Content
How not to confuse love with affection
26.01.2023 19:28
Updated: 13.04.2023 16:34
Love and affection - how similar they are. These concepts are often confused, although there are plenty of differences in them.
Guzel Safina, psychologist, mentor of sales and personal brand experts, told how to distinguish love from attachment.
Love
It is impossible to give a clear definition to this great bright feeling. Everyone understands something different under it. But it still has common features that are unchangeable.
- Love is based on common interests, goals, aspirations and strong sympathy between people. There is no place for too bright feelings, relationships are built calmly, based on mutual respect.
- It involves physical attraction, when a partner attracts you on a “chemical” level, sexually entices you.
- Communication even without words. With a loved one, there is always a topic for conversation, and it is also pleasant to just be silent with him: silence in this case does not depress, but calms.
- You trust each other and are not afraid of being betrayed or deceived.
- The desire to make each other happy is one of the most striking signs of love.
- Accepting your partner as he or she is, without trying to change them to suit your needs.
- Joint plans for the future. They are built in love.
- Love can last a long time, sometimes a lifetime.
- Partners in love are good both together and apart. They do not strive to stick to each other, but live their full lives.
Very often, one of the signs of true love is called loyalty. Despite the freedom of views that is popularized in our time, this postulate remains unshakable: when you love, you cannot betray.
Love will stand the test of money, illness, personal problems. People who truly love each other will only become more convinced of their choice after them.
Attachment
It is also called infatuation, when a flurry of emotions is essentially not supported by anything. Therefore, the outcome of attachment is not always positive. Instead of the constructiveness that is characteristic of love, it often entails total emotional destruction of both the person and his partner.
- Painful swings. Instead of positive emotions, partners “gift” each other with jealousy, manipulation and conflicts. They are feverish from crazy happiness and unbearable pain.
- Egoism. Partners pull the blanket over themselves and care only about their own comfort.
- Total control. There is no place for trust in attachment. But there is a pathological desire to possess the partner by 200%.
- Fear of loss. Painful relationships are based on the fear of losing a partner and being left with nothing. This creates a dependence on each other that is very difficult to overcome.
- Partners do not feel happy because they are in total tension: what if he leaves, cheats, deceives.
- Completely ignoring the partner’s shortcomings at the beginning of communication and trying to remake him to suit yourself in the relationship.
- It is difficult for partners to be apart: it is important for them to constantly control each other, thereby cutting off the “oxygen”.
- Attachment does not provide resources: it exhausts and creates a feeling of emptiness.
It is extremely difficult to get out of such relationships: the “lovers” pull each other’s strings and do not allow each other to go their own way. Therefore, it is very often impossible to break off such communication by willpower alone. The help of a psychologist will be required.
