True love has three elements, and a man who satisfies these three elements can basically be sure that he really loves a woman.
1. Three elements of true love
Psychologist Robert Jeffrey Sternberg concluded that true love is a "three-body problem": you must deal with the relationship between the three, so that you can love for a lifetime. These three elements are passion, intimacy and commitment.
Let's talk about passion first:
Passion is an exciting and strong desire, which urgently needs to be satisfied. Once satisfied, it is climax and heaven. This violent impulse comes from the body, from sex and from our emotional needs.
Many people may mistakenly think that passion is sex, but in fact passion can also be an emotional peak experience. For example, fans are idolized, for example, the male god you admire very much tells you that you will be crazy about it.
Physiologically speaking, when a person falls into the passion of love, the activation area of the brain coincides with the activation area when taking drugs, and your body will secrete dopamine, which is the pleasure hormone. In the ultimate sense, when you are passionate about a person, you are addicted to him.
Psychologically speaking, passion will produce the desire to dream. The so-called "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", when the passion comes, you may even distort the reality and think that the other person is your ideal lover.
Intimacy:
If passion can make people wear the most gorgeous clothes and stage the most beautiful love drama with each other, then intimacy means that you can put down all your defenses and show your most vulnerable places to each other completely defenseless.
How to distinguish passion from intimacy? Give it a hug.
If you and your partner become more excited, then what happens between you is passion; If you hug too much and doze off, then what you have is intimacy. Because intimacy can make people relax and make your heart more and more calm, instead of making people want to be restless like passion.
Physiologically, the essence of intimacy is oxytocin. What is oxytocin? Oxytocin is the most common hormone in women after giving birth. We call it "hug hormone", which is a calming hormone. If there is too much intimacy between you and almost no passion, then you have entered the "love between your left and right hands" of "love without feeling". The so-called saying that love will eventually turn into affection is that we don't know how to keep passion in a long-term relationship.
Commitment:
Many people mistakenly think that "commitment" means vows of eternal love. In fact, the so-called "commitment" in the passion stage is just a bubble of love. Real commitment is maintained by emotional intelligence.
The sense of responsibility that many people talk about actually includes three elements: heart, brain and input. Only when a person is willing to do these three things for you can he say that he is really devoted.
Which of the eight modes of love is yours?
Knowing these three elements, we can combine them into eight love modes, which can cover almost all types of love games.
(1) zero, "three noes, true love: it is the love of passers-by. Two people may have no feelings at all, just to get married and live in partnership.
(2) One-third, including one of the three elements, is the love between mother and baby with only intimate relationship. This kind of love is actually "protective love", and it is only one-sided intimacy with each other, not all intimacy. For example, babies and mothers are extremely close, but babies can't give their mothers the intimacy of adults, and mothers can't get the warmth of adults from babies. This relationship is often a "virgin-giant baby" pairing relationship, and there is often no sexual life.
Secondly, there is only passionate bubble love. For example, someone talks about six girlfriends a year and changes one every two months on average. After more than two months, they got bored. He wants to keep himself in a state of high excitement. His girlfriend is like chewing gum to him. Once he feels tasteless, he will vomit. In fact, it is not that feelings have lost their flavor, but that he has no ability to explore the beauty of long-term relationships, so he can only live in a short-term love fantasy.
Then there is the promised love for the machine. For example, a girl lover's boyfriend was dumped for eight years, and she no longer believed in love, so she married a man whose parents took a fancy to her. This man is loyal and has good conditions, but her heart is like a stagnant pool. In this way, she lives like a robot without any emotion. Marriage is just a tree hole in her emotional hibernation.
(3) Take two out of three, love contains two elements. The first is intimate and passionate romantic love, also called "adolescent love". For example, we often say "summer romance". Nobody wants to live forever, just for fun. Practice loving each other.
Then there is the idiot love of passion and commitment, also called "impulsive love". For example, after a one-night stand, some people find that they are pregnant with children. The woman asks her son to get married, and the man wants to be responsible, so he gets married in a hurry, but in fact he doesn't know each other at all. The result can be imagined.
Then there is intimate and committed partner love, also called "brother and sister love". I have a friend, and this is his relationship with his wife. They can talk about everything all night, but he is not interested in his wife. It was not until he was 40 years old that he finally found out that he was actually gay.
It is passion+intimacy+commitment, which we call true love. Because we can solve the problem of "seeking common ground while reserving differences", our love can reach the vulnerable layer directly, and we can "be vulnerable together!" , can realize the needs of the true self, can repair the past wounds together, and can become a more complete self. Such love requires lasting skill and deep intimacy.
For example:
A couple, they have a tacit understanding, that is, when either party loses his temper, the other party will * * * love the other party until the other party's emotions are "unloaded" and then speak his mind. Therefore, they will never quarrel, and they can always make their words very clean, without leaving any resentment stubs. When they are emotionally stable, they will make a comeback together and try to seek each other's understanding. The angry party will thank the listening party for their patience.
How did they do it? They said that they often quarreled when they started dating, but they were determined to find a solution, so they agreed on this rule. It was really difficult at first, because it was difficult for us to capture each other's emotions. We often want to defend ourselves, pass the buck and vent. But they persisted and finally learned to tolerate each other's "moments of collapse", and this habit has become a magic weapon to keep their feelings fresh for life.
Summarize the three elements of love: passion, intimacy and commitment. As long as one of these three elements is missing, it is immature love. Knowing these concepts, you can identify what kind of emotional mode your lover is. As long as you let TA talk about her thoughts on marriage and feelings, you can instantly judge whether TA has a mature emotional view.