Love is one of the most profound emotions known to human beings. There are many kinds of love, but many people seek its expression in a romantic relationship with a compatible partner (or partners). For these individuals, romantic relationships comprise one of the most meaningful aspects of life, and are a source of deep fulfillment.
While need for human connection appears to be innate, the ability to form healthy, loving relationships is learned. Some evidence suggests that the ability to form a stable relationship starts to form in infancy, in a child's earliest experiences with a caregiver who reliably meets the infant's needs for food, care, warmth, protection, stimulation, and social contact. Such relationships are not destiny, but they are theorized to establish deeply ingrained patterns of relating to others. The end of a relationship, however, is often a source of great psychological anguish.
Maintaining a strong relationship requires constant care and communication, and certain traits have been shown to be especially important for fostering healthy relationships. Each individual should, for starters, feel confident that their partner is willing to devote time and attention to the other. They must both also be committed to accommodating their differences, even as those change over time.
In the 21st century, good relationships are generally marked by emotional and physical fairness, particularly in the distribution of chores necessary to maintain a household. Partners in strong relationships also feel grateful for one another, openly provide and receive affection, and engage in honest discussions about sex.
In good relationships, partners try to afford their partner the benefit of the doubt, which creates a sense of being on the same team. This feeling, maintained over the long term, can help couples overcome the challenges they will inevitably face together
Finding a partner with whom to share a life is a wonderful but frequently difficult process. Whether it's conducted online or in-person, the search will likely push an individual into unfamiliar settings to encounter potential partners. To be successful, it is often necessary to go outside of one's comfort zone.
Determining whether a particular person is suitable as a potential mate, and whether a connection reflects temporary infatuation or true love, can challenging, but research suggests that there are revealing clues in behavior.
One possibly counterintuitive indicator of a potential match is one's sense of self. Someone who would make a good partner may push an individual to discover new activities or beliefs that expand their own self-concept. Another early signifier may be stress: Repeatedly interacting with someone whose impression matters deeply to us can fuel anxiety. Other positive indicators include being highly motivated to see the person and investing a significant amount of time, emotion, and energy into the budding relationship.
Every relationship represents a leap of faith for at least one partner, and even in the happiest couples, the very traits that once attracted them to each other can eventually become annoyances that drive them apart. Acquiring the skills to make a connection last is hard work, and threats may spring up without notice. In short-term, casual relationships, neither partner may see a truly viable long-term future together, but often only one takes action, in some cases ghosting the other, walking out of their lives with no communication, not even a text.
For some couples, infidelity is both the first and last straw, but a surprising number of relationships survive betrayal, some only to have their connection upended by everyday threats such as a loss of interest in physical intimacy, or a waning of positive feeling in the wake of constant criticism, contempt, or defensiveness. Even staying together for decades is no guarantee that a couple will remain connected: The divorce rate for couples over 50 has doubled since 1990.
Some people can walk away from years of marriage and instantly feel unburdened. For others, the end of a relationship that lasted just a few dates can trigger emotional trauma that lingers for years. However a breakup plays out, it can be a major stressor with an effect on ego and self-esteem that cannot be ignored.
In the most successful relationships, partners not only afford each other the benefit of the doubt; they take active supportive steps that foster a powerful sense of being on the same team. Maintained over the long term, research shows, that connection provides individuals a solid emotional base for pursuing their dreams and for bouncing back quickly when they encounter setbacks.
Although the term is often used as a euphemism for sex, the sharing between two people that defines intimacy is not exclusively a physical connection and is not exclusive to romantic relationships. Intimacy involves the risk of putting yourself out there. It tends to begin cautiously in conversation—sharing something emotionally meaningful with a new partner—but evolves over time into a connection with someone we believe truly gets us. Once a bond of intimacy is established, it can become the bedrock of both deep friendship and physical desire.
Sexual connection is a vital aspect of most romantic relationships, but it’s not always as central as people may think. Partners have sex for self-interested reasons—it feels good and can boost self-esteem; and for relationship-focused reasons—it enhances closeness and pleases someone they love. Over the long term, most couples will face sexual challenges, as bodies change with age and individuals’ desire for sex waxes and wanes (and generally declines). Research consistently shows that most couples struggle to talk about sex honestly, but that when they do, it brings them closer together.
Love also brings people together, but it takes more than love to stay together. Many of us know couples that broke up despite believing that they were in love with each other, because of one partner’s infidelity or because of distance or circumstance. But even in long-term stable relationships, partners who feel that they are in love may grow apart, if one believes that they are not emotionally safe in the relationship, or that it lacks passion or intimacy.
Sex is an important aspect of many relationships and while research finds that while regular sex does help to cement a couple's emotional bond, that boost doesn't derive from the physical act as much as from what it expresses—openness, transparency, positive communication, and a commitment to foster and maintain erotic energy. What happens after sex is also vital: Research on sexual "afterglow," including cuddling and pillow talk, finds that the feeling of enhanced sexual satisfaction following a sexual encounter can leave partners feeling better about each other for weeks or even months. While many partners worry about why they may not have sex as often as they once did, or whether they need to learn new techniques, a decline in a couple's sex life is more commonly a reflection of other problems in the relationship, rather than the cause.
Loving relationships can literally be a matter of life and death: Having a supportive relationship is more predictive of warding off mortality than quitting smoking or exercising, while a toxic relationship is more damaging than no relationship at all. But love is always reciprocal, and can only survive if both partners are willing to be open and honest with each other, express gratitude, share their thoughts and feelings, and ask for support rather than trying to go it alone. Individuals often believe they are sparing their partner by keeping their troubles from them, but people can be deeply hurt when they discover that the person they love most has not confided in them or sought out their support.
Even couples that are generally successful at addressing other issues get stuck when it comes to talking about sex. Many people assume that great sex should not require conversation, but that often leads to years of stale or unsatisfying encounters. Research finds that people avoid talking about uncomfortable topics because they imagine that what they say might threaten a relationship, especially if it's about sexual fantasies or interest in "unconventional" sex; that expressing concern about their sex life will hurt their partner's feelings; or because they're reluctant to reveal too much about themselves for fear of feeling shame or being shamed. But research also shows that partners willing to discuss intimacy with each other are generally happier with their relationships because they discover that their sexual concerns are usually not, after all, a sign that their relationship is in trouble.
There is no universal prescription for a healthy sex life. There are happy couples that have sex multiple times a week, and satisfied couples that hardly ever have sex. But many couples do encounter serious conflicts around their sex lives, often having to do with discrepancy in desire. When one partner—and it's not always a man—has a much higher sex drive than the other, it can threaten a relationship, with one person feeling pressure to have more sex, and the other feeling rejected. Bringing such concerns out into the open can help assuage hurt feelings, and meeting with a couples therapist may help partners find common ground.
Some evidence suggests that the ability to form a stable relationship starts to form in infancy, in a child's earliest experiences with a caregiver who reliably meets their needs for food, care, warmth, protection, stimulation, and social contact. Such relationships are not destiny, but they have been theorized to establish deeply ingrained patterns of relating to others.
Adult relationships succeed or fail for many reasons beyond the partners' childhoods, of course. Most people have to work to master the skills necessary to make romantic relationships endure and flourish, and threats to their connection are sources of great psychological anguish.
For centuries, couples did not tend to spend several decades together as they do now, due to shorter lifespans and greater medical risk. So in a way, the challenges long-term partners face today may be seen as novel. But fundamentally, relationships are challenged because individuals change and their partners are forced to adjust. But many couples face the same types of crossroads moments, when crises arise and threaten their connection, such as the first year together; the arrival of children, and their eventual departure; the declines of old age; and the inevitable tragedies every person faces.
For many, breaking the commitment to remain faithful to a spouse or partner is unthinkable. Yet nearly 20 percent of people have had sex with someone else while in a committed relationship. People cheat for a variety of reasons, but whatever the cause, it poses a serious challenge to the offended partner. Infidelity, however, doesn’t always lead a couple to split up. Whether a couple survives the challenge depends on the essential soundness of their connection, and whether the affair involved emotional as well as physical attachment: Research shows that more than 40 percent of men who have had affairs report that it was only about sex, while only 11 percent of women say the same.
Many couples with different ages, heights, sizes, cultural backgrounds, ethnicities, or religions find significant happiness together, and in surveys they tend to say the same thing: The challenges they face, while real, are primarily external and not internal. The ability to tune out the judgment of others, whether strangers or close relatives, is core to their long-term satisfaction.
Personality can affect one’s ability to find happiness in relationships, but it is never the only factor and it does not have to be a roadblock. Attachment style, for example, can have a significant influence on relationship success. Individuals with an “insecure” attachment style, a trait typically developed in childhood, may be highly anxious about the security of their adult relationships or may avoid commitment altogether. But an awareness of one’s tendencies to resist or stress out about finding love, and a willingness to talk to partners about it, can help individuals manage their challenges ad find a path to a healthy long-term relationship.
Committing to a relationship with someone high in the trait of narcissism often leads to an unfulfilling relationship, even if it takes a while to discover the deficits at its core. A narcissist avidly seeks admiration, from romantic partners above all, and so when they first meet a potential partner, they may be highly charming and charismatic, and overwhelm someone with attention, moving a relationship forward much more quickly than others might. Their eagerness may be attractive, but their fundamental lack of empathy can leave them disinterested in a partner's deeper thoughts and feelings over the long term.
People who actually have narcissistic personality disorder are virtually unable to fall in love or form an equitable relationship. Such individuals instead will likely try to establish strict rules and isolate a romantic partner from their friends and family, among other disturbing behaviors.
People living with personality disorders can struggle to manage the give and take of relationships, especially the frequent minor conflicts common to most romantic partnerships. Fearing abandonment, or averse to giving in, they may cling to partners or push them away when they feel their connection is threatened. Working to achieve healthy, secure attachment with a partner and to trust in their support can help make relationships workable.
In some failed relationships, partners endure a gradual decline of connection, intimacy, and affection, while in others, one or the other partner can identify moment when they knew it was over. When a relationship experiences strain, couples must decide if they have built a connection that can sustain it, and if not, whether it’s best to end it.
Standing at the altar, few couples can imagine that they will one day be signing divorce papers. And yet many will. Spouses lose their connection to each other for some common reasons—infidelity, financial stress, a decline of affection, or incompatibility—and so experts suggest that couples remain vigilant about these challenges even during their honeymoon period and, if those issues become insurmountable, they honestly assess whether it’s time to part ways.
Even if you didn’t believe a relationship would last a lifetime, its ending can hurt, especially if you feel that you’ve been rejected by someone you loved and trusted. Understanding why breakups are painful, and what you can learn from them, are crucial steps toward bouncing back.
Comments
Post a Comment
Welcome.......
What are you thinking of....!!