding his circle of acquaintances. Let him look for ways to diversify his life in this direction. Your task is to encourage him to do this. The more people that come into his life, the better this will affect his ability to get what he needs from them. A person becomes bolder, more self-confident, one might even say, livelier, by communicating a lot and with different people. Of course, this is provided that such communication as a whole is favorable for him. This also needs to be monitored.
It is equally important to expand the scope of your activities, becoming interested in everything new and previously unknown, in order to make your life more diverse and interesting. Begin to be surprised and enjoy everything new so that your mind remains alive and flexible, receptive to new sensations. It is necessary to deprive love of some of its resources, directing them to obtain pleasure from other things. You need to find new hobbies, perhaps you should change your job, and it is even advisable to do so. You need to start visiting new places where you have never been before in order to see life in all its glory. Wake up your mind, let it help you find new joys in life, so that your unhealthy love does not occupy your entire consciousness. Many people tend to grow into one place, doing the same activity for many years, or even their entire lives. And they get used to experiencing joy from a limited number of things, as if there is nothing else in life that can decorate it. This plant-based lifestyle is an addiction in itself. And when love comes into such a life, then all a person’s attention is riveted to it, and he inevitably becomes dependent on it, because he sees in it a ray of light in his kingdom of darkness.
You know, friends, sometimes I want to conduct an experiment in which a person’s life will be extended up to a thousand years and they will be allowed to do the same thing all this time. This is how interesting it is that a person can do the same thing over and over again, without daring to change anything in his life. How long can he go to the same job, have fun in the same way, and in our case be attached to the same person? There must be some reasonable objective limit to our habits.
People tend to simplify themselves and their lives to the limit, reducing it to a small number of familiar and habitual activities that simply put them to sleep. This is the perfect breeding ground for addictions of all kinds, including love. Because when a person begins to live only by habits, his mind stops looking for something new, stops being surprised and enjoying everything new that comes into his life, and therefore giving us new sensations that decorate our lives and allow us to feel like happy people . Instead, everything old and familiar becomes very valuable, because apart from it a person has nothing in life. Change your lifestyle, find something new to do to distract your mind from unhealthy love.
And the third direction in which you should start moving to expand your horizons is working on your inner world, its saturation and transformation. In this case, we expand our horizons not by expanding the framework of perception of the external world, but by deepening into our inner world. Great dreams, beautiful fantasies, good imagination that helps to create them, deep and extensive reflections, new ideas, thoughts about the meaning of life, about God, about our purpose - this is all the wealth of our inner world, to which we can switch our attention from the external world , when it is especially necessary. And in our case, this is necessary. You can hide from heavy, heart-piercing and soul-hurting love in your inner world, if it is rich and beautiful enough. And for it to be like that, it needs to be developed in different ways. Many people find it very helpful to saturate their inner world by reading interesting books that develop their imagination and help them temporarily escape from reality. And when something, including love, causes severe pain, it is better to leave reality for a while so as not to go crazy. For some, it helps to saturate their inner world by communicating with smart, interesting, non-standard thinking people who help a person think about things that he has never thought about before. Some people are helped by religion, science, esotericism, fantasy, fairy tales, depending on the person’s preferences and interests. Saturate your inner world with everything that can captivate you into the world of fantasies and dreams.
A person with a rich inner world rarely becomes dependent on anything from the outside world. He can take pleasure in many things that do not need to be sought, because they are inside him - in his fantasies and imagination. Therefore, his consciousness is not directed only at the object of his love, it can plunge into the inner world of a person and find joy and peace there.
Love yourself
Lack of self-love also needs to be addressed. Until a person loves himself, he will not know what true love is, which happens between people and allows them to experience fantastic sensations. What does it mean to love yourself? This means taking care of yourself, striving to do well for yourself, including through love for another person. This is in no way a manifestation of selfishness, when a person thinks only about himself, this is a desire for a normal mutually beneficial partnership, in which one wants to take something from a loved one and give a lot to him. But the main thing here is that a person who loves himself will not love someone who harms him, who treats him badly and gives nothing in return. There is no meaning in love, which causes suffering and pain, which kills morally and sometimes physically, just as a feeling that should create, create, inspire, delight and make people happy. Such love cannot be healthy, which means it should not be considered love. It's a disease. And self-love is a kind of defense mechanism for one’s “I” against such an illness. Thanks to her, a person thinks about the meaning of his love for other people, another person.
From the above it follows that in order to love yourself, you need to think about yourself, about your desires, interests, needs, dreams and, in general, about your own well-being. It is necessary to switch your attention from the outside world to yourself and your life in order to think, first of all, about yourself as a person on whom the quality of your life and your happiness depend. Without you, my dears, this world will not exist, it will not exist for you. Therefore, you are the most important element in it. Both the bad and the good in your life originate from you. You must understand your importance to yourself in order to value yourself highly. Then you will have something to love yourself for. And the attention of people who do not love themselves is precisely focused on those around them, on the outside world. They value other people more than themselves, considering them responsible for their happiness. As a result, they try to get something from the outside world, sacrificing themselves to it, humiliating themselves in front of other people, giving in to them in everything, for the sake of their good attitude towards themselves, for the sake of their attention, instead of making them respect themselves and love not out of pity, but out of dignity. You need to change this value system, putting yourself first in importance in this world, and not someone else. When a person realizes how valuable he is to himself, when he understands how much depends on him in his life, he will definitely love himself. Otherwise it can not be.
A person should also pay attention to all his virtues and successes, which he can and should be proud of. This will allow him to realize his own importance and exclusivity. You can, of course, love yourself simply for being you, as I wrote above, this is also important. But as my experience shows, for many people this is not enough to start at least treating themselves better. They need real success in life, and they need to clearly see the qualities in themselves that would clearly show how special, strong and smart they are. In other words, people need proof that they have something to love themselves for. They need to believe in their own worth. A person’s love for himself will be stronger the more good he sees in himself. We all deep down consider ourselves special, we all want to be better than others in something. Therefore, we must address this person’s desire to see himself in a better light, compared to other people, by working to improve his attitude towards himself.
Development of thinking
Well-developed thinking in itself is a good defense against any addiction. Thinking people can conduct a thorough self-analysis, understand their feelings, desires, needs, obsessive thoughts, in order to use their will to change their behavior in the desired way. They can do this themselves or with the help of specialists. The important thing is that such people are generally able to understand themselves, while those whose thinking is poorly developed live primarily by feelings and do not properly think about the reasons for their behavior. So you need to teach a person to live with his mind, and not only and not so much with his feelings, then he himself will understand many things and get rid of many addictions, including love. A thinking person in most cases controls everything that happens to him. It is not easy to catch him in a love net. There are a lot of ways to develop thinking, you can use any of them.
Reduce the importance of a person
This is a fairly commonly used method of dealing with love addiction. To use it, you need to reduce the importance of the person you love by destroying his ideal image in your head. Or you can help someone you want to free from love addiction to do this. If you are helping an addicted person, then you need to discuss with him all the qualities that he values in his loved one, trying to find out in as much detail as possible what he sees in them as valuable, special and useful for himself. Let him think about his feelings. Usually people exaggerate the virtues of those they love and convince themselves that other people do not have such virtues, so they hold on to their love as if it is the only one in their life. They value not the person they are in love with, but their fantasy about him. After all, love forces us to consider our loved ones special, difficult to replace or irreplaceable at all. And when you begin to lay out and analyze in detail all the advantages of your loved one, when you try to connect them with your desires and needs, then many illusions associated with him begin to crumble and the most ordinary person appears before you, in whom there is nothing special. Sometimes a lot of bad things come to light about him, which he had not seen or understood before, and therefore did not attach any importance to it.
Love distorts our perception of reality, it deceives us in order to tie us to a person. After all, she also has her own purpose - she helps people build strong and long-term alliances that help them raise children together. Without love, people would not be so stable and reliable in relationships. And this would reduce their chances of survival by procreation. So every pleasure that nature rewards us has its own purposes. Therefore, when love is destroyed by analyzing its constituent parts, it loses its power and the scales fall from the eyes of the lover.
Here it is very important not to try to convince a person in love that his beloved or loved one is nothing of himself, that he or she has a lot of shortcomings, that he or she is not worthy of love, and so on, because this can cause resistance in the dependent and only will strengthen his attachment to the object of his love. Instead, you need to help him come to the conclusion that the one he loves is an ordinary person, that there is nothing special about him, that a replacement can be easily found for him. To do this, you need to ask the addict leading questions that will help him compare his loved one with other people and, with the help of such a comparison, lower him to the level of the majority.
Some experts advise paying the attention of addicts to the shortcomings of their loved one, in order to thus show them who they really love. If you help them see their love object in a bad light, they may lose interest in him. But my experience shows that this is not a very good idea. The shortcomings of those we love, especially with not entirely healthy love, often become for us a continuation of their merits. Therefore, people who become dependent on love get used to any shortcomings of their loved one and even begin to appreciate them. Maybe they don’t see some of these shortcomings, but they will still accept them if they are pointed out directly to them. After all, what can other people know about our love? They live in another world, they don’t know what’s in our souls, what’s in our hearts. This is how we reason when someone points out to us the folly of our love, right? So I believe that you will not be able to cool the heart of a lover using this technique, and in some cases you can even turn him against you, because he will see you as someone who opposes his desire to be happy.
No, here you need to act more subtly. You must ask the person to tell you about such cases when he himself noticed the shortcomings of his loved one, when he hurt him, insulted him, humiliated him, and acted unworthily. Let him, with your help, change, at least temporarily, his idea of your loved one, let him tune in to the negative wave and give free rein to his emotions. When a person is absorbed by an emotional wave, it can throw him anywhere. It may turn out that by paying attention to the shortcomings of a loved one, talking about them in every detail, a love-dependent person will begin to hate his love and the person for whom he feels it, after which he can immediately break off his relationship. True, this does not happen often, at least in my memory. Much more often, people gradually cool off towards the one they love. In general, the point of this approach is to encourage the addict to find and savor the shortcomings of a loved one, rather than pointing them out to him.
Burn out the feeling of love
This method of dealing with love addiction is suitable for those for whom nothing else helps to cope with this problem. To burn out the feeling of love, you need to retire somewhere, preferably completely close yourself off from all people for a while and give free rein to all your negative emotions. Cry, scream, tear out your hair, climb the wall, scold yourself, your loved one, everyone who hurt you. By doing this you will cleanse yourself of all accumulated experiences, you will heat up your thread of feelings, and it will burn out, after which you will become indifferent to everything that made you suffer. You will experience emotional exhaustion, after which you will look at yourself, at your love, at your loved one with different eyes. You will have no strength left for feelings and experiences and you can calmly make the right decision regarding your loved one, giving up your love for him.
By intensifying his suffering in various ways, a person hardens his heart, making it more callous. It's like watching people die all the time, and as a result you become indifferent to it. When a person’s love drives him to madness, beyond which there is nothing, absolute emptiness, indifference, composure, passivity towards everything, it dies, and with it the dependence passes. Suffering becomes impossible because there is no psychic energy left for it.
Start making plans for the future
Another good way to get rid of love addiction is to start making plans for the future, in which there is no place for the current object of love. The better a person imagines a new life - beautiful, bright, joyful, the faster he will forget his present, full of pain and suffering. And for the imagination to work well, it is useful not just to dream about the future, but to make detailed plans for it, thinking through all the details, taking into account all your needs. You need to occupy your attention [or the attention of the person you are helping] with constructive thoughts, instilling in yourself hope for a joyful and happy future, for a brighter future. Then the unhealthy love in the present will begin to let you go little by little.
A person must gain hope that by abandoning his unhappy love, he will not deprive himself of his last joy and there will be many more bright and much happier moments in his life. Just think about what will happen if the person you love so much disappears from your life? And nothing will happen. Even if he or she is happy with another person, which may cause you some pain, nothing bad will happen in your life. Your life will not end here. But you can imagine how it will continue in the form of a well-thought-out plan. Then all you have to do is follow this plan to build a new life and find new love. When a person knows what to do, he becomes more courageous and decisive and does not hold on to decrepit love, just to have at least some joy in life.
Understanding Love Addiction
In cases where people want to experience unusual sensations, plunging into the madness of love, then we need to help them find joy in more healthy things. To do this, they must understand what love addiction is, what it leads to and what alternatives it may have. A person can enjoy life in many different ways and people are so designed that they want to try everything, even what causes pain and suffering. Love addiction, as mentioned above, is attractive and interesting in its own way. It can decorate a person’s life, darkening it. And some people think that this is a good way to experience unusual sensations, so they deliberately fall in love with those who are not able to reciprocate their feelings and make them happy. Women can fall in love with men who walk around, and men can fall in love with flighty and bitchy women, knowing full well that such love will be full of problems. And understanding love addiction helps people know in advance what approximately feelings and sensations they will experience if they succumb to such love. And are they worth exposing yourself to a lot of stress for?
But in order to explain to a person what love addiction is and how it differs from healthy love, you need to, to a certain extent, know both for yourself. Unfortunately, theory alone, gleaned from books, is not enough here. You will not be able to convey to a person all the subtleties of the sensations experienced by a loving person if you have never loved anyone and have not experienced at least a slight dependence on your love. This is too complex a feeling to talk about it from hearsay. You need to know love - strong, bright, crazy, you need to suffer because of it in order to enter the position of someone who is experiencing or is about to experience love addiction and help him figure it out.
Love is an elemental feeling, it embraces our entire nature - our mind, emotions, spirit, every cell of our body. A person drowns in it, it carries him in different directions and is capable of changing his mood at any moment, depending on the circumstances. You can easily lose your mind while experiencing this great feeling. So love is not easy to manage, even if it is quite healthy. And when people talk about what true love should be like, what emotions a loving person should experience and say that love is always joy and happiness, and not pain and suffering, you understand that they themselves have never loved anyone so much to know How can you become addicted to love? And this is very important, first of all, for understanding the person who has fallen into this addiction and is unable to cope with it. If you know where a person can lose his head, you can warn him against this, you can explain to him in the language of not only logic, but also feelings, how to cope with emotional impulses and leading thoughts that can drive him crazy. Well, of course, you can show him the difference between true love and love addiction and tell him how to come to one and avoid the other.
You need to share with a person his feelings, experiences, thoughts, sensations, desires, fears in order to show him how you yourself loved someone madly and were able to cope with love addiction, making a choice in favor of healthy, reasonable love. If you yourself have experienced strong love, you yourself have fallen into love addiction, it will be much easier for you to do this. It is always easy to explain what I experienced myself. And then you will be able, if not according to a clearly developed plan, then at least intuitively, based on your own experience, to guide a person dependent on love through the jungle of his deep and contradictory experiences, replacing one another, to a bright, calm, happy and sweet love.
It is difficult to find a woman who has not dreamed of meeting great, true love. However, not everyone manages to create relationships built on mutual love. Sometimes we come across people who do not know how to love. Most often, nature deprives men of this ability, who are generally stingy with emotions. Such people may experience affection, need intimacy, and even get married. But they are emotionally cold, and due to the specific features of their personality, they are not capable of strong feelings. According to research from the Florida Family Institute, 25% of people do not experience love.
Fear of love
Let's first pay attention to people who are afraid of love. They may have had a negative experience that left them with pain and fear. A person who has once experienced the pain of an unrequited feeling is haunted by the fear of repetition. As a result, only one desire remains - to hide, to withdraw into oneself, not to think, not to feel. He withdraws, deliberately limits contacts with women, is afraid of dependence on the object of love, of vulnerability.
The case, of course, is difficult, but with enough patience, such a man can be taught to trust a woman, his heart will open to new emotions that will bloom even brighter.
The inability to love is a congenital trait
It’s a completely different matter for men who are unable to love because of their special personality. Relationships with such people are painful and destructive. Ironically, these men have a special attractiveness in the eyes of women that attracts moths like fire. Not endowed with the ability to love, they evoke strong feelings in others. Women invest their spiritual strength in completely unpromising relationships, hoping for reciprocity, and as a result they lose faith in romantic love.
To avoid disappointment, let's look at 7 signs that a man is incapable of love.
- A man possessed by a narcissist complex
Men suffering from narcissism are so charming that the girl has a subconscious feeling that “he is too good for me,” which is further supported by the narcissist himself. It is typical for a person who is in love with himself to devalue his partner. If you notice that your chosen one constantly makes comments to you, reproaches you for something, looks for shortcomings, constantly demonstrates his superiority - this is a serious reason to assume that he has a narcissist complex. Relationships with him most often develop according to a certain scenario: having devalued his partner, the narcissist decides that he deserves better and goes in search of a new victim.
- Your chosen one is an egoist
Selfish people, as a rule, do not know how to love, because they think only about their own well-being. You can recognize an egoist at the initial stage of a relationship by carefully observing his actions. Such people reject everything that can cause them even the slightest disturbance; they feel satisfaction only when they consume feelings and do not give them away. An egoist may well maintain a long-term relationship if he sees economic or social benefit in it. But in this case we are not talking about love.
- A man needs power
A powerful person demands selfless devotion, immediate submission, and admiration for his virtues. He strives for perfection and does not respond well to criticism. Such a man does not compromise, strives to dominate, dictate his terms. Your love makes you vulnerable to a powerful person. Because by remaining insensitive, he gains power over a woman in love. They view relationships not as a partnership of equal people, but as a duel in which they strive to become the winner.
- He is incapable of emotional intimacy
Men who do not show interest in their partner’s personality are, as a rule, reluctant to talk about themselves. They regard information about themselves as strategic data that can be used against them. The reluctance to get to know his partner better indicates that the man does not make long-term plans for a relationship with a woman. He avoids long-term relationships, and especially the obligations that follow.
- The man is a pathological liar
Constant lying is another sign of a person who is unable to love. Narcissistic men lie to aggrandize themselves, to create a favorable image for themselves. Egoists lie in pursuit of selfish goals. Both categories lie very confidently, it seems that they enjoy the process. But it’s easy to catch them on little things, just listen carefully and compare the facts. If you point out an obvious lie to them, they do not repent and do not feel remorse.
- The person lacks empathy
There is a category of people who are incapable of empathy - conscious empathy for the emotional state of another person. It is easy to recognize such a man: he is not able to sympathize, empathize, or imagine himself in the place of another. He is indifferent to the pain of others and will indifferently pass by a person who needs help. Waiting for a manifestation of love from a man who is not receptive to empathy is a waste of time.
- A man’s internal forces are directed towards another object
Some men direct all their internal forces not to feelings for a woman, but to some other object. This could be business, career, sports, passion for material things (collecting). Thus, the object of love is replaced. They say about such men that he is married to work. There is no room left in their life for love for a woman.
Many women, even realizing that their chosen one does not demonstrate deep feelings, continue to hope that they can re-educate him. It seems to them that when a man understands how much a woman loves him, he will appreciate her merits, behave differently, and show emotions. If you meet a person with an innate inability to love, then these hopes will not come true: he will not appreciate, will not understand, will not re-educate. He will be by your side as long as it is convenient for him. But it is “next to”, not “together”. Therefore, the sooner you understand the essence of your chosen one, the more mental strength and time you will save for a worthy and sympathetic person.
Are there people who, in principle, are not given the ability to love? - I ask the famous psychotherapist, sexologist, candidate of medical sciences, professor at the Institute of Psychoanalysis, Alexander Poleev.
Alexander Poleev| A quarter of people, according to scientific research, do not experience feelings of love,” he answers. - We are talking about those who live in civilized countries, in the so-called golden billion, because such studies have not been conducted at the global level. But this does not mean that these people do not experience a feeling of affection, a desire to take care of someone, but they are not given the opportunity to experience romantic love.
Russian newspaper| What is romantic love?
Poleev| This is a very important and complex phenomenon. I wrote articles on this topic, they can be viewed on my website www.prosex.ru, and in my books there is about it. Great true romantic love usually happens to a normal person once, twice, or at most three times in his life. It cannot happen more often, because this feeling is very joyful, light and bright, BUT - exhausting. Both psychologically and physiologically. It is based not on emotions, as it might seem, and not on passion at all (although they are present), but on the so-called double error of thinking. First of all, this is idealization, when an ordinary person seems to us to be unusually smart, attractive and extraordinary. Very often, idealization occurs despite the fact that we know the real merits of a person. The second thinking mistake is the idea of uniqueness. When it seems that only with this person will you be happy.
In men, only some of these disorders occur, because the idea of the uniqueness of a partner is not expressed in us. And idealization - yes. Some girl may seem the most charming and attractive to us.
RG| But those who do not know how to love, do they lack romantic love as such?
Poleev| In order to understand that they do not know how to love, it is necessary to clarify: what exactly is not given to them. Why did nature invent romantic love? It would be possible to create a family so quietly, as rational Germans do. Raise children. The fact is that it is romantic love that awakens the desire to live together - this is the first thing. Secondly, it awakens sexuality. Romantic love is needed primarily by women. If it were not for it, most of them would remain frigid. Romantic love is a very important process. It does not last very long - from four to nine months. It cannot last any longer, because there is a psychological adjustment to another person. People have already become attached to each other, a different kind of love appears - less acute.
Those who do not know how to love have no idealization. Not because they are so smart, but because they are afraid to idealize someone and thus become dependent on a certain person, vulnerable. They are usually too fragile. But some of them cannot idealize because they are too critical. Sometimes not only to others, but also to yourself. And without idealization, love does not happen. Another important point is that couples who get together without romantic love are much more likely to break up. Imagine, people got married for convenience. This may be a psychological calculation, not necessarily a material one. They lived for five years, became more mature, smarter, and more prosperous. They began to look at others. Thinking about whether to move to another partner? They ask themselves questions - what did I find in her (in him)? But at the same time they remember those six or eight months when they were madly in love with each other. And the thought arises: if I had this with her (with him), but with a new partner there is no such emotional outburst, is it worth leaving?
RG| Those who are unable to experience love, do they themselves realize this?
Poleev| As a rule, yes.
RG| And they suffer from it?
Poleev| They read books, watch movies, they have friends who tell them about their feelings. Men take this more calmly. They say: “I want this too - to be passionate, to be on fire, to rush to go on dates with her. I’ve never had this. I once didn’t respect it, but now I understand that it’s great! Help.” But women have a harder time. Moreover, they cannot succeed as women! Without a feeling of love, they are difficult to get involved in intimate life. To enter into a sexual relationship, love and emotional uplift are necessary. Therefore, women who are unable to love are, as a rule, sexually unsuccessful. They see their girlfriends in love and laugh at them, saying what do you see in him, and he is short, and ugly, and gets only 250 dollars. And then another girlfriend fell in love, and a third, and a fourth. But she’s still not doing well! She has sex with men, but there is no emotional uplift.
RG| Why does this happen? Maybe those who are unable to love are selfish people obsessed with themselves?
Poleev| This has nothing to do with selfishness. Selfish people also love, though selfishly.
RG| Lack of love - is it curable or not?
Poleev| It is curable, but in most cases it is a complex psychotherapeutic process. It's a matter of a special personality type. The fact that this person does not know how to love is only the tip of the iceberg. There is something else behind this. The inability to love romantically is, strictly speaking, a disease. Because there is a tail of problems behind her, for example, the inability to overcome neurotic complexes, lack of sexuality. Strictly speaking, this is a severe neurotic disorder, with which women often turn to specialists. And men walk like that. It often happens that the inability to idealize, criticality and vulnerability disappear with age. Especially for men. And a person truly falls in love at 35 years old. And all the sex, all the hobbies that happened before seem like vulgar idiocy against the background of this feeling.
RG| But it’s good if this happens at 35 years old, and not at 55.
Poleev| It also happens at 55, but this is less common, because love requires a lot of energy, and at this age a person simply doesn’t have it anymore.
RG| But what about the phrase “all ages are submissive to love?” It seems to me that even at 55
years old, a person can suddenly develop such energy...
Poleev| Absolutely not all ages are submissive when it comes to great romantic love. Such love requires long burning, passion. And at the age of 55 you will turn around a lot? Someone, of course, conserves energy. But love requires not only psychological strength, but also reinforcement with physical energy.
RG| Does it happen that a person is able to love, but not his own kind, but, say, money?
Poleev| This happens quite rarely. You can become passionate about a particular hobby. This attitude is found, for example, among collectors. Yes, I have seen in my practice a person who committed suicide because he was unable to buy a painting by Aivazovsky he liked (he lacked 10 thousand dollars). But these are people incapable of great love for a woman, because their inner strengths are directed towards something else.
RG| I have this question because some people nowadays, in order to make money, are ready to sacrifice any bright feeling for the sake of a tidy sum.
Poleev| This does not mean that a bright feeling does not arise in them. But in order for love to blossom in them, it must be supported by a partner. Romantic love without reciprocity quickly fades away.
Valentin Rasputin:
The writer lives in Siberia. He flew to Moscow for the premiere at the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov's play "Live and Remember" based on his story of the same name. The main character of the story, Andrei Guskov, deserts from the war at the end of the war and hides in the vicinity of his native village. Feeling the presence of her husband, Nastena finds him and carefully keeps this secret. Somewhere in the distance there is a war going on, and in the souls of the heroes a “forbidden feeling” has awakened and blossomed again. Childless before the war, Nastena became pregnant. At the moment of the raid on Andrei Nastena commits suicide...
Are the actions of Rasputin’s heroes consonant with today’s audience?
Valentin Grigorievich, did you like the performance?
What drives your characters more - love or marital duty?
For my heroes, duty is mixed with love. They have a pure wonderful relationship.
What do you think love is?
It's a cleansing feeling.
And what is called love today in television films and programs dedicated to the relationship between a man and a woman?
This is not love, but corruption. But evil did not win everywhere. Come visit us in Siberia, see how people live - and love in spite of everything...
Valentin Yudashkin:
Who gave you the name Valentin?
Did she know what it meant?
I think yes.
What are you doing now?
Preparations for Milan Fashion Week, in which we took part, and our traditional festive show dedicated to Women's Day. My new collection is called "Cabaret".
What would you like to wish for Valentine's Day?
Love and be loved.
Valentin Chernykh:
Nothing. It is love in Paris, love in Moscow, and in Rome. It’s just that it’s probably more difficult to love here.
What are you working on now?
On the amendments to the ten-episode film by Murat Ibragimbekov. There is no name yet, but I want to offer my own: “Moscow hits from the toe.”
And what is the film about?
Yes, it's all about the same thing. Moscow is a tough city, it can not only make you fall in love, but also make you upset.
The dog died. It's like losing a loved one.
Valentin Gaft:
What is love?
I once wrote in my book, “Love is a short article, but it all depends on the reader.”
And what are you reading now?
My last love is Olga Mikhailovna Ostroumova. This is destiny.
Valentin Smirnitsky:
Valentin Georgievich, in “The Three Musketeers” you played Porthos. Musketeers were distinguished by their chivalrous attitude towards women. Do they meet in life today?
What would you wish for people who are hungry for love?
Find your soul mate.
This is how men respond to these words: “I would do even more for her!” “I realized that I had created a good base on which we could build much more and develop our relationships”
What kind of man do you want next to you? Most women will say something like this: interesting to talk to, loving, caring, passionate... the list goes on. However, to get something, you need to give something. But the question is: what does a man want? What does he really need from you in return?
“Women love with their ears,” says the famous saying. But if you apply this rule to your chosen one, you will not only not make a mistake, but will also win a lot. Men are no less dependent on what they hear from the woman they love.
Your words can make a man a God or... cause him suffering. And your relationship with him will depend on this. So what do representatives of the stronger half of humanity want to hear from their women?
I bring to your attention several of the most common phrases that will sound like music to your man. And of course they will improve the quality of your relationship!
1. How are you feeling?
Variants of this phrase:
How can I help you?
How can I ease your condition?
What would you like right now?
What would make you happy?
Is there anything I can do to make us both feel better?
He really wants your care for him. Caring gives your man a sense of the depth and strength of your relationship. After all, this is how you make it clear that his physical, moral and emotional well-being is important to you. Here's what men say when they hear these phrases:
“I feel like a person who is cared for, listened to, heard and understood.”
“I understand that she really cares about how I feel in a difficult situation, and she really wants to help me.”
2. I feel safe with you.
Variants of this phrase:
You solved this problem so easily!
I'm delighted how you... (fixed the TV, set up the computer, nailed the hanger, pulled the clothes cord...)
You took a weight off my shoulders.
I couldn't do this alone!
You did a great job for me.
When a man loves you, he wants you to feel comfort, coziness and security next to him. By letting him know that his efforts were not in vain, you inspire him to continue making efforts in this direction. Here's how men respond to these words:
“I realized that I had created a good base on which we could build much more and develop our relationships”
“I would do even more for her!”
3. I support you.
Phrase options:
I'm proud of you.
I believe in you.
You definitely can do it!
I'm with you anyway.
I don't care what others think, I know you better and I have confidence in you.
In my eyes, in any case, you are a wonderful (strong, talented, purposeful...) man.
“My wife is my fortress,” - this is how the famous artist Evgeny Zharikov paraphrased the famous catchphrase. A better image of support is perhaps hard to find.
Your man needs to know that he can count on you. Always. Both when he takes risks and when he pours champagne to celebrate a victory.
But a man is the embodiment of strength. Does he need support?
You are significant to your man like no one else. And when you support him, believe in him and are proud of him, he becomes even stronger:
“Her support gives me confidence that I can solve many problems.”
“I have more strength.”
“I feel prepared to withstand the harsh conditions that I have been put under.”
4. Let's go somewhere.
Options:
Let's have a picnic!
Let's play tennis (ride bikes, swim...)
Let's go on an excursion.
Let's go to the festival.
Let's stay home and order dinner.
Your man wants you to spend time with him, and not only in case of important and useful matters. He needs shaking, switching, play, a positive charge of emotions like air! Relationships become insipid and turn into a routine if they always follow the model “home - work, work - home, weekends - TV”.
Therefore, arrange small holidays. And don't get hung up on one thing. If he usually takes you to cafes or restaurants, host the reception at your place. And if you also prepare a dish that you master or that he likes, you will win doubly!
What do men think?
“The pleasure of spending time together is so refreshing to our relationship!”
“We usually have special sex after events like this.”
5. I want you.
Options:
You turn me on so much!
When you do things like this, I lose control...
Touch here...
More please...
I'm going crazy from your smell...
Where did we stop last time?
Your man wants to know that he is still desirable to you, excites you, and you can't wait to get into bed with him. And it’s not at all necessary to hope that he initiates sex every time. Take the first step! Let him know how much you want him. You don't risk being intrusive or immodest.
Men are delighted with this:
It helps me feel sexually powerful."
It fires me up!”
“I know that I am interesting, desirable, this adds warmth to the relationship, makes us closer.”
6. Thank you!
Options:
I'm so grateful to you!
I have no words…
I can't tell you how great you did!
Your help is so important to me!
Your care makes me truly happy.
I'm very pleased that you thought of this.
A huge number of men want a simple thing: to be appreciated for what they do. He knows that you need him. He strives to help you. A loving man wants to make you happy, it’s in his blood.
Therefore, sincerely express your gratitude to him. Don't skimp! This is the fuel that motivates him to continue in the same spirit:
“I know that she will highly appreciate my hard work and results. So I’m willing to put in the effort.”
“Her gratitude is a sign to me that I make her happy, which means I’m a real man!”
“When I do something for her, she feels special and is willing to give a lot in return.”
7. I love you.
Options:
I love when you smile.
I love your hands.
I love your hugs.
I love watching you when you make things.
I love listening to you snore in your sleep.
I love your confused look too.
I love your shirts, ties and socks.
When you say “I love...”, you are turning to him with your heart. And his heart responds. He feels with all his being that your love is unshakable and unconditional. He stops being afraid of his vulnerability and gains the ability to express his love in return. Isn't this what you want?
“A woman who can speak about her love openly and strongly is a gift from fate.”
“Words are very important to me. But if these words are accompanied by a loving look, or even better, a gentle touch or hug, it’s just a thrill!”
So, if you want to show your man how much he means to you, use all the phrases that were discussed. Let your wise instinct tell you how and in what combinations to do this. And you will become the one and only for him.
