Читать книгу Enjoy, Comprehend, Love. Entering the Spaces of Conscious Love - Yury Tomin - Страница 17

Sternberg’s theory of love leaves open a key question for many who think about love: if we now know what perfect love is, then why don’t psychologists explain to everyone how to achieve it? Alas, the answer to this question seems to be comparable to solving the mystery of the universe. But there is good news too.

At the beginning of this century, a new direction began to develop in psychology, which was named Positive Psychology. Scientists are seeking to expand our understanding of how people can achieve greater well-being, life satisfaction, and happiness-related relationships with others, including loving ones, by drawing on their inner strengths and developing positive qualities.

Having studied the influence of five main personality traits on the quality of relationships between partners (the level of intimacy and the degree of satisfaction with the relationship), psychologists have found that four of them: extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional resilience have a positive effect on the quality of close relationships. As for such a positive personality trait as openness to experience, synchronization seems to be a difficult task, and it can rather lead to conflicts in relationships.

In addition, the qualities already familiar to us were attributed to the number of the necessary strengths of the individual to achieve perfect love: a high level of self-esteem, emotional intelligence, stable self-identity.

Here, already on a new route, now led by a scientific navigator, we again climbed to the top of mature, conscious, perfect love. Since our ascent is purely theoretical, we, unlike Robinson Crusoe, are not destined to find human tracks here. Let’s look around. But what are these neatly stacked stones? It looks like an ancient temple. We read and, on an inspiration, translate the inscription: “Born in beauty.” Looks like a new riddle of love. And reflecting on this image worthy of great poets, we will set off along the road, which is almost two and a half thousand years long, leading to the repository of Plato’s manuscripts.