When Affection Ends

When Affection Ends

Harlan Jacobsen, copyright Š2003

Marriage and love relationships used to be primarily functional.

Today they are "primarily" affectional.

You used to love one another because you needed each other to survive, and now you need each other only because you love each other.

When the"love ends" the
reason for the relationship and the relationship itself usually ends.

You must learn that "affectional" love and individuals both have their limitations.

In the past you needed a marriage partner "to survive.

One was the provider, the other took care of the inevitable children, cooked, washed, mended and maintained clothing, maintained the household, canned, tended the garden and the chickens.
Both can now "survive" on their own just fine, thank you.
Therefore , now when one or the other concludes that the relationship is no longer affectional, the reason for the relationship and the relationship comes apart.

Psychology Today, reports in a recent survey that 25% of those "saying they were happily married", had a partner that said they were not.

Rarely do both decide at the same time that the relationship is no longer affectional, and no longer working.

When one checks out of the relationship, the other is often left in complete surprise and shock.
They often conclude in a panic, that their one chance for "affection" in their life" has just been ended.

The old myth that there is only one man or woman for you in your life has now days, gone down the tube..

If you are genuinely capable of love, you can love many times and many people. Second marriages, for example, are often a much stronger love than the first marriage.

The old myth that there was only one love for each personhas brought much devastation to many people over the years.
- The idea that all you have to do is find them and that they will do the rest will get you nowhere.

True love is a sort of form of prejudice.

You learn to love

what is available,
what is near,

what you meet.

You feel you can only love that certain person you found, when in actuality there are ten thousand members of the opposite sex you would love even more if you ever met them, but, of course, you'll never meet them all.

You can certainly meet some others you can love more.

However, you have expectations which no one person is ever going to be able to fulfill - no matter how kind, understanding and loving an individual they turn out to be.

If your relationship does not deliver all the levels you expected, then the negative gap opens and degenerates, a gap that widens as you find that what you expected and what you actually see and feel are two different things.

You need to stop dreaming the impossible dream and having impossible expectations of utopia. Instead you wind up disillusioned, disappointed and crushed by the whole thing.

You erroneously feel that your expectations were realistic, but you just had the wrong person.

This myth is very painful to give up. Reality intrudes.
The old fairytale where the magic mate appears at the last moment and solves all the problems and they live happily ever after just does not work out in actuality.
This fairy tale has all been reinforced now with TV commercials, advertising, movies, all, in fact, escapes from reality.

Singles now seek a partner as an embodiment of all their unrealistic fantasies.

When the partner cannot live up to these unrealistic expectations, they part bitterly.
They each blame the other and the dreamers go back to their fairyland world, since they failed to change their lover into the imaginary person they expected.
You must not surrender your ability to feel and to act. If you surrender to the 'one and only' theory, you subordinate your will.
You lose touch with your real self because you are afraid if you act on your sentiments, you will, in fact, lose your "one and only."
You stop being your real self.

You need to develop self-assertion, self reliance, selfdevelopment and interest.

A realistic lasting love is a "we" feeling.
You must learn that love and individuals both have their limitations.

You must learn to love life, to learn to grow and change.

When you learn to love life, to love growth and aliveness in general, love children, love ideas, and to love a man or woman, you find you can love many things and many times.

Love and love again; with mature, realistic expectations.

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