One partner is more in love than the other. And more love the loving partner wants from the other, the less the other partner feels like giving. ... the more-in-love partner was in what I term the "one-down position," while the less-in-love partner was in the "one-up position."
One-downs try harder. Feeling insecure and wanting to regain a sense of control, they labor to enhance their "attraction power": wearing most flattering clothes, spending hours at the mirror, thinking up clever things to say, honing culinary skills, spending money freely on gifts, restaurant meals, and romantic diversions - in sum, making yourself as desirable as possible. ... If you prove too appealing to the one you want - to the point where he's clearly more in love with you than you with him - your relationship will fall out of balance. You've become the one-up. Or, if you're frightened by your partner's distance, you become the one-down. And herein was the missing link I sought:
The very urge to attract someone, to bring another person under your emotional control, contains the potential for upsetting the balance of the relationship. And that is because the feeling of being in love is biochemically linked to the feeling of being out of control. Once you feel completely in control or sure of another person's love, your feelings of passion begin to fade. Gone is the challenge, the emotional spark, the excitement.
Of course, we all know that the dizzy, delicious feelings of new love can't last forever. In a balanced relationship, after the initial passion fades, the partners move into a phase of enduring intimacy and warmth. But when one partner falls more deeply in love than the other, it can trigger harmful patterns between them.
"The Passion Paradox: Patterns of Love and Power in Intimate Relationships" by Dean C. Delis, Cassandra Phillips
ReplyDeleteMost people who enter therapy do so because of relationship problems. I'd long marveled at how very difficult it is to find lasting pleasure in love, and how often we find only pain. It seems to make only a perverse kind sense that love, the most joyous human emotion, could also be the most punishing.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first began to question the prevailing approach to relationship problems, I went back to basics. I described for myself in the plainest terms possible what was causing the most trouble in my clients' relationships. I boiled down to this: One partner is more in love than the other. And more love the loving partner wants from the other, the less the other partner feels like giving.
I had described a state of imbalance, in which the more-in-love partner was in what I term the "one-down position," while the less-in-love partner was in the "one-up position." I knwe from experience that both men and women occupied the one-up and one-down positions at various times. So it seemed to me that the contemporary preoccupation with women as victims of male mistreatment was causing us to lose sight of an important fact: that women can be heartbreakers too.
No one - even the "emotionally healthy" person - is exempt from the pain of love when it tips out of balance. The troubled individual may, of course, more frequently wind up in unbalanced relationship, and the healthier person may recover more quickly and learn more from them. But love can go out of kilter for anyone.
One-downs try harder. Feeling insecure and wanting to regain a sense of control, they labor to enhance their "attraction power." The basic rites of courtship are about self-enhancement: wearing your most flattering clothes, spending hours at the mirror, thinking up clever things to say, honing culinary skills, spending money freely on gifts, restaurant meals, and romantic diversions - in sum, making yourself as desirable as possible.
The goal of all this effort is to gain emotional control over a loved one so that we don't have to worry about rejection. That means winning his or her love.
But there is a catch.
If you prove too appealing to the one you want - to the point where he's clearly more in love with you than you with him - your relationship will fall out of balance. You've become the one-up. Or, if you're frightened by your partner's distance, you become the one-down. And herein was the missing link I sought:
The very urge to attract someone, to bring another person under your emotional control, contains the potential for upsetting the balance of the relationship. And that is because the feeling of being in love is biochemically linked to the feeling of being out of control. Once you feel completely in control or sure of another person's love, your feelings of passion begin to fade. Gone is the challenge, the emotional spark, the excitement.
Of course, we all know that the dizzy, delicious feelings of new love can't last forever. In a balanced relationship, after the initial passion fades, the partners move into a phase of enduring intimacy and warmth. But when one partner falls more deeply in love than the other, it can trigger harmful patterns between them.
I was given a freedom to pursuit my happiness.
ReplyDeleteI thought maybe what I missed of happiness was missing of love. but when love came to me, most of the time accompanied with lot of pain, such as feeling of strokes, as if my love is a stone, he wanted me to feel the pain and then toss me some study materials, then from pain to realize the feeling of love again, then I forgot the pursuit of happiness, I went after my love, I want catch him and make him all mine. very greedy.
maybe he sensed my greedy, 2 days ago, I was pronounced dead by his publisher. so I prepared my will and went to SunUno' Rose Garden where once lined up cheery trees without cheery, roses were gone, I, Sunflower could not smell SunUno's perfume, without SunUno's care without his pollinate, his Sunflower lay down her head quietly at her favor southeast corner withering herself.