David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Love, Marriage, and the Illusion of Certainty
By Steven Stosny, Psychology Today
March 2, 2009
If you want to love big, you have to think small.
If you're like most people, you rode into married life on powerful waves of affection and intimacy that crashed occasionally into self-doubt and apprehension, only to rise again, stronger than ever. In other words, you believed that you married for love. That was the easy part.
Lots of research shows that love is more effective at bringing us together than keeping us together. You may have heard the saying, "Love is easy; relationships are hard." The truth is relationships are hard because love is easy. Strong feelings and sensations of any kind carry an illusion of certainty. With the exception of resentment, no emotional experience has more illusion of certainty than love. The need to feel certain is at least part of the reason why we come to resent the most the people we love the most.
Strong feelings and sensations of any kind also tend to block out those of other people. When you have a terrible headache, it's hard to recognize that someone else has a backache. If you're resentful, you cannot appreciate the vulnerabilities of others. If you feel excited or euphoric, you are less likely to notice the homeless sleeping on the street. Love makes us less sensitive to the subtleties of our loved ones' emotional worlds in the rush to project our own onto them.
Half the Story: Your Partner Changed into Someone You Like Less
When the intensity of love wanes, we stop projecting and begin to see some things in our lovers we don't like. It's not so much that we don't like who they really are, it's just that it had seemed, in love's illusion of certainty, that they were everything we really liked. This disillusionment is what couples fight about in the second year of marriage, although they think they're fighting about money, sex, jealousy, in-laws, housekeeping, or something stupid. Most of the arguments that couples have in the second year of marriage take the following form:
Falling in love made each of you a better person. You became more appreciative, caring, loving, compassionate, and tolerant. Those qualities - not your partner - made you feel lovable and gave you a false sense of confidence that you knew how to make intimate relationships work. Your partner didn't make you a better person and then selfishly changed; your appreciation, care, tolerance, and compassion made you a better, more loving person.
When the intensity of love wears off, caring, appreciation, tolerance, and compassion tend to fade with it. As a result, you no longer feel lovable and adequate as an intimate partner. If you blame these core hurts - inadequate and unlovable - on your spouse (or your childhood), your marriage will fail, if not become abusive - all abuse is failure of compassion.
When you feel inadequate or unlovable, as we all do occasionally, blaming your spouse (or childhood) can only make it worse. The only way to make it better is to do something that will make you feel lovable.
What Makes a Person Lovable?
Take a moment to think of the qualities that make a person lovable - an adult that is; children are lovable just because they're cute.
I'll bet you didn't think of things like resentment, getting your own way, or having to be right. You most likely thought of appreciation, care, tolerance, and compassion. If you want to feel lovable and adequate, you have to return to the appreciative, caring, tolerant, and compassionate person you were, only this time in small, sustainable doses.
If You Want to Love Big, You have to Think Small
Large waves of love and romance are nice, but all waves of strong feeling, with their inherent illusion of certainty, must crash into reality.
Everyday sensitivity to our partners' vulnerabilities and strengths, in a steady trickle of small attitudes of appreciation, care, tolerance, and compassion, will cut through the illusion of certainty that blinds us to the real value of human relationship.
By Steven Stosny, Psychology Today
March 2, 2009
If you want to love big, you have to think small.
If you're like most people, you rode into married life on powerful waves of affection and intimacy that crashed occasionally into self-doubt and apprehension, only to rise again, stronger than ever. In other words, you believed that you married for love. That was the easy part.
Lots of research shows that love is more effective at bringing us together than keeping us together. You may have heard the saying, "Love is easy; relationships are hard." The truth is relationships are hard because love is easy. Strong feelings and sensations of any kind carry an illusion of certainty. With the exception of resentment, no emotional experience has more illusion of certainty than love. The need to feel certain is at least part of the reason why we come to resent the most the people we love the most.
Strong feelings and sensations of any kind also tend to block out those of other people. When you have a terrible headache, it's hard to recognize that someone else has a backache. If you're resentful, you cannot appreciate the vulnerabilities of others. If you feel excited or euphoric, you are less likely to notice the homeless sleeping on the street. Love makes us less sensitive to the subtleties of our loved ones' emotional worlds in the rush to project our own onto them.
Half the Story: Your Partner Changed into Someone You Like Less
When the intensity of love wanes, we stop projecting and begin to see some things in our lovers we don't like. It's not so much that we don't like who they really are, it's just that it had seemed, in love's illusion of certainty, that they were everything we really liked. This disillusionment is what couples fight about in the second year of marriage, although they think they're fighting about money, sex, jealousy, in-laws, housekeeping, or something stupid. Most of the arguments that couples have in the second year of marriage take the following form:
- "Why can't you be what I want?"
- "You made me feel that I was what you wanted. So you have to be what I want now!"
Falling in love made each of you a better person. You became more appreciative, caring, loving, compassionate, and tolerant. Those qualities - not your partner - made you feel lovable and gave you a false sense of confidence that you knew how to make intimate relationships work. Your partner didn't make you a better person and then selfishly changed; your appreciation, care, tolerance, and compassion made you a better, more loving person.
When the intensity of love wears off, caring, appreciation, tolerance, and compassion tend to fade with it. As a result, you no longer feel lovable and adequate as an intimate partner. If you blame these core hurts - inadequate and unlovable - on your spouse (or your childhood), your marriage will fail, if not become abusive - all abuse is failure of compassion.
When you feel inadequate or unlovable, as we all do occasionally, blaming your spouse (or childhood) can only make it worse. The only way to make it better is to do something that will make you feel lovable.
What Makes a Person Lovable?
Take a moment to think of the qualities that make a person lovable - an adult that is; children are lovable just because they're cute.
I'll bet you didn't think of things like resentment, getting your own way, or having to be right. You most likely thought of appreciation, care, tolerance, and compassion. If you want to feel lovable and adequate, you have to return to the appreciative, caring, tolerant, and compassionate person you were, only this time in small, sustainable doses.
If You Want to Love Big, You have to Think Small
Large waves of love and romance are nice, but all waves of strong feeling, with their inherent illusion of certainty, must crash into reality.
Everyday sensitivity to our partners' vulnerabilities and strengths, in a steady trickle of small attitudes of appreciation, care, tolerance, and compassion, will cut through the illusion of certainty that blinds us to the real value of human relationship.
