Читать книгу The Secret of Happy Parents: How to Stay in Love as a Couple and True to Yourself - Steve Biddulph - Страница 26

Liking usually comes first, but loving can soon follow, and everyone over the age of ten knows that this is a different and more powerful emotion. It’s the feeling that says ‘special’. Limited edition. Limit one per customer.

Love requires a certain kind of openness and trust, a willingness to be vulnerable. Listen in on this conversation between a couple in their thirties, just beginning a relationship, and tentatively beginning to risk being open:

She:	I’ve been missing you. You haven’t called all week!
He:	I wanted to call. After last time, I didn’t think you wanted to see me!
She:	But I thought you knew how much I felt for you.
He:	Well … you get so critical and cold sometimes.
She:	I … I just don’t like to feel controlled, that’s all.
He:	I don’t want to control you.
She:	I know you don’t, it’s just, well, I’m anxious about being too close to a man again, I don’t seem to choose men well.
He:	Thanks very much!
She:	Oh, you know what I mean!

Notice how misunderstanding and hurt can easily arise. Yet only by being honest by saying those risky things like ‘I wanted to call’ and ‘I thought you knew how much I felt for you’ can we allow love to grow.

Loving is complex because it carries the baggage and expectations from earlier love experiences, including those from childhood. In men this might include feelings about mothers who were or were not there for us. In women it will tap into memories of fathers who were kind, or mean, attentive, or absent. You might feel a strong attraction to someone who is actually a bastard, because bastards were the people who loved you when you were a child. (More of this later, we’re trying to stay positive here.)

Also strength of love does not always mean the same as depth. You can fall passionately in love with the idea of a person, when they are actually quite different. Tricky.

Love can be expressed in words, but it is not about words. The human heart aches, it sings and it soars, but it doesn’t talk much! Loving actually causes alarm in some people because it is part of a domain that is unfamiliar – the domain of emotion. Don’t panic – feelings are simple!

With increasing honesty as you voice your feelings, a couple can begin to understand and clear up the obstacles to closeness one by one. Love grows through the vulnerability you show, as well as the strength of feelings you admit to. Your real self comes out more and more – and guess what? They still like you! You begin to feel that you can say anything, discuss anything, be completely yourself. It’s a great feeling. (Though there’s always something new, dark and murky arising from deep down, to make you start all over again.)

The good news is that love between two people may take decades to reach its fullest peak, so you have plenty to look forward to.

So in a growing relationship, men and women find attraction growing from head to head, and also from heart to heart. But there’s another level too, so let’s rock on down to the basement.