“Where do you (honestly) find your happiness?” Among the 18 answer options, the leader is: “feel needed”. That is, almost all of us see our happiness in the first place – in relationships, and already in the second – in hobbies. There is one nuance here. The fact is that most of us do not really notice our own lives, but are immersed either in the past or in hopes and anticipations. Therefore, happiness in stereotypical values is not so much found as anticipated … And somewhere here one of the most tricky problems begins – this is such a paradox when relationships become a painful striped drama just in those very cases when happiness is expected from them.
Love control
When happiness is expected from a relationship with a partner, this person wants to be controlled so that happiness does not escape anywhere. From here the roots of jealousy and a sense of ownership grow. All this is the fear of losing a controlling stake in an anticipated personal fairy tale. At the same time, a bad illusion arises that happiness is possible only with this particular person, whom you like like.
Love is deified, all the best is attributed to it, because the highest stake is placed on this feeling itself. The lover dreams that in the realization of his love he will achieve the highest goal that a living person can achieve. All other joys of the world in the head of a lover begin to fade, and professional and spiritual peaks are perceived as faded shadows of that sparkling merger with the one and only object of love.
As a result, this “only one” with every gesture, every turn of the head directly affects the well-being of the lover, as if pulling the real levers of his states. Turned – good, turned away – bad. In such dependence on someone else’s location, he shakes the addict in love, like a weather vane in the wind, because the beloved for him is such an indicator of all significant limits of personal states.
When an unrequited lover begins to lisp and babble with inspiration, smearing his sugary-melodramatic snot, he seems to beg for an affectionate disposition. And in response, at best, he receives perplexed tenderness, or even irritation.
The object of “love” from such encroachments on his own person feels as if the lover is trying to occupy the personal space of his victim, while imposing something huge and obscure – his own destiny. If a loved one’s response feelings do not wake up naturally, their artificial extrusion only causes rejection.
To a lover without a loved one, everything seems empty and meaningless, as if he has comprehended in this life everything that can be comprehended, and understood what true happiness lies in – in the attention of a loved one. At the same time, the lover does not understand that even the most intelligent and brilliant people comprehend only the edge of the activity that they are passionate about. Life is an endless and incomprehensible phenomenon – there is no such limitedly narrow happiness in it, which is stuck in a single person. This stereotype.
It’s okay to be in control of your stuff. It’s okay to become possessive about your hobbies and passions. But to make property out of other people is the path of doubt and fear. Control suffocates relationships. At the same time, control should not be confused with conscious efforts aimed at maintaining harmonious relationships.