What is preventing us from having a sweet love?

Getting a sweet love may be what many young people dream of. However, things do not go as planned. We often see that many people have either been single for 20 or 30 years, or have been defeated repeatedly in love, never enjoying the sweetness of true love, but suffering the bitterness of love. So much so that some people often lament that they have met the wrong people and may not deserve true love.

But in fact, this is not the case. If you want to embrace love, you can learn it. We must first understand what the basic elements of love are and what are the real stumbling blocks that prevent us from having a sweet love.

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Intimacy + passion + commitment = sweet love

If we want a sweet love, we must first know what sweet love looks like. Only with a clear understanding and goal can we move forward.

Sternberg's love triangle theory believes that love is composed of three elements: intimacy, passion and commitment:

Intimacy is "warm", which refers to the psychological feeling of liking each other, including closeness, respect, support and communication.

Passion is "hot" and is an emotional obsession. For example, when you see the other person, you will feel your heart beating fast. We often say "love makes people stupid" because passion suppresses reason.

Commitment is "cold". It is the expectation and commitment of both parties to the love relationship. It is the sharing of weal and woe and the end of the world that is common in novels, and it is the "I do" in the wedding ceremony.

In addition, Sternberg also divided the following seven types of love based on these three elements:

Therefore, sweet love is a kind of love that has sufficient intimacy, closeness and support for each other, as well as heart-pounding passion and the commitment to stay together for a lifetime.

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But this alone is not enough. Psychologists Acker and Davis believe that love in reality may have multiple triangles. There will be a "real triangle" that reflects the real situation of the current relationship, and a "perception triangle" that reflects how both parties view this relationship. Only when the "perception triangle" and "real triangle" of both parties are relatively overlapped, the relationship will be truly harmonious and beautiful. Otherwise, there will be different degrees of dissatisfaction. This also confirms the so-called "love is a two-way journey".

On the road of running in both directions, what becomes the stumbling block?

Love is a very complex proposition, which leads to the fact that when people find it difficult to obtain ideal love, many people only see some superficial or one-sided reasons, such as being too introverted, not knowing how to socialize, not being mature enough, breaking up after a quarrel, always meeting unsuitable people, etc.

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"Children get their earliest impressions of what marriage is like from the lives of their parents," wrote psychologist Adler in "Inferiority and Superiority." "Early in the child's development, we can see that he is already forming his outlook on love and marriage."

In Adler's view, he actually emphasizes a very important point: the influence of the original family. Although modern psychology believes that a person's concept of love is influenced by many aspects such as family, personality, education and social life, the original family still has a very profound and close influence on the concept of love in adulthood.

Many times, we just see that we have some problems in love, and it is easy for us to give ourselves a hint: "Oh, there is no way, I (or the other person) is just such a person..." But in fact, whether it is those existing problems or such unconscious hints, they may be closely related to the original family.

Break up after a quarrel? This may be the influence of parents

Psychological research has found that if parents have a harmonious relationship and use non-violent communication to resolve disputes, their children will be more likely to adopt non-violent communication behavior patterns in their relationships when they grow up, and their relationships will become closer over time. On the contrary, children tend to adopt hostile communication methods when they grow up, and they are prone to verbally abuse each other when they quarrel, leading to a breakup. However, in many cases, these are problems that can be resolved through calm communication between the two parties.

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This shows that our love style is likely to be inherited from our parents’ marriage. Social learning theory believes that during childhood and adolescence, parents are their most important role models. They tend to observe, internalize and imitate their parents’ behavior patterns, and learn how their parents resolve conflicts between them. Therefore, their parents’ love patterns are gradually internalized as their own love patterns. Some theoretical studies also believe that children tend to regard conflicts between their parents as a threat, or think that it is their responsibility. Therefore, when children grow up, they will become highly sensitive and anxious about love relationships, more prone to love conflicts, and use negative methods to deal with them, resulting in low-quality love relationships.

How to find a partner? What kind of partner should you look for? This is also related to your family of origin.

How we find a partner reflects our ability to fall in love and interact with others, and what kind of partner we find is our standard for choosing a spouse. The upbringing style of our original family is actually the soil for how we develop our ability to fall in love and interact with others and form our standards for choosing a spouse.

Psychologist Auslander's research found that when parents are tolerant and accepting of their children, and provide strict guidance and close attention to their children, the children will develop better social skills, behave more maturely in romantic relationships when they grow up, and thus have better romantic relationships.

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Domestic research has also found that when parents show warmth and understanding to their children, the children are less likely to develop empty love for the purpose of emptiness and boredom when they grow up. At the same time, the more mutually supportive and harmonious the family relationship is, the more comprehensive the children's considerations in choosing a spouse will be, and they will comprehensively consider the other party's character, quality, social skills and family environment, rather than just looking at appearance.

Although the influence of one's family of origin on love is profound, it is not irreversible. If one realizes that one has some shortcomings in love, then considering the reasons from the perspective of one's family of origin may give us a more comprehensive and objective perspective, helping us to better overcome these problems, remove the stumbling blocks on the road to love, and have a sweet love that will never break up.

References

[1] Li Yan, Liu Rong. Research on the relationship between family education style, personality traits and college students' love outlook [J]. Education Circle, 2020(05):22-23.

[1]Qiao Qian. The relationship between college students’ family intimacy, family adaptability, love attitudes and mate selection preferences[D]. Henan University, 2016.

[3]Auslander BA, Short MB, Succop PA, et al. Associations between parenting behaviors and adolescent romantic relationships[J]. Journal of Adolescent Health, 2009, 45(1): 98-101.

[4] River LM, O'Reilly Treter M, Rhoades GK, et al. Parent–Child Relationship Quality in the Family of Origin and Later Romantic Relationship Functioning: A Systematic Review[J]. Family process, 2022, 61(1): 259-277.

Produced by: Science Popularization China-Creation Cultivation Program