The Secret of Happy Parents: How to Stay in Love as a Couple and True to Yourself. Steve Biddulph

Чтение книги онлайн.

       2 Compatibility: The Ways We Connect

      Three Kinds of Attraction: Liking, Loving and Lust

      The family cycle begins, naturally enough, with ‘boy meets girl’. It’s the attraction of opposites that sparks the explosion that kicks along the whole wheel of life. But attraction is a complicated thing. It has many levels to it, and understanding these levels is vital to a happy love life.

      Not everyone gets together in the same way. For instance, some couples are first attracted at the mind level – liking the other person’s ideas, finding him or her funny, interesting, stimulating. Other couples may find that they connect initially from the heart level; that warm affection and loving feelings arise easily between them. And of course many couples begin with an obvious sexual attraction, that tantalizing tingling excitement that is pure lust! To complicate it more, the way you feel about the other person is not always mirror-reflected – you can lust after someone who only likes you, or love someone who is only capable of lust, and so on. It can be tricky, especially when you are young and inexperienced (or, for that matter, old and stupid).

      Levels of attraction are especially important to be aware of in the early stages of finding and choosing a partner. It’s important, especially for teenagers, to distinguish these three levels of need and, in handling personal relationships, to be honest with yourself about which is what. Knowing yourself well enough to tell love from lust, liking from loving, is the real sex education and can help avoid countless problems.

      It’s tough being young, and some lessons can only be learned by experience. Remember in your youth, finally getting up the courage to declare your love to the girl (or boy) of your dreams? Having had some friendliness from them in the past, there seems every reason to hope … and so you finally take the plunge and pour out your heart! To your horror, they look alarmed and utter those fateful words: ‘Oh no … oh wow … look … I really like you, but …’ It’s lucky that hope springs eternal, or we’d all be celibate!

      Whatever kind of attraction you start with, a developing couple partnership will usually grow to involve all three. When liking, loving and lusting are present in symphony, then the effect is unforgettable. Since this often happens more by accident in the early years, you will sometimes be left gasping, wondering what you did right! As you get older, you will have to be your own fairy godmother. You will learn more about how to achieve the sustained and deeper communication, so that your love isn’t a lucky accident, but an achievement, a deepening well of experiences shared and lessons learned, that you can draw on at any time.

      Now let’s explore how the three levels of attraction work, and then what to do when they stop working. Even if you’ve been married for fifty years, you’ll enjoy reading this part, to reminisce and understand the journey you have already made. If you’re a little younger than that, it might even help you to power your love-life along!

      Liking: a meeting of minds

      Liking is the safest, easiest kind of human attraction. You can like all kinds and all ages and sexes of people – you can even like people you don’t approve of, or would never buy a used car from. Often you will like some things about a person, and dislike other parts of them. (If you like everything about someone, stick around; something you won’t like is bound to show up.)

      As you get more involved with a person, either as a friend or as a lover, then you might ask them to change behaviour you don’t like. Relationships involve changing ourselves all the time. It’s no big deal: if you are giving your lover a back rub, you might do it vigorously, because that’s what you enjoy. They explain they like a gentler massage, and so you change. If you live together, you might like to make the kitchen spotlessly clean and tidy after every meal. They might prefer to leave the dishes for a big once-a-week cleanup. Committed partners sometimes make big requests of their partner: to give up drinking or smoking or living a life of crime, for instance! Our partners may change, or they may not. We are all aiming to get more of what we like, and less of what we don’t.