Relationships: Take the time to take stock with each other
updated the Saturday, October 24, 2015Virginia Meggle, psychoanalyst and author of The Painful Separations: Heal Our Emotional Dependency (Eyrolles ed.) explains how to stay on course when doubt sets between the couple.
LOVING THE OTHER LESS, IS IT INEVITABLE?
Virginia Meggle: The question is when there is an empty feeling when the desire or arousal at the mere mention of the beloved creates less response. The romantic encounter is the meeting of two unconscious, hoping to repair a narcissistic fault or fill a gap (the affection of a mother, for example). In love, there is always a desire to repair and have a better idea of each other. But the other cannot meet this demand, or fantasy, besides being himself confronted with this problem. Sooner or later, there will be disappointment, which some translate as ‘loving less’. Jacques Lacan once said, “Love is to give what one does not have to someone who does not want it.” In this ‘lesser’ love, there is sometimes simply the passage of the lightning strike to true love, the return of calm, or the reinvestment other interests. Finally, do you want less? It is not enough to have a difference between sex and feelings. You can love one person but want someone else.
WHAT SHARE OF NARCISSISM, IN LOVE?
We love in the eyes of the other. We seek in this regard, because it feels good. But it is the difference between love and passion, one being a feeling that grows with time, based on the concept of sharing, and the other being the blindness, and a merger destruction. Lacan also spoke of “hainamoration” to evoke the ambivalence of feeling, the love of narcissism which aims to find the other part of oneself, hence hatred when the difference in the other becomes unbearable.
HOW TO STAY ON TRACK WITH YOUR SPOUSE?
You must question what drives the life of the relationship, what you like in each other, what you are willing to do to keep the flame alive. There is much talk of over-investment in a couple of too high expectations. Yet it is given little time. Often the quality time between the couple happens after work and fulfilling hobbies. Take stock from time to time with your husband, because it is necessary before it is too late.
Valerie Rodrigue and Nur Syazana H.
