The most loving phrase you can say to your partner

Hello friends!

What do you think might be the most loving phrase to say in love? Is it “I love you”? Or perhaps public declarations of affection, romantic sacrifices or love letters that, in the opinion of the greatest Portuguese-speaking poet (perhaps of all languages), Fernando Pessoa, are ridiculous? Well, before we get to the opinion of an expert on relationship problems, let’s talk about the inherent difficulty: the difficulty of understanding that the other person is another person, that is, has your individuality.

The worst thing that happens in a relationship is projecting what you want onto what the other person wants. In other words, a confusion of one’s own desire with the desire of the other is created. With that, expectations are frustrated, because what would seem obvious – receiving this or that, receiving this or that way, be it affection, a letter, a gift, attention – does not happen as expected.

That is, one does not realize that the other person is not identical, not equal to who we are. Values ​​are different, feelings are different, the way to react is different and so on. In the romantic idea of ​​a union, it is normal to confuse things and think in terms of a merger in which the other person is transformed in such a way that he could be a mirror or else be part of a paradise in which all desires are fulfilled, perhaps even before they were formulated.

Well, the clash between fantasy and reality usually doesn’t take long and the famous cycle of love and hate is created. Love for pleasant and pleasant moments and hatred for what does not fit the ideal – unconscious or not – of what it should be, what the other person should think, do, feel, give.

The most loving phrase you can say to your partner

I read this idea in an article in English and would like to share it with you. According to Steven Stosny, the most loving phrase you can say to your partner is, “Teach me how to love you and I’ll teach you how to love myself.”

I found this idea curious and that’s why I thought of writing this text for three reasons: first, the sentence already presupposes that, in a relationship, there is no final, ultimate, universal knowledge on how to deal with the other. Second, it also presupposes not-knowing in love and, implicitly, the idea that because people are different, time and space should be given to get to know each other in a new relationship. And, third, in a relationship you need to create dialogue: say what you like and what you don’t like.

According to Stosny, this phrase alone can make any relationship improve and improve a lot. For him, couples should ask: “How can I make you feel loved?”

In some cases, we know that the direct question could be a little embarrassing or perhaps, instead of generating a frank and direct answer, it could cause discomfort or even silence. Therefore, as an alternative, we can raise another idea, without asking directly.

How was the beginning of the relationship?

Neuroscientists say that passion hormones last an average of two years. After this period, couples stop feeling in love (butterflies in the stomach as they say in English) to build a relationship of companionship, complicity and love. That is, there is less passion, but more closeness, greater knowledge of each other.

The alternative idea, rather than asking “How can I make you feel loved?” it would be to sit and think about the first few moments of the relationship. What did the other person like to receive, hear, feel?

It could be, for example, an activity like going out dancing or going to the movies. It could be a special affection like sending flowers or writing a nice letter. Anyway, each couple will have their rhythm, their music, their individuality.

If the memory is brought up, something very interesting often happens: the feeling of the time, the beginning, the first impressions is revived.

Not only do men end up not “trying to conquer”, but women do too. After the first period, and even more so when there is a public commitment like marriage, the impression that each one has is that it is no longer necessary to conquer. Many still come to believe that nothing else is needed for the relationship to continue. So it is related, but badly.

Conclusion

Stosny’s idea that the most loving phrase you can say to your partner is “Teach me how to love you and I’ll teach you how to love myself” by Stosny gives food for thought. Her basic assumption is that in love there is no foreknowledge.

For people forget that there is individuality. That each person with whom we can create a relationship is unique, is individual. Literally and etymologically, individual comes from what is not divided, what is not repeated, what is unrepeatable. If it doesn’t repeat itself, if there’s no one like it (to be loved) it’s not possible to transpose rules from one relationship to the next, from a self-help book once and for all.

It is in this sense that Stosny’s phrase makes sense. It is necessary to learn to love, to understand that if for one person to feel loved it is necessary to say “I love you” every morning to another person, this will be unimportant and he will be able to feel much more loved or loved with gestures, with “sacrifices”, with little treats or gifts.

Perhaps, as Fernando Pessoa would say, all love letters are ridiculous. Perhaps writing texts about love is also a little ridiculous. Ridiculous because in love there are no universal rules and we always have the feeling of incompleteness.

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