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Valentina Moskalenko - When there is too much love: Prevention of love addiction. Introduction

VALENTINA MOSKALENKO
WHEN LOVE
TOO MUCH
A LOT OF
PREVENTION OF LOVE ADDICTION
PSYCHOTHERAPY MOSCOW
2006
BBC88
UDC 159.9.072
N82
Moskalenko V.D. M 82 WHEN LOVE IS TOO MUCH: Prevention love addiction. - M.: Psychotherapy, 2006. - 224 p. ("Family Psychology")
When there is too much love, the danger of love addiction is great.
The basis of happy love is healthy intimate relationships, which are not limited to physical proximity. Intimacy is shared love, the joy of mutual understanding, cooperation, trust, reliability, spiritual growth.
Intimate relationships are not formed overnight. Previous experiences, traumatic childhood events, unstable self-esteem, psychological delusions may interfere.
This book will help you get rid of false ideas, unnecessary fears, find the right guidelines in search of love.
For a wide range of readers.
ISBN 5-903182-02-X
© Valentina Moskalenko, 2006 © PSYCHOTHERAPY, 2006
CONTENT
Introduction 5
Hasty marriage 7
What is a functional family? 94
Priceless qualities of newly born children 100
Essential Needs of the Soul FROM
Survival IZ
Touch P4
Attention 116
Guide 118
Acceptance and approval 119
The ability to bury your losses 123
Support 124
Loyalty and trust 125
Achievements 126
Entertainment, escape from routine 128
Sexuality 130
Freedom 135
Care 137
Love without any conditions 138
A little more about the boundaries of personality 140
"Yes or no, my dear?" 148
Family is a zone of psychological comfort 154
Task for today 160
The place of sex in intimate relationships 162
Luck in love 168
So, you are building a healthy relationship 173
Feelings of anger 173
Guilt 177
Shame 178
Tearfulness 179
Fears 180
How do children's feelings manifest themselves in marriage? 184
Traumatic childhood events 188
Roots and Branches of the Dependency Tree 195
"Bravo, Victoria!" 200
Boomerang Principle 204
Some exercises to help positive
changes in oneself and in relationships with others
Conclusion 214
Literature 216
Application. Seminars V. Moskalenko 218
INTRODUCTION
If you have never experienced difficulties in relationships with loved ones, put this book aside. She is not for you. I write for those who love and suffer, who are not always lucky. I especially sympathize with and want to help women, both young and wise family life who, it would seem, do everything for their loved ones, but for some reason are not very happy. Perhaps these women love too much.
Situation: there is too much love, and the result does not satisfy you - what to do? One of the answers is to look for a way out of possible delusions. In the field of love, as in other areas of life, there are myths and there is reality. We will talk about intimate relationships. Let's agree on what we mean by intimate relationships. In modern life, this concept has narrowed - in the view of some to the content of the store "Intimacy". Sexual relations are only a small part of intimate relationships, only a special case, one of the components of such relationships. What we will talk about in this book is much broader, more diverse and more interesting.
Intimacy is a celebration of the sharing of all feelings, not just good sex. So intimacy is more than sex. Let us turn to the meanings and the origin of the word.
The Latin roots of the word "intimacy" are as follows. The Latin verb intimare means “to announce”, “to make known”, and the word intimus means “lying deep inside”, “deepest, innermost”.
Look into the dictionary of V. I. Dahl and you will see: “Intimate (lat.) - close, short, cramped, sincere, heart5
ny, sincere; secret, secret, internecine, secretive; private, private." It is about such relationships between people - close, sincere and at the same time, perhaps, unspoken, secret - that we will talk about in this book.
- Each of us has his own inner world, his own inner space. Intimacy lies beyond it, it is a world open to two. And they enter it with what the soul is rich in. The tone of the relationship is set by the spiritual wealth (or poverty) of the partners. However, relationships are always in dynamics, they can be built, changed - it would be nice to know the goals you are striving for, and the rules of construction. Everything can be learned if there is good will.
Nothing prevents people from getting along with each other more than fears, prejudices, fears, which I call myths, out of nowhere. A myth is a departure from reality, something opposite to the truth of life, a delusion. My task is to show the most common misconceptions of people building close relationships. As is well known, any devastation begins in the minds. You will find the way out of your difficulty yourself. The myths and realities of intimacy are different for each person. Let's talk about some of them, which are quite common, at least in my practice as a psychotherapist.
I hope that this book will help you build healthy intimate relationships and that with its help you will advance in self-improvement. Even if, reading it, you only think about the issues discussed here, talk with your loved ones on this topic, you will already gain something and get an impulse for further spiritual growth.
Close relationships are such an important area of human life that I am convinced that it is worth talking about. A friend of mine likes to say: "Wish someone lucky to meet you, then you will be lucky to meet him." I also like this aphorism.
HURRY MARRIAGE
No one expected that Tanya would marry so hastily. She was a serious girl, very responsible, shunned noisy companies. And suddenly - here you are! Marry! The courtship period is one week.
The chosen one had a beautiful appearance and ... a difficult fate. His first wife, leaving him a child, drove away with a young officer. Everyone sympathized with the abandoned husband. It seemed that now he was only concerned with the difficulties of life, the upbringing of his son. But as soon as Tanya appeared at the design bureau where he worked, and where she was sent for practice, he immediately drew attention to her. And then - an invitation to a restaurant, to his home ... And everything was decided.
Tanya fell in love with him immediately. She was 22 years old, he was 35. She had no experience in love, except for a painful, unrequited love for a student who seemed to her the star of the course. A sort of successful young man in everything, as they say, the soul of society. Now we must admit - she did not manage to achieve it, but she tried very hard. Well, let the past stay in the past. It seemed to Tanya that this episode passed without a trace. Is not it? And in general, does anything go unnoticed?
Tanya really wanted to have a good, friendly family, so that both her husband and children would love her. It's so natural. And doesn't she deserve such a fate? And her appearance is good, and there are as many advantages as you like. Clever, diligent, never lazy, everything in her parents' house rested on her.
Mom worked at a regime enterprise, she came late, tired. Tanya so wanted to please her with the cleanliness of the apartment, a delicious dinner. However, the always tired mother rarely rejoiced at anything.
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At school, Tanya tried to get good grades, to be exemplary in behavior. But mother's fatigue never seemed to end, and father... And what, in fact, is father? Tanya somehow does not remember him. He was always absent. He has training camps, competitions, he is a motorcycle racer. And when he left big sport, business trips began. At first I was bored, then I got used to it. It seemed like there was a dad, but it didn’t seem to be. Tanya had never seen her parents kiss or laugh happily. True, they did not quarrel. But the atmosphere in the house was unhappy.
Tanya passionately wanted to arrange her family life differently, not at all like her parents. Everything will be different for me, she thought. Why not? Isn't man the smith of his own happiness? Doesn't Tanya know how to be devoted, gentle, infinitely sensitive to the needs loved one? It seemed to her that she could move mountains if they interfered with her happiness.
And so she fell in love with a handsome man who suffered with a frivolous wife, fell in love with his orphaned son. So why bother pretending? You have to be sincere. And Tanya immediately agreed to his proposal to get married. He seemed so serious!
FIRST DISAPPOINTMENTS
A month after the wedding, on April 30, the husband disappeared for two days. It was later revealed that he met his friend and they "got drunk" together. So they spent May 1 and 2. Tanya stayed at home with her husband's son. Naturally, this first “holiday” in her family life was remembered by her for a long time. Then the husband asked for forgiveness. She forgave. Tanya tried to show herself only with better side. She thought that in this way she would be able to win Kostya. She did not part with the idea that they could make a perfect couple.
Tanya worked miracles of cooking, made the house cozy, did not refuse her husband sexual pleasures, although she herself still did not understand much about this. The woman in her hasn't woken up yet. Kostya admired her, saying that best wife can not found. But quite often he disappeared somewhere, then explained all this by unforeseen and very serious circumstances. His drinking increased. He loved his son, but apparently he loved vodka more. He quickly shifted all the worries about his son onto Tanya's shoulders. Increasingly until late at night did not return home.
Tanya loved to read, tried to distract herself from sad thoughts by reading. It was hardly achievable. In A.S. Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”, she read ironic lines, but they seemed serious to her. She became even more sad.
What could be worse in the world than a family where a poor wife grieves for an unworthy husband, And day and evening alone; Where is the boring husband, knowing her price (Fate, however, cursing),
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Always frowning, silent, Angry and coldly jealous!
Three years have passed. After three years married life Tanya realized that she could not call her marriage happy. Notice that for three years she convinced herself otherwise. There were thoughts of divorce, but then a sense of duty intervened, fear of upsetting parents. Tanya's mother and father thought that their daughter was happily married, that everything was in order in her family.
VICTIMS MAKE VICTIMS
Tanya's life story made me think again about the question: why does it happen that such worthy, hardworking, devoted women who are able to sacrifice everything to win love and affection are unlucky? Maybe because they love too selflessly (literally "self-denying")?
If I am not for myself, then who is for me? Probably, you can not trample on your interests and needs. But if I'm only for myself, then why me? But what about such an indisputable value as altruism, the ability to devote one's life to family and children?
After much thought, I realized that Tanya was doomed to an unhappy marriage. There was nothing accidental in her fate. Tanya entered life with a set of myths about marital happiness. And where was she to find out the truth? She did not have a good model of family relations before her eyes. The best way to learn is by example, but where are they?
Tanya's mother was either pulling the strap of a really unbearable burden, or this burden (that is, her own life) was so boring, so uninteresting that she simply did not live a full-blooded life. This is where the concepts of "burden" and "attitude" are connected. When we change our attitude towards something, the weight of the burden changes significantly.
Mom stopped being a hostess. She shifted all responsibility for the maintenance of the house to Tanya. Mom stopped being a wife too - her husband was physically absent almost all his life.
Let's not judge anyone. Let's just look at the distribution of roles in this family. Tanya's mother was a victim of either circumstances or the irresponsibility of her husband. The daughter continued this role. She became a victim of her own
strong desire to have good family, his decency, sense of duty, dedication. At least, that's how it seemed to her afterwards.
Like any child, Tanya loved both mom and dad. Her parents also loved her, only they did not express their love enough. No matter what homework Tanya did, no matter how many A's she got at school, her parents didn't seem to notice. They forgot to congratulate her on her success, to praise her, they did not rejoice with her.
The girl became overly responsible, subconsciously seeking the love of her parents with her positive behavior, but in vain. In any case, Tanya did not see external, indisputable manifestations of love. She does not remember the case when her father in childhood put her on his knees, it would be the height of bliss! She doesn't remember mom or dad telling her how pretty she is. At school, she was the first student, but at home her parents did not consider her smart. Neither mom nor dad told her that they were proud of her. They did not give her compliments, for example, they did not say in passing that she had beautiful hair or eyes.
But childhood is long gone. What does it have to do with marriage today? Psychologists around the world believe that direct. Remember, Tanya had an unrequited love for a brilliant student? But doesn’t that student remind Tanya’s father, who wins sports victories somewhere far from home, but is always inaccessible to his daughter? Maybe the unfulfilled desire of a six-year-old girl to sit on her father's lap and the romantic (and also unfulfilled) love of an eighteen-year-old girl have the same roots? And why are the lines of behavior of the father with his constant traveling and the husband with his “serious” circumstances tearing him away from home so similar? Finally, why does the daughter have the same role in life as the mother, the role of the victim?
In human destiny, childhood decides a lot. No wonder childhood became the focus of attention for Sigmund Freud. No wonder Leo Tolstoy divided his life into two periods.
yes: before and after five years and recognized that they are equal in value. So if you want to predict the fate of a person, pay attention to his childhood. Unravel the past - you will know the future. Let's take care of the kids.
And we will return to the fate of Tanya and unravel the secret of her hasty marriage.
TRUE OR FALSE?
Lovers often make statements like the following. What do you think, which of them are true and which are not? Answer each question below: "True" or "False".

1. If I allow myself to be intimate with you, I will lose you/me.2. If you recognize my shortcomings, you will leave me.3. We are one whole.4. Being vulnerable and vulnerable person is always bad.5. We will never quarrel or criticize each other.6. If something goes wrong, it's my fault. I am a bad person.7. To be loved, I must always look happy, cheerful, carefree.8. We will fully trust each other - immediately and forever.9. We will do everything together.10. You will instinctively capture all my desires and needs.11. If I do not control myself completely, life will turn into chaos and happiness will fall apart.12. If we really love each other, we will be inseparable.13. Yes, I understand you...14
The above questionnaire was compiled on the basis of data contained in the book of the famous American psychotherapist Janet Woititz (Janet Woititz) "The Struggle for ... Intimacy." I consider it a great luck, a smile of fate, that I had the opportunity to study with Janet Voititz at Rutgers University (USA), where I learned the science of how to help people build interpersonal relationships.
Did you have trouble answering? Not surprising. Tanya also thought about each of the 13 points for a long time. Let's now take a closer look at these provisions. In my psychotherapeutic practice, I have had to discuss them with many young men and women. This time, my imaginary interlocutor will be you - my reader or reader. While I imagine that in front of me she is cute, shy girl, endowed with many talents, including the talent for diligence and responsibility, still unmarried, and I will talk with her.
1. If I allow myself to be intimate with you, I will lose you/me.
These fears have one common source - a vague idea about yourself, about your worth, just about who you are, what you are worth, whether you love yourself or not.
As a girl, you received vague "guidelines" from your parents regarding your own personality. You have grown up, but it is difficult for you to understand who you are - a pretty girl worthy of adoration or some kind of "mistake of nature" and you still have to prove your right to exist. The reason is that your parents used the so-called “reverse pedagogy”: they were afraid to once again say a kind word to you, praise you, they were often dissatisfied with you, scolded, believing that this is what will make you strive to be better. And as a result, it became difficult for you to figure out what you are, and you still doubt in your heart whether you have any dignity.
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When self-awareness as a personality is still in its infancy, a person is easily exposed to external influences. It would be ideal if, by the time a girl (or a boy) reaches “passport maturity”, the internal semantic signs were stronger than external influences. In other words, it would be good now that you yourself make decisions based on the knowledge and experience already accumulated, and not depending on what, for example, a girlfriend said.
Gaining self-confidence, the ability to make decisions, to take responsibility for bringing them to fruition is not easy for you. Someone else's opinion constantly interferes and influences your own. At the beginning of your relationship with the young man you liked, when you were only thinking about possible intimacy with him, you seemed to hear your mother’s voice pulling:
You shouldn't be so close to him!
Fear this the most!
A girl should be proud!
And you felt like a baby again, weak, completely subordinate to the authority of your parents, as it had been for most of your life. After all, important decisions have always been made for you by your mother. Have you ever been asked what do you think about this or that? Rarely, very rarely.
So, you are used to the fact that your own opinion is either not important at all, or coincides with the opinion of an authoritative person for you. Now that you have fallen in love, the opinion of the one you love has become the most important thing for you. That is why you are afraid to take a responsible step: what if he looks at it somehow badly?
What to do?
My dear friend! Your self-doubt, dependence on the opinions of others does not mean losing yourself. It’s just that you are in the process of growing up, and you still have to think deeply about your perception, about your reactions, about what guides your actions.
kami. There is a process of self-discovery. You are now receiving the most important information for yourself. You are growing spiritually.
I ask you one thing. Do not rush to abandon your previously established views in order to replace them with someone else's opinion. You can consider the opinion of the author of this book, take into account, but make your own decision. Think again about the situation. Listen to yourself, to the voice of your heart. You have a dilemma. Desire rapprochement threatens further intimate relationships. Why?
There is a question of trust. Will a young man trust a girl who is quickly moving towards rapprochement? Will he not think that you will behave the same way with another young man? Think, do not rush, you are building relationships not for one day, but for a long time.
The main question you need to decide is not whether or not to have sex. The main thing is what kind of relationship you have with this young man. After all, a healthy, honest, open intimate relationship between loving man and a woman is rarely without sex. But first let your fears dissipate.
The truth is that healthy relationships only increase a person's self-worth, self-respect. You cannot humiliate, “lose” yourself if both you and he want intimacy.
This is a wonderful state! As the interpersonal expert Eric Berne writes: “If there is intimacy, a couple can be recognized by the way they walk down the street. Their eyes are shining, their steps are light, and the children - if they have children - laugh most of the time. The lady is to be congratulated on how well she looks, and the gentleman on how well he does his job."
2. If you recognize my shortcomings, you will leave me
It seems to me that every person has flaws. Nobody's perfect. You have nothing to be afraid of being exposed, because you are not such a good actress to
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be able to hide their weaknesses. Your loved one has long known you for who you are. And yet your relationship has not collapsed. So your imperfection doesn't bother him.
Tell me, didn’t you have such a situation in your childhood when your parents directly or only hinted at you to understand: “If you were a good girl, then your mother wouldn’t be so nervous, your father wouldn’t have a heartache?” Maybe it was after that that you tried to show strict parents only your good features, hiding your shortcomings in every possible way? You were afraid to cry in front of your mother. You probably don't remember how in your early childhood your mother told you that she would leave you if you didn't stop crying. Since then, the fear of being abandoned has become the main reason for your progress towards an unattainable goal - towards perfection. But perfection does not exist at all.
Since your parents were not always emotionally available to you, since childhood you have been hungry for recognition, for human warmth, trust, for a reliable shore that you could land on without any fear.
Tell me, have you always been sure in the process of growing up that you are safe? Were you sure that in the event of some kind of threat you can count on security? Safety and security are fundamental to survival. When cracks appear in these cornerstones of life, it becomes more difficult for people to trust the world. Hence your self-doubt.
Such was Tanya, whom I spoke about at the beginning of the book. Her father, who often left for competitions and business trips, was not only emotionally, but also physically unavailable to her. Also inaccessible to her was her mother, busy at work, and after work - with her thoughts and worries.
Tanya had accumulated an unsatisfied hunger for love, a passionate desire for emotional attachment, she didn’t even want to grow up because of this, she seemed to expect that
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this hunger is about to be quenched. She herself would never say why she hurried to marry a man 13 years older than her. Subconsciously, she wanted to extend her path of transformation from a girl into a woman, to get parental love, it seemed to her that her husband would satisfy this need of hers. The subconscious was looking for the figure of the father.
Wishing you had a strong emotional anchorage is normal and natural. Today you have a loved one, but you are afraid that he will be tomorrow. In an attempt to maintain this support, you idealize your relationship, and at the same time idealize your role in this relationship.
In order to strengthen your love, in order to overcome the fear of being abandoned, you strain all your strength, striving to achieve perfection. I must say, you have succeeded in many ways, and I congratulate you on this!
What to do next?
Remember, my girl, that you are not obliged to satisfy all the needs and whims of your loved one, other close people. Listen to what your heart tells you, be attentive to your inner impulses. By the way, how does your loved one feel about you? Does he consider that you need support, does he appreciate your desire for self-sacrifice, does he notice how you grow spiritually, does he give you the freedom to grow?
You are afraid of being rejected, but more often it happens that a woman rejects and betrays herself first, and only then others do the same with her. At married women this is easy to see from the way they talk about their husbands. “My husband” - any sentence often begins with these words.
When I conduct group therapy with women whose marriage is complicated by the husband's alcoholism, it is very difficult for me to direct the conversation in such a way that women talk about themselves: about their feelings, their experiences. They all talk only about husbands. Women do not seem to have their own life, separate from that of their husbands.
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They were all so afraid of being abandoned that they stopped living their own lives and lived only the lives of their husbands. As I was convinced, all these women in childhood did not have a satisfied sense of security, reliability, there was no solid “emotional shore”. And their difficult marriage for many years seemed to be cemented by the fear of being abandoned.
It is good when a person's spiritual growth is natural and free from fears. And when it serves one single purpose - to keep a loved one, then most often what happens is what you are afraid of. When you lose yourself, you lose your loved one.
A friend of mine had a husband who was a researcher. She loved him so much, loved him so much that she abandoned all her interests, did his work in the laboratory, selflessly looked after him, protecting him from everything, and in fact from any responsibility for the family. I remember how she pathetically exclaimed: “I consider it my highest happiness to fry cutlets for Igor!” At the time, it seemed like self-sacrifice to me. Which beautiful love! They later separated despite having three children.
Now I understand that this loving and suffering woman, afraid of losing Igor, lost herself. Maybe the disappearance of her as a person led to a divorce? Maybe a woman becomes uninteresting for a man when she loses something most important in herself, her individuality? Just do not think that I am against my wife frying cutlets. Let him fry, but for the sake of the cutlets themselves, so that there are just cutlets in the house. And the highest happiness is something else.
Be yourself with all your flaws and virtues. If you are afraid of something, stop hiding your fears from your loved one - by the way, from yourself too. Don't pretend like you're not afraid of anything. Your chosen one can help you overcome fear, give you a sense of security.
If even at the beginning of your relationship, he cannot dispel your trifling fears (or rather, your fears
faces, but the reason for them may be insignificant), then I doubt that he will be a solid support for you in more serious situations. Then maybe he's not the person you're looking for.
You yourself (or with the help of a psychologist or a good friend) need to get to the bottom of the source of your current fears. Quite often they, like so much in human nature, are associated with childhood. Perhaps, as a child, you were not able to please your parents simply by the fact of your existence. They expected you to be especially good, some kind of ideal behavior, outstanding success in studies, in music, victories in competitions and olympiads. And, willy-nilly, you had to spend a lot of energy on achieving these successes, “grooming” your positive traits and expending a lot of effort to keep other, in your understanding, unprofitable sides in the shade.
This thread from childhood stretches all my life. When you realize this, when you understand that in intimate relationships people value each other as a whole, without sharing positive and negative characteristics (to have weaknesses is so human!), you will gain more self-confidence. As you know, we appreciate the strengths in people, and love them for their weaknesses.
It's good to be the person you really are! Then "to be" and "to seem" do not contradict each other. Then you feel genuine, real, natural, capable of experiencing any feelings. Psychologists call such people authentic, which means "equal to themselves."
3. We are one
This is also a myth, your next delusion. IN real life you are you, he is he, and only in the future, very slowly, will something that can be called "we" arise. But even at the stage of far-reaching relationships, at the “we” stage, there are still boundaries between the personalities included in the “we”, and the complete dissolution of one person
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in the other it does not. And that's okay. And therefore, there is no need to strive for this.
Where did you, my dear girl, get this passionate desire to merge into one with your beloved? Why are you so attached to him literally from the first meeting? Why do you want to invest all your emotional savings right away in this “new venture”?
All this happens to you because you are... in love. You are so pleased to think about him from morning to evening. The phone keeps ringing. Your fantasy is in full swing. You cannot resist this flood of feelings. And what's wrong with that? Love is how it should be.
Yes, it really is just love. Just the beginning of a relationship. Healthy intimate relationships require duration, strength. So they need to be built. To make a building strong, people make emotional investments gradually, as trust grows. And you, generous soul, presented all the gold of your soul to him at once.
I want to warn you against disappointment. Your love is like intoxication, followed by emotional sobering, and possibly a bitter hangover. Remember the lines of M. Yu. Lermontov:
Then suffering and anxiety
I paid for the days of bliss...
Is it really impossible to achieve intimate relationships and not then pay so dearly with painful disappointments? It is possible, but for some people it is difficult. It is especially difficult for someone who was rejected by their parents in childhood. Those who have experienced the fear of rejection or the feeling of real rejection and abandonment understand you well.
Let's take Tanya, whom we know. As a little girl, she sought to get closer to her parents, achieving this with the means available to her - she tried to behave as best as possible. But real affection between Tanya and each of the parents never arose. And the hunger for affection remained. That's where the hasty marriage comes from
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a strong desire to form a new emotional attachment.
It is not surprising that those girls whom their parents kept at a distance from themselves do not marry, but “jump out” to get married without having time to understand whether intimate relationships with the chosen one are developing or not.
They just want to get away from their parents as soon as possible. However, with the guys the same story. They, too, may be inclined to form unions in which their emotional hunger would be satisfied immediately, according to the "here and now" principle. They want everything at once.
What to do?
Try to explain to yourself the reason for the intensity of your feelings. But never blame your parents. They didn't want to hurt you. They only repeated the style of raising a family in which they themselves grew up. If you blame your parents, you will get into a dead end from which there will be no way out. You can then say to yourself: “I am like this because others made me like this, therefore, I am powerless to change anything.” In this case, in life you are destined only for the role of the victim. You will be unable to change yourself or protect yourself.
To explain to yourself the source of your feelings means to understand what happened to you in your past life, who and how influenced you, and try to change yourself, acquire those skills that will help you build healthy relationships with people in the future.
As for your strong love, I'll tell you this. If you can't resist not calling him, not looking for meetings with him, not to force your relationship, then you will most likely be disappointed. No wonder they say: "The happiness of a person is in his heart."
At first, all your attentions will be flattering for your chosen one, the rapidly growing intimacy of the relationship will give both a pleasant feeling. But it can happen
It is (and often happens) that your partner will take advantage of your relationship only to get pleasure himself, but not to satisfy your need for love, your hunger for deep and lasting affection. In the end, he might just suffocate in your arms.
After all, it is normal that life puts other priorities. One day he will tell you that he cannot meet with you today, because he needs to take exams, his future depends on it, or he needs to take his mother to the country, filial duty must also be fulfilled. Yes, you never know what life will offer. And it may seem to you that he already rejects you.
No, girl, this is life starting to return to its normal course, the intensity of feelings decreases. If you continue to strive for the same intensity of feelings, for the same frequency of meetings, then you can lose your chosen one just because you will have a mismatch in the phases of intimacy development.
Your exaggerated demands are unrealistic. Once again imagine what you expect from your relationship. It seems to me that the main thing is to get to know the other person better and give him the opportunity to get to know you.
Falling in love is dynamite at the very beginning of the path, it is an explosion of emotions of great power. He only hindered you.
Well, life experience teaches us to continue to be more circumspect and not be led only by our feelings.
Think about your limits. Learn to say not only “yes”, but “no”.
4. Being vulnerable and vulnerable is always bad.
In fact, vulnerability and vulnerability sometimes lead to negative, and sometimes to positive consequences. But the path to intimacy always lies through vulnerability and vulnerability.
How to protect yourself? Do you want to become invincible? You can achieve this - at the cost of giving up close relationships24
ny. The same result will be if you build an impenetrable wall of protection between yourself and people. It will seem to you that you are protecting yourself from insults, ridicule, gossip - well, in general, from all misfortunes. And in fact? In fact, this is a wall of alienation, this is the cessation of the development of relationships. Yes, this is complete security and no intimacy.
What "bricks" are used to build a wall of alienation? The building material can be anger (“if you come close to me and say this and that, I’m not responsible for myself”), and fears - being afraid of everything in the world, you yourself will move away from people and hide behind your wall.
Yes, all relationships involve risk. Afraid to take risks, you will stop going to parties, you will not invite anyone to your place. And if you are still surrounded by people like you, then without words you can give them a signal with approximately the following meaning: “We don’t need to get closer. Do not come to me. I am so fragile that I am afraid to enter into any relationship with anyone.” Well, is it effective method protection?
A wall can be made up of silence or, conversely, of verbosity. If you hide behind a wall of silence, you will behave quietly. Then you will resemble a person who only observes what is happening in his room, and does not participate in the events at all. This person does not live here. But this is “your room”, this is your life! How can you be inactive in it?
The other extreme is when you talk incessantly, not allowing anyone to put in a word, even if they politely try to remind you that you should listen to others as well. This wall of verbosity also hinders building healthy relationships.
Without proper communication skills, people can rush from one wall to another, that is, from anger to fear, to speech pressure, and then to silence, all this only because they want to remain invulnerable, protected from all adversity.
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What to do?
Do you know what I think about this? close, a good relationship worth the risk. Not thoughtlessness, not impulsiveness, when you do not know to whom and why you trust your soul, but the risk of openness. Do you remember the meaning of the word intimate? Yes, yes, "announce, make known." Until you announce something important about yourself to another, until you make at least a piece of your soul known to him, you will not build intimacy.
Maybe it needs to be gradual. You can open up to someone more and more as trust increases. But to sit behind a wall all your life just for fear that your feelings will be hurt, hurt!? You will become even more alone than you were. No, you won't see anything good either.
When we build relationships with others, we get to know not only our partner, but also ourselves. So every relationship is a gift. As a result, we either get to know another person and thereby enrich our experience, or we get to know ourselves better. A mystery is revealed to us, whether we can love another person, whether we can love ourselves. We can grow spiritually. And in order to grow, we will strive to be open to new feelings, ideas, we will be ready to increase our own experience of experiences.
Your vulnerability can be reduced not by erecting barriers between you and people, but by a clear awareness of your inner boundaries, your spiritual sovereignty.
5. We will never quarrel or criticize each other.
Real life is such that even in ideal couples people argue and quarrel from time to time, criticize each other's behavior. However, my dear companion, you yourself know this. But in the state in which you are now, in the state of the initial stage of falling in love, you recognize this only with your mind, and not with your heart.
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The very idea that someday you will be angry with him or he will dare to show his anger to you is unacceptable to you. Now you tend to idealize your relationship. Ideal relationships seem to you conflict-free, they have no place for such negative feelings as anger, annoyance, anger.
To understand a country, we turn to the study of its history. To understand a person, we can turn to his past. People who grew up in families with tense relations between parents, in an "angry" climate, may unconsciously seek to avoid expressing their anger, discontent. These people may think that getting angry is always bad, that it does no good for anyone, that anger only destroys relationships, that it is incompatible with love, that being angry is just a waste of time and energy, that in anger we lose control of ourselves and we almost reach the point of confusion.
There may be delusions of this kind: if they are angry with us, then we did something wrong, and we must keep people from being angry. Or: if we are angry, then those around us have brought us to this or someone should try to make our anger pass. These are all myths about anger. As well as a number of other performances. Here are some examples for you:
Spreading the misconception about feeling angry
If I am angry with someone, it means that our relationship has come to an end and this person will definitely leave me.
If I get angry with someone, I should punish that person for making me feel that way.
If I get angry with someone, then that person should stop doing what caused my anger so that I don't get angry anymore.
If I get angry, I should hit someone or break something.
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If I'm angry with someone, it means that I don't love that person.
If someone is angry with me, it means that he no longer loves me.
You can feel anger only when there is an excuse for this feeling.
All of this is false, all of this is delusion. In fact, a person can experience any feelings - this is characteristic of human nature. All feelings are legitimate because they are real.
The misconceptions come from someone in authority (probably mom) saying a long time ago when we were kids, “You shouldn’t/shouldn’t get angry (cry, etc.).” Only adult members of the family allowed themselves to become angry in the family, and children were not allowed to do this. It blocked your natural channels for the release of emotions. Then you often couldn’t or didn’t want to tell your parents how you felt. You learned to suppress unwanted emotions, and if they did arise, then you felt guilty.
Suppressed anger, like other unreacted emotions, is fraught with the emergence of new problems and difficulties. If we haven't been taught conflict resolution skills, if we haven't had a safe way to express that feeling, then we don't know what to do with our anger and we get terribly scared of it.
What to do?
Anger has to be expressed one way or another. There are acceptable and unacceptable ways of expressing anger, just as there are acceptable and unacceptable human behavior in certain circumstances. With anger, you can do all the operations that you can do with other feelings. It should be recognized, try to understand it well, talk about it with someone in order to better understand this feeling, and then the anger will dissipate. Everything is verbalized28
nye emotions, that is, feelings expressed, formalized by words, are weakened.
An unacceptable way of expressing anger is aggression, an attack on another. Aggression can be both physical and verbal. Anger is a bad adviser. He can suggest words that can really destroy a relationship.
So what do you do if anger, even for a short time, closes all other aspects of life? Here are my tips for you:
Allow yourself to feel the anger, if that is what you need right now. But let others have the same feelings. Recognize the right to be angry both for yourself and for others.
Learn to recognize the thoughts that accompany your anger. It's best to say them out loud.
Let's find out what is the reason for your anger. What is it - a symptom of some trouble within you or in external circumstances? We often get angry when our needs are not met. However, anger quickly disappears when we stop yelling at the person and, having realized what we want from him, ask him for it. Ask.
Do not shift the responsibility for your anger to others. You can say, "I get angry when you do this," but don't say, "You made me crazy."
Express your feelings to someone you trust. Not necessarily words. And yet, conversation is the most common way to channel feelings. If someone can listen to you without interrupting or giving any advice, then you will immediately feel relieved.
Anger is emotional energy. Burn this energy. Wash the kitchen. Go to the disco. Wash something with a vengeance. Draw your feeling. Then tear up the drawing. Give a physical outlet to your energy.
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- Write letters that you will never send. Perhaps you will feel guilty towards the person you are angry with, this will prevent a new round of anger. Then you will get rid of the feeling of guilt. We can all forgive ourselves. You really haven't done anything irreparably wrong that doesn't deserve forgiveness. After all, anger needs neither justification nor rationalization. We all make mistakes, but we learn from them. It's okay to feel angry. It is only necessary to avoid actions dictated by hostility.
Healthy intimate relationships can be accompanied by disagreement, irritation, and even anger. You just need to react, "work out" these emotions in an acceptable way, without harming yourself and others.
6. If something goes wrong, it's my fault. I am a bad man
Something in real life can really go wrong due to your fault. But something is not at all because of you. Terrible things can happen, so what - are you going to think that you are a terrible person?
Let's figure out where this persistent feeling of guilt, shame comes from in you. Guilt arises when you feel that you did something wrong, did something wrong. Along with guilt can come feelings of shame. This is already something that does not relate to your actions, but directly to your essence. Shame is a deeper feeling than guilt. Behavior is easier to correct than to change the essence of a person. If you are not helped to cope with these feelings in a timely manner, you can fight them all your life and prove to yourself and others that you are a worthy person.
It turns out that this is precisely what no one needs to prove. You have inalienable dignity already by the fact of your birth. A person was born - so you need to take care of his feelings dignity. For religious people, the creation of man is
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act of God. God created you in his own image and likeness. If you do not respect yourself, do not value yourself, then it turns out that you are insulting God, devaluing his work. If the word "God" means nothing to you, if you are an atheist, then all the same in a society (healthy, of course) it is customary to treat people with a sense of respect and appreciate their dignity.
Will you break this rule for yourself? Loving yourself is not only not a sin, but it is even a duty. More precisely, it is a condition of healthy relationships with other people. Other people, including your chosen one, will love you only when you love yourself.
Maybe your parents voluntarily or unwittingly inspired you with the idea that you are to blame for the misfortunes of the family. And perhaps you yourself thought so. You see, the feeling of guilt, oddly enough, also helps to survive in difficult circumstances. When you were little, your logic was not yet so developed that you could understand that in reality all the difficulties of your family are not caused by you. It could be the illness of one of the family members, financial difficulties, hobbies of one of the parents (like Tanya's father has a love for motorsport).
Passionately wanting to solve a problematic situation, you believe that it is somehow connected with your behavior. Salvation can come from this side. Since it's about you, you just have to change yourself, try hard - and everything will work out. And if you realize that you have nothing to do with it, then there is complete hopelessness, then you cannot do anything, change anything. This is how your thought could have gone as a child. This may be one of the sources of your willingness, now that you are an adult, to take all the blame.
Feelings of guilt, shame are experienced hard, but even harder is the feeling of helplessness, the consciousness that nothing depends on you. That's why women take on super-responsibility for everything that doesn't go as smoothly as we would like.
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I know women who, even after their husband beats them, come up with an excuse for him - “It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have touched his pain point, I shouldn’t have told him that he stopped being good father to his son”, etc.
Let's calmly deal with this issue. First, physical aggression is always absolutely unacceptable, whatever the circumstances. And secondly, do not take on more than fifty percent of the responsibility for the costs of a relationship in which two people participate: you are not alone in building these relationships, your partner should also think why it’s not all going the way you would like.
What to do?
It's better to say it out loud so that your partner can hear something like this: “Let's take another look at this case together, regardless of whether it's my fault or yours. We both need to understand why things aren't going well in our relationship." Did this thought cross your mind?
Maybe your low self-esteem is holding you back. Guilt easily arises in people with a weak sense of self-worth, with impaired - usually low - self-esteem. The fear of being seen from a non-winning side is mixed in. You start to hide something. A climate of "incomplete honesty" is being created. Relationships get tangled.
Work on restoring healthy self-esteem. For example, mentally or in writing repeat or write only positive statements about yourself:
I am a valuable and worthy person.
I have the right to be treated with respect.
I can set goals for myself and achieve them.
And a lot more. But only positive statements, without the “not” particle.
Release yourself from guilt. Trust me, it's not your fault. If you carry this feeling in yourself, then you will definitely get into situations of self-infliction32
knowledge. There is another way out - forgive yourself if it seems to you that you are to blame.
7. To be loved, I must always look happy, cheerful, carefree
So what do people look like in real life?
Sometimes they look happy, sometimes they don't. And that's okay.
If it comes to your mind to put on a mask of carelessness, then I suspect that you are trying to hide bitter feelings deeply. Maybe you are still full of fears? Fear of losing a partner, fear of being abandoned, fear of showing unwanted, from your point of view, feelings - sadness, bitterness of loss.
Fear has big eyes. And any change in life may seem to you a loss, a failure. Do not rush to conclusions. Life is not all about victories. Defeat is also a human condition. A person who has not known defeat loses something from his humanism. Sometimes defeat can turn into a change - to a better state of affairs, to another happier life.
Let's remember Tanya. She failed to win over a brilliant student, just as she failed to attract the attention of her father in childhood. So what is her defeat? Nothing. It is still unknown whether this student would be her good friend. But she learned to fight for attention to herself. In those cases when attention was given to her without difficulty, when the young men said that they liked her, she was bored with them, uninteresting. There was no proper intensity of feelings.
What to do?
The main thing is to be yourself. Throw off masks, do not pretend to be sad or cheerful, but allow yourself to experience any feelings.
As we have already agreed, we need to get to the bottom of each feeling, and then discard all myths, delusions, free ourselves from fears.
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Your fears would be lessened and even completely eliminated if you weren't so dependent on what others think of you in your self-esteem. Confidence in self-worth should be your inner, deep characteristic. It is not given overnight.
It is necessary to work on developing adequate self-esteem for a long time and best of all not alone. Reading this book is useful work above oneself. Be patient. You don't need

When there is too much love, the danger of love addiction is great.

The basis of happy love is healthy intimate relationships that are not limited to physical intimacy. Intimacy is shared love, the joy of mutual understanding, cooperation, trust, reliability, spiritual growth.

Intimate relationships are not formed overnight. Previous experiences, traumatic childhood events, unstable self-esteem, psychological delusions may interfere.

This book will help you get rid of false ideas, unnecessary fears, find the right guidelines in search of love.

For a wide range of readers.

INTRODUCTION

If you have never experienced difficulties in relationships with loved ones, put this book aside. She is not for you. I write for those who love and suffer, who are not always lucky. I especially sympathize with and want to help women, both young and experienced in family life, who, it would seem, do everything for their loved ones, but for some reason are not very happy. Perhaps these women love too much.

Situation: there is too much love, and the result does not satisfy you - what to do? One of the answers is to look for a way out of possible delusions. In the field of love, as in other areas of life, there are myths and there is reality. We will talk about intimate relationships. Let's agree on what we mean by intimate relationships. In modern life, this concept has narrowed - in the view of some to the content of the store "Intimacy". Sexual relations are only a small part of intimate relationships, only a special case, one of the components of such relationships. What we will talk about in this book is much broader, more diverse and more interesting.

Intimacy is a celebration of the sharing of all feelings, not just good sex. So intimacy is more than sex. Let us turn to the meanings and the origin of the word.

The Latin roots of the word "intimacy" are as follows. The Latin verb intimare means “to announce”, “to make known”, and the word intimus means “lying deep inside”, “deepest, innermost”.

From the book of a psychotherapist, psychiatrist-narcologist, clinical geneticist and family psychotherapist, doctor of medical sciences, professor - Moskalenko V.D. "When there is too much love" on the prevention of love addiction: "How to distinguish love, or a healthy, secure attachment, from an unhealthy, pathological attachment? In other words, what is the difference between happy love and unhappy love? Euphoria, depression. Ups and downs. An insatiable need for love as an insatiable need for alcohol. Fatal addiction. There is even a word such as "any-goalism" by analogy with alcoholism. "Lyubolichki" is always not enough of the warmth that a partner gives. They cannot come to terms with the fact that there are two separate "I", they want there was a single "we". And this means inner lack of freedom, dependence. If a person is dependent, the danger of becoming unhappy looms before him.

If the lover weakens his love a little bit, suffering begins. And if he cheats, he leaves ... The severity of the state of the abandoned woman in this case resembles the state of taking away the substance to which addiction has developed. hangover syndrome. It takes a sip of the same thing - new love in one case, alcohol in another - to make it easier. Just as alcoholism is a relapsing disease, that is, a recurring one, so the scenario of “anythingism” is repeated. An alcoholic gives vows - that's enough, you need to tie it up. An abandoned woman can also say to herself: “That's it, I won't fall in love again. Only suffering from this love. This is an attempt to get rid of unhappy love on a rational level. The attempt fails because our subconscious mind powerfully rebels against it. The ideas about their dependence, helplessness and uselessness are only intensifying. And well-wishing girlfriends whisper: “Look at him. Is he worthy of your tears? Hatred arises. Like a switch was flipped. There was love and suddenly - time! And hate. This is another misfortune. Until an indifferent, indifferent, calmly neutral attitude towards the person who brought suffering does not come, happiness cannot be seen. There will be no recovery. Like alcoholism. As long as the attraction to vodka is strong, then no vows, no horror stories, no coding help. Recovery is possible when deactualization of attraction is achieved. In simple words, then, when no longer painfully drawn to alcohol. If harmony reigns in the soul of a person, then love, no matter how strong it is, does not compete with other attractions. On the contrary, healthy love, as it were, multiplies everything. internal forces- nourishes creativity, reveals talents, gives a special depth to friendship, care for children, loved ones.

With love addiction, relationships with men occupy an exorbitantly large place in life and crowd out, devalue everything else. Isn't that how alcohol rules the life of an alcoholic, crowding out or absorbing all other interests? Unhappy love is characterized by altered, displaced experiences. Stereotyping, repetitiveness of the situation resembles the features of alcoholism. When a non-alcoholic person is going to a party, it is impossible to predict in advance how he will behave there. It is possible that he will happen to drink a lot. But this is optional. Everything will depend on the mood, on what kind of company will gather. The behavior of an alcoholic at a party can be calculated in advance by hours and minutes, from the first glass to the moment when he becomes unbearable and they begin to send him out. There are women whose fate can also be calculated in advance. No matter how bitter days you have to endure mentally healthy, emotionally mature woman She is always the future. She can plan. And her circumstances change, meets new person, life can go differently. The most important indicator of mental health is a wide, multivariate mode of life activity. The life of a woman suffering from love addiction is a non-stop exhausting search for a man who will "give her everything." He, according to her expectations, will completely turn her fate around, even in the case when there is no need for a coup.

In any human union, and in love too, each of the participants must go his half way towards the other. "Lyubogolichki" in their irresistible impulse rush to run the entire distance - for themselves and for a partner. As a rule, they do not understand what the essence of the problem is. Often they even see advantages in their ability to love. They believe that only chosen women can love like that. This is their natural psychological defense that helps to live. It also prevents you from taking a sober look at failures and trying to save yourself. One of the essential differences between women who are capable of healthy love, satisfying relationships for both partners, and women suffering from love addiction, is the quality of self-esteem in both. Healthy women, capable of love, appreciate their intelligence, their qualities, their spiritual wealth, their personality. They themselves appreciate, and do not wait until someone else evaluates them from the outside. These women know what they want from life and what they can do for themselves. Ask them to write a plan for their life for the next 5 years - this task will not make it difficult for them. By and large, they foresee their lives. They are able to make active efforts to realize their life plan.

Women who are prone to addiction usually crave recognition from outside. For them, only the assessment of other people somewhat saturates, feeds their unstable self-esteem. “If I don’t become a wife, I will feel like a failed person,” said one quite worthy woman. This woman considered herself valuable only next to a man. Only a man could provide her with a sense of safety and security, a sense of "I'm fine." She thought that without relying on a man, she would not even be able to exist. Healthy women are emotionally mature. They can use all their senses. They can endure suffering, loneliness associated with spiritual growth. They are fine with themselves alone. They know the answer to the question, "Who am I?" They have a well-developed self-discipline - they can delay the satisfaction of desires. They have a more permanent mood. They do not have such a large amplitude of fluctuations of fate. In addicted women, despite the intensity of their suffering, the feelings are still superficial, the reactions are immature, like in a teenager. They can neither wait nor choose a worthy partner. Feelings often change, and shakes them from hell to heaven. They don't seem to care who they depend on. If only there was someone. They have poor self-discipline. They cannot postpone the satisfaction of their desires until later. Just like children. Perhaps this is because from childhood they have a feeling of emptiness and a hunger for attention. They strive to fill their inner emptiness as soon as possible, to satisfy their hunger for attention. A hungry person does not shop well. He hurries and grabs whatever comes his way. These women throw their best qualities to the wind, even honesty with themselves is not the highest value. And "holes in the soul" are formed. Some part of the personality is lost, integrity is lost, there is no sense of identity. They define "Who am I?" only through relationships.

If healthy women actively build their lives, then dependent women take a passive position. They look at a man and even at children as a source of their happiness and fullness of existence. If the “anyones” are not happy, then they hold others responsible for this: “He is to blame, he ruined my youth!” As a result, they are infinitely vicious and feel defeated, destroyed, and even more devastated. Some disappointments. Perhaps the root of the problem is lack of self-sufficiency. In reality, no one can make another happy. A person with high self-sufficiency is characterized by the feeling “I am worthy (worthy) of love and therefore I am loved (loved)”. So it will be as long as a woman is true to herself, as long as she appreciates herself for who she is. For dependent people, this logic is perverted: “I am loved, so I am worthy of love.” The very ability to cause affection is made dependent on an external circumstance - on the attitude of a particular person. It seems to make up for the lack of "I". Mature, independent individuals have long been psychologically separated from their parents and can now form a new emotional attachment. When they build a family, the division of roles in the family is not as rigid as for dependents. Members of a healthy family can change roles. This reduces their interdependence. At the same time, it is training to survive alone, in case of loss of a partner.

A master of establishing relationships in the family, a family psychotherapist known not only in her homeland in the United States, but also in many other countries, Virginia Satir visited our country shortly before her death, gave a number of lectures, and held family consultations. From her precepts, her lessons I learned following rules building close relationships in the family: I want to love you, but not hold you. I want to appreciate you without judgment. I want to join you, but not invade you. I want to invite you, but not to demand you. I want to leave you, but without reproach. I want to criticize you, but not to blame. I want to help you, but not reproach you for your inability. And if I can get the same from you, we can meet and truly enrich each other! Try to live by these rules for at least a week. You will see how difficult it is. What good comes easy?

Love without any conditions. Love is the highest human need. This is not just a feeling, but all the energy of a person directed to ensure that both he and the one he loves grow and develop in all respects, including physical, mental, emotional and higher spiritual dimensions. Love is our most healing, most beneficial inner resource. A person needs to be loved, especially in childhood. If someone was mistreated as a child, the very ability to love others and even oneself can disappear.
When I see tough guys, every now and then trying to fight, destroy something, not even putting their lives in anything, I always think that they were not loved as a child. They are characterized by low self-esteem, a sense of defectiveness, insufficient self-worth. In order to drown out this feeling, to hide it, not to show it, they commit their tricks, condemned by society. They do not believe that they can fulfill themselves in some other, creative, constructive way. Destroying everything in your path, destroying yourself - with alcohol, drugs - is one of the consequences of low self-esteem, which, in turn, is an insufficient experience of love in early childhood. In order for a person to be able to give love, it is necessary to love him, and without any conditions. Love involves caring for a person, overcoming difficulties and conflicts, forgiveness, trust, devotion to his well-being, acceptance of him as he is, without any conditions, and just peaceful being with him, with himself. This is our most healing inner strength.

Women who are unlucky in love. Well, why, why are good, attentive, devoted women so chronically unlucky? I asked this question at the beginning of the book and think about it all the time. Women are not to blame for this. And even the circumstances of the meeting with a partner have nothing to do with it. More importantly, what kind of childhood they had, what kind of relationships were in the parental family. Here is what usually distinguishes those women who are unlucky in love:
1. They often come from dysfunctional (unhealthy) families where their emotional needs were not met. For example, the father or mother could be alcoholic.
2. Women who have been little cared for begin to fill their unsatisfied need for attention with increased care for someone, especially a man with a difficult fate, a man who is in great need of help, guardianship. She becomes his wife, nanny and mother. Her calling is to save.
3. Due to the fact that in childhood these women never managed to turn one or both parents into caring, loving mother and dad, in adulthood they are attracted to emotionally inaccessible men, whom they try to change with their boundless love.
4. Having experienced the horror of rejection in childhood, these women do everything possible to prevent the breakup of a relationship with the man they love.
5. These women do not stop at any cost of time, effort and even money if it "helps" the man they love.
6. Having got used to the lack of love in their family, these women are ready to wait, hope and do everything possible to please their chosen one.
7. These women are ready to take on much more than fifty percent of the blame, responsibility in any relationship.
8. The self-esteem of these women is very low, and deep down they do not believe that they deserve to be happy. Rather, they are willing to believe that they still have to earn the right to enjoy life.
9. These women have an exceptionally great need to control the behavior, feelings and thoughts of their man. They stand guard over their relationship like a sentry on duty, as they lived in an environment of insecurity as children. They try to help others everywhere and in everything, to become necessary and even irreplaceable. Often such women choose the so-called helping professions ( medical worker, psychologist, educator, teacher, waitress, etc.).
10. In relationships, it is more important for them how it should be than the situation that has developed; they dream more than they live.
11. Their love and torment is very difficult for both them and their partner. This is "all-consuming and withering" love.
12. They may be predisposed (emotionally or genetically) to addiction to alcohol, drugs, drugs, certain types of food (for example, sweets).
13. They are attracted to people with problems who need “salvation”, they are closer to situations where chaos reigns, uncertainty, emotional suffering, while they avoid responsibility for themselves.
14. These women may have a tendency to become overwhelmed, which they try to prevent by getting involved in fragile, "turbulent" relationships.
15. These women are not attracted to men who are kind, stable in life, reliable and interested in them. They find these men cute, but boring, boring.
So writes American psychotherapist Robin Norwood in her book Women Who Love Too Much. My clinical experience confirms these findings. As a consolation, I can say that bad luck in love is not forever, you can work on yourself, change, and everything will change for the better. The training to overcome codependency helps a lot in luck in love.
Download a book.

Situation: there is too much love, and the result does not satisfy you - what to do? One of the answers is to look for a way out of possible delusions. In the field of love, as in other areas of life, there are myths and there is reality. We will talk about intimate relationships. Let's agree on what we mean by intimate relationships. In modern life, this concept has narrowed - in the view of some to the content of the store "Intimacy". Sexual relations are only a small part of intimate relationships, only a special case, one of the components of such relationships. What we will talk about in this book is much broader, more diverse and more interesting.

Intimacy is a celebration of the sharing of all feelings, not just good sex. So intimacy is more than sex. Let us turn to the meanings and the origin of the word.

The Latin roots of the word "intimacy" are as follows. Latin verb intimate means "announce", "make known", and the word intimus- “lying deep inside”, “deepest, innermost”.

Look into the dictionary of V. I. Dahl and you will see: “Intimate (lat.)- close, short, close, sincere, cordial, sincere; secret, secret, internecine, secretive; private, private." It is about such relationships between people - close, sincere and at the same time, perhaps, unspoken, secret - that we will talk about in this book.

Each of us has our own inner world, our own inner space. Intimacy lies beyond it, it is a world open to two. And they enter it with what the soul is rich in. The tone of the relationship is set by the spiritual wealth (or poverty) of the partners. However, relationships are always in dynamics, they can be built, changed - it would be nice to know the goals you are striving for, and the rules of construction. Everything can be learned if there is good will.

Nothing prevents people from getting along with each other more than out of nowhere fears, prejudices, fears that I call myths. A myth is a departure from reality, something opposite to the truth of life, a delusion. My task is to show the most common misconceptions of people building close relationships. As is well known, any devastation begins in the minds. You will find the way out of your difficulty yourself. The myths and realities of intimacy are different for each person. Let's talk about some of them, which are quite common, at least in my practice as a psychotherapist.

I hope that this book will help you build healthy intimate relationships and that with its help you will advance in self-improvement. Even if, reading it, you only think about the issues discussed here, talk with your loved ones on this topic, you will already gain something and get an impulse for further spiritual growth.

Close relationships are such an important area of human life that I am convinced that it is worth talking about. A friend of mine likes to say: "Wish someone lucky to meet you, then you will be lucky to meet him." I also like this aphorism.

Hasty marriage

No one expected that Tanya would marry so hastily. She was a serious girl, very responsible, shunned noisy companies. And suddenly - here you are! Marry! The courtship period is one week.

The chosen one had a beautiful appearance and ... a difficult fate. His first wife, leaving him a child, drove away with a young officer. Everyone sympathized with the abandoned husband. It seemed that now he was only concerned with the difficulties of life, the upbringing of his son. But as soon as Tanya appeared at the design bureau where he worked, and where she was sent for practice, he immediately drew attention to her. And then - an invitation to a restaurant, to his home ... And everything was decided.

Tanya fell in love with him immediately. She was 22 years old, he was 35. She had no experience in love, except for a painful, unrequited love for a student who seemed to her the star of the course. A sort of successful young man in everything, as they say, the soul of society. Now we must admit - she did not manage to achieve it, but she tried very hard. Well, let the past stay in the past. It seemed to Tanya that this episode passed without a trace. Is not it? And in general, does anything go unnoticed?

Tanya really wanted to have a good, friendly family, so that both her husband and children would love her. It's so natural. And doesn't she deserve such a fate? And her appearance is good, and there are as many advantages as you like. Clever, diligent, never lazy, everything in her parents' house rested on her.

Mom worked at a regime enterprise, she came late, tired. Tanya so wanted to please her with the cleanliness of the apartment, a delicious dinner. However, the always tired mother rarely rejoiced at anything.

At school, Tanya tried to get good grades, to be exemplary in behavior. But my mother's fatigue never seemed to end, and my father... And what, in fact, is my father? Tanya somehow does not remember him. He was always absent. He has training camps, competitions, he is a motorcycle racer. And when he left big sport, business trips began. At first I was bored, then I got used to it. It seemed like there was a dad, but it didn’t seem to be. Tanya had never seen her parents kiss or laugh happily. True, they did not quarrel. But the atmosphere in the house was unhappy.

Tanya passionately wanted to arrange her family life differently, not at all like her parents. Everything will be different for me, she thought. Why not? Isn't man the smith of his own happiness? Doesn't Tanya know how to be devoted, gentle, infinitely sensitive to the needs of a loved one? It seemed to her that she could move mountains if they interfered with her happiness.

And so she fell in love with a handsome man who suffered with a frivolous wife, fell in love with his orphaned son. So why bother pretending? You have to be sincere. And Tanya immediately agreed to his proposal to get married. He seemed so serious!

First disappointments

A month after the wedding, on April 30, the husband disappeared for two days. It was later revealed that he met his friend and they "got drunk" together. So they spent May 1 and 2. Tanya stayed at home with her husband's son. Naturally, this first “holiday” in her family life was remembered by her for a long time. Then the husband asked for forgiveness. She forgave. Tanya tried to show herself only from the best side. She thought that in this way she would be able to win Kostya. She did not part with the idea that they could make a perfect couple.

Tanya worked miracles of cooking, made the house cozy, did not refuse her husband sexual pleasures, although she herself still did not understand much about this. The woman in her hasn't woken up yet. Kostya admired her, saying that a better wife could not be found. But quite often he disappeared somewhere, then explained all this by unforeseen and very serious circumstances. His drinking increased. He loved his son, but apparently he loved vodka more. He quickly shifted all the worries about his son onto Tanya's shoulders. Increasingly until late at night did not return home.

Tanya loved to read, tried to distract herself from sad thoughts by reading. It was hardly achievable. In A.S. Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”, she read ironic lines, but they seemed serious to her. She became even more sad.

What could be worse in the world

Families where the poor wife

Sad for an unworthy husband,

And day and evening alone;

Where is the boring husband, knowing her price

(Fate, however, cursing),

Always frowning, silent,

Angry and cold-jealous!

Moskalenko V.D.

When there is too much love

Prevention of love addiction

Introduction

Situation: there is too much love, and the result does not satisfy you - what to do? One of the answers is to look for a way out of possible delusions. In the field of love, as in other areas of life, there are myths and there is reality. We will talk about intimate relationships. Let's agree on what we mean by intimate relationships. In modern life, this concept has narrowed - in the view of some to the content of the store "Intimacy". Sexual relations are only a small part of intimate relationships, only a special case, one of the components of such relationships. What we will talk about in this book is much broader, more diverse and more interesting.

Intimacy is a celebration of the sharing of all feelings, not just good sex. So intimacy is more than sex. Let us turn to the meanings and the origin of the word.

The Latin roots of the word "intimacy" are as follows. Latin verb intimate means "announce", "make known", and the word intimus- “lying deep inside”, “deepest, innermost”.

Hasty marriage

No one expected that Tanya would marry so hastily. She was a serious girl, very responsible, shunned noisy companies. And suddenly - here you are! Marry! The courtship period is one week.

First disappointments

What could be worse in the world
Families where the poor wife
Sad for an unworthy husband,
And day and evening alone;
Where is the boring husband, knowing her price
(Fate, however, cursing),
Always frowning, silent,
Angry and cold-jealous!

Three years have passed. After three years of married life, Tanya realized that she could not call her marriage happy. Notice that for three years she convinced herself otherwise. There were thoughts of divorce, but then a sense of duty intervened, fear of upsetting parents. Tanya's mother and father thought that their daughter was happily married, that everything was in order in her family.

Victims beget victims

Tanya's life story made me think again about the question: why does it happen that such worthy, hardworking, devoted women who are able to sacrifice everything to win love and affection are unlucky? Maybe because they love too selflessly (literally "self-denying")?

If I am not for myself, then who is for me? Probably, you can not trample on your interests and needs. But if I'm only for myself, then why me? But what about such an indisputable value as altruism, the ability to devote one's life to family and children?

INTRODUCTION

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