Most people want to maintain a romantic relationship with their spouse. However, many married couples find it difficult to maintain a romantic relationship as time passes. This phenomenon is only natural and it happens since the psychology of marriage and that of dating are different. It is difficult to maintain a romantic relationship with your spouse unless you understand the change of psychology after marriage no matter how hard you try.
First, you must understand the difference between the psychology of marriage and the psychology of dating. The psychology of an individual operates when you are in a dating relationship. The man gets immersed into positive moods being with the woman and generates passion toward the woman. The woman perceives the man's passion as positive feelings and begin to feel love toward the man. The man's passion and the woman's love developed toward the partner are considered important in a dating relationship. As they continue to get immersed into passion and love, they develop the desire to live with the partner and they get married.
When a couple get married, the psychology of a person in relationships rather than that of an individual operates and they pursue being happy together. Then, happiness of family becomes more important than happiness of individuals both for the husband and the wife. The man who used to focus on getting immersed into his own positive moods and passion toward the woman transfers to focusing on his passion of pursuing values and future happiness together as a family. Also, the woman who used to focus on getting immersed into feelings of love toward the man transfers to focusing on her love of pursuing meanings and present happiness together as a family.
In some couples, the husband may pursue meanings and the wife may pursue values. In any case, the wife and the husband pursue meanings and values to achieve happiness as a couple and a family. An individual's happiness can be achieved when a man has passion and a woman has love. On the other hand, the happiness of a person in relationships can be achieved when they pursue self-actualization with meanings and values of life to be happy together.
As time passes after marriage, the husband feels less and less passion toward the wife and the wife less and less love toward the husband. This phenomenon is referred to as the state of ennui and considered as a negative phenomenon by many people. However, it actually results from the husband's and the wife's mind operating for being happy together rather than being happy as an individual. They may not recognize as much passion and love as before, but it actually indicates that they have formed love and happiness as a married couple in their unconsciousness.
As described above, the psychology of marriage and that of dating are completely different. Then, what can you do to live as a married couple but still maintain a romantic relationship? It is possible when you pursue self-actualization with meanings and values as a married couple and, at the same time, the husband generates passion toward the wife and the wife generates love toward the husband. To be able to do all of them, the husband and the wife must exist as a man and a woman respectively when they are only by themselves excluding all other relationships.
The husband, as a man rather than a husband and father, should be able to generate positive moods looking at the wife being happy as a woman. The wife should try to be happy and feel love as a woman rather than as a wife and mother. You can remind yourself of and bring back your speech, actions, and facial expressions of the days when you were dating, which may be difficult if you had been married for a long time and forgotten all about those days. You must try to spend some time only for yourselves without being disturbed by other people or daily matters. You must focus on each other and positive emotions you two can share, and must not think or talk about children, family matters, or economic problems.
When you are just by yourselves, conversation becomes very important. You may remember that you couldn't stop talking with each other all day when you were in a dating relationship. Then, you would still continue talking on the phone even after you went back home after a date. When you engage yourself in conversations in a romantic relationship, topics of conversations must be you and your partner instead of other life matters in marriage or family relationships. Topics don't have to be limited to only positive ones but should be limited to you and your partner as individuals. You may want to set a certain time of the week or the day to spend time only to yourselves or you may want to be spontaneous. It may feel awkward or uncomfortable at first, but couples usually try hard to become individuals as they continue. Then, the husband begins to feel passion toward the wife and the wife begins to feel love toward the husband.
Next, the psychology of sex naturally begins to be activated between the husband and the wife. It is only natural that the psychology of sex fades away as men's passion and women's love transfer to the pursuit of values and meanings after marriage. When you deliberately try to restore the psychology of sex itself in a married couple by adopting direct and practical methods, you may experience temporary restoration of a sexual relationship, but you cannot restore passion and love. This is a distorted course of action to take and may cause all kinds of problems such as reinforcing sex only as obligation or meaningless routine or becoming overly conscious or compulsive about sex.
This concept is easy to understand when you compare the situation with a dating relationship. You didn't aim for having sex itself when you were dating, but you felt passion and love first and sex just naturally followed reinforcing passion and love. When you have lost passion and love in a marriage relationship, you must restore passion and love first before you restore the sexual relationship. When you restore passion and love as a man and a woman, a sexual relationship will naturally follow. It is a pity that many experts recommend married couples in the state of ennui or with sexual issues should restore sexual actions first. It is the same as encouraging people to have sex without passion and love and it may lead to the destruction instead of the restoration of couples and families.
You must understand the underlying mechanism of visible phenomena and address the fundamental cause of problems. It is natural and right that your psychology changes when you marry from the psychology of an individual to that of a person in relationships. Forgetting individual happiness means that you have focused on being happy together as a couple and a family. Now, you can restore individual happiness and still keep happiness as a couple and a family by understanding the operational mechanism of human mind and psychology. You can live a life you have dreamed of by existing both as an individual and as a person in relationships. You can live in both a marriage relationship and a romantic relationship simultaneously. You can not only generate passion and love but also pursue self-actualization with meanings and values of life to be happy together.
No comments:
Post a Comment