Lasting love begins when falling in love breaks

When do you stop being in love? When do we go from talking about love to talking about falling in love? The key to understanding lasting love is in the transition and not in the change, in this way we can understand how many loves survive when idealization is broken and others do not.

Let’s think that falling in love does not end and love begins, but rather it is a path from one to the other. Falling in love is plagued by idealization, we do not see the other as they really are, but rather we project all our illusions and our desires onto the other person, everything we want in the other is captured in that passion.

When we really begin to see the other with their faults and flaws, when we have that “shock” of reality and we accept those differences and come to love them, that is when we can really talk about love. We can then find and understand lasting love if we can see the transition and adjustment to circumstances over time. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it has to be real and respond to the demands of each moment so that it remains over time.

Stenberg’s theory of love

Stenberg established what is now known as the triangular theory of love. This author tells us about love as a feeling that would be based on three basic pillars:

Privacy: understood as the closeness between two people, getting to know each other and discovering each other. Allowing themselves to have the confidence to bare their souls.Passion: as a feeling of desire and physiological activation.Commitment: decision made between the two to remain united over time.

Lasting and complete love would then occur if you have the three components in equal parts.although there are stages in which intimacy, passion or commitment acquire greater weight as the “glue” of the couple.

For Stenberg, lasting and complete love would be easy to find, but difficult to maintain.. Now looking at the three pillars, depending on which of them stands out we will have different types of love. For example:

Liking: here only intimacy would be present. There would be closeness and understanding.Fall in love: This feeling would mark passion. There is physical and sexual attraction. It is very fast, but it also decreases at high speed.empty love: the commitment would remain. A decision was made to stay together and we remain that way because of that promise.Romantic love: here we would find passion and intimacy. Commitment would be left out of this type of love.Companion love: Intimacy and commitment mark this model. It could be understood as a committed long-term friendship.fatuous love: understood as the union of passion and commitment but without intimacy. They do not know each other in depth and it is difficult for them to remain over time.

Understanding these types of love we can understand much better that this feeling is dynamic and changing. Thus, you can go from one type to another as the stages occur or one of the basic pillars that we previously identified stand out.

Is it healthy to always be in love?

Many describe the stage of falling in love as a delusional stage because during this period there is usually a considerable distance between what is and what we perceive. We idealize the other person and it costs us a world to be objective, which is why this would not be real love. Loving someone involves knowing them completely, knowing what we like about the other and what we don’t and even then making the decision to want to stay by their side.

When we fall in love our brain releases substances called serotonin and dopamine. Its release generates a feeling of pleasure and happiness in us and makes us “addicted” to that other person, since it generates euphoria and well-being. But this torrent of emotions decreases over time and gives way to new, more rational and in some cases less intense emotions. Our brain, being in love, gets carried away by the passion and happiness of the moment, almost like animals.

When our brain loves, it also does so with its rational part, valuing and making decisions and choosing the other person from a more mature and more human point of view. Let’s fall in love every day, but above all let’s learn to love every second once the inertia of the falling in love stage has been broken. Thus, lasting love involves certain sacrifices that at first escape us and demands an effort that at the beginning did not cost us. It is we who have to decide if it is worth it or not.

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