YOUR MARITAL HEALTH/LOVE LIE: “THERE IS ONE LOVE-MATCH PARTNER FOR EVERYONE, A ONE AND ONLY. “
I think my one and only, the person for me, must have relocated to the tundra region of Russia. He sure doesn’t seem to be housed anywhere around here.
WIFE
Monotropy, bonding with one person at a time, requires an enormous amount of emotional and even physical energy, especially because we can feel several emotions at one time while we are doing this bonding. If we add to this problem the myth that we must also search for the singular right person meant for us, we overstress the entire love system. The “one and only” concept is a myth that limits loving.
It is possible to live with and love almost anybody. I have said that love is volitional, not just emotional. It is inextricably tied to sex, and we have sexual attraction for many people. Love is something you do, and you can do it with an infinite number of people. As one wife stated, “So many men, so little time.”
Persons struggling with bonding are often limited because of their uncompromising stance regarding a partner. One of the rules of super marital sex mentioned earlier is that super marriages depend much more on being the right partner than on finding the right partner. Efforts to look for Mr. or Ms. Right will always fail, for it is your reputation with yourself that matters. Would you fall in love with you? That is the key question, and it puzzles many of my patients. We are more used to looking “for” than looking “in,” looking for lovers instead of discovering our own loving.
“Would I fall in love with me?” responded the wife. “Are you kidding? I have taste.”
It is true, as Martin Buber stated, that love is when we “happen to one another,” but we do not have to happen to one particular person pre-assigned to us by some universal dating service. We cannot happen to or with one another until we happen to ourselves. Susan Campbell, in her book The Couple’s Journey, a study of 150 couples, writes about “co-creative” relationships. Just as we can recreate and procreate with a large number of potential partners, we can also co-create with a large range of possible lovers if we look to how we choose to be, how we “happen” with someone, rather than spend our time looking for someone to “happen” to us.
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Tags: General health