Love yourself and love your partner
Valentine’s Day is the time of the year when we take the time to celebrate love and the people who are meaningful to us. Love, which could be defined as a field of resonating, often fluctuate and sometimes synchronous energy.
Love is one of the most profound emotions known to human beings. There are many kinds of love, but most people seek its expression in a romantic relationship with a compatible partner. For many, romantic relationships comprise the most meaningful aspect of life, providing a source of deep fulfillment. The need for human connection appears to be innate, but the ability to form healthy and loving relationships is learned.
A great deal of evidence suggests that the ability to form a stable relationship begins in infancy, in a child’s earliest experiences with a caregiver who reliably meets the infant’s needs for food, care, warmth, protection, stimulation and social contact. Such relationships are not destiny, but they appear to establish deeply ingrained patterns of relating to others. Failed relationships happen for many reasons, and the failure of a relationship is often a source of great psychological anguish. Most people have to work consciously to master the necessary skills to make relationships endure.
Finding a partner with whom to share a life is a wonderful, but sometimes is a difficult process. The desire to do so may push people into unfamiliar settings to encounter potential partners. Dating or setting up meetings in advance is a process by which people spend time with another person in order to gradually determine whether the person is suitable as a potential mate. Determining whether a connection reflects temporary infatuation or true love can sometimes be challenging. The research suggests that there are revealing clues in behavior. One possibly counterintuitive indicator is sense of oneself.
On the one hand, a good partner can push people to discover new activities or beliefs that expand their self-concept. On the other hand is stress, repeatedly interacting with someone whose impression matters deeply can arouse anxiety. Other indicators include being highly motivated to see the person and giving a significant amount of time, emotion and energy into the budding relationship.
Strong relationships are continually nurtured with care and communication. Although relationships can take many forms, certain traits have been shown to be especially important for healthy relationships. Both individuals should feel confident that their partner is willing to devote time and attention to the other, and they are also committed to accommodating the differences and challenges.
In the 21at century, good relationships are generally marked by a sense of fairness in the distribution of the chores of maintaining a household. Partners also feel gratefulfor each other, openly provide and receive affection and engage in honest discussions about sex. In good relationships, partners always afford their partner the benefit of the doubt, which creates a sense of being on the same team in life, a feeling that can help couples overcome many difficulties.
Early in life, our first experience of love is through the warmth, nurturance and affection were received through the contact and touch from our mothers, fathers or another primary caregiver. During our infancy and childhood, warm, nurturing and affectionate behaviors from our parents provide us with the capacity to form intimate, emotional bonds or relationships, called attachments, which shape how we establish contact with others throughout our lives.
Affectionate behaviors like touching, holding, kissing or hugging help to provide us with a sense of loving safety, and trigger the limbic system to release vasopressin, which helps us to form bonds, and oxytocin.
Humans are not the only ones who are affectionate toward one another for the purposes of love and forming bonds. Tenderness can be seen among other mammals that establish contact with one another and display affectionate behaviors, like nuzzling in horses or kissing and hugging in chimpanzees.
Hormone combats stress, promotes feelings of closeness with others and helps to soothe us. The relation during infancy is not only important for our survival, but also provides us with the safety, comfort and security we need. When we are stressed or in danger, it will protect our physical and psychological well-being.
Psychologist’s suggestions
1: Generosity — Being helpful and considerate in small and large ways, doing our fair share of chores, stepping in to allow our partner to take a break.
2: Positivity — Focusing on and communicating about our partner’s positive qualities. Showing appreciation and affection on a regular basis.
3: Attachment — Allowing our partners to turn to us and depend on us when they are vulnerable; providing a secure emotional base and reassurance of worth.
4: Expansion — Helping our partners to expand their worlds by engaging in novel and challenging activities together and bringing in our own passion for life.
About the Psychologist
Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist, and an expert on Mindfulness, Attachment & Relationships with expertise in the Gottman approach and Emotion-Focused Therapy for couples. Dr. Greenberg provides workshops and speaking on weight loss and career coaching, and psychotherapy for individuals and couples in nonprofits.
