Our Love Is Like A Story

“Seeing love as a story can help us improve our love relationships.”
J. Sternberg

Each person lives love in a certain way, we have a conception of our ideal love and through that conception we can learn a lot about ourselves.

In each of the love relationships that we live, we carry with us our own love story, all our experience, learning, our hurts and our fears. When we choose a partner and find ourselves involved in another relationship, we continue to carry our entire history with us, with the lessons we have learned from previous relationships.

Do we know the type of relationship we want to maintain?

 “Most of our wishes are not worth much. It is as if they were based on what we think we should want and not on what we really want ”.
J. Sternberg

To get to know what we really want we have to know what is the story that we repeat over and over with different partners, in different romantic relationships.

The couples we choose are not by chance or coincidence, they all repeat some patterns, some common characteristics that are why we feel a special attraction. These characteristics that attract us are different for each person.

If we ask ourselves what are those characteristics that attracted us from other relationships and those that attract us today, we can realize what it is we really want. People who maintain a relationship with their first partner can verify it through the characteristics of the people with whom there is more affinity and closeness.

When we discover what we really want in our love relationship, we are more prepared to see what is not working in the current relationship and how it can be resolved to improve the relationship.

In many cases, ending the relationship is not the solution

Couples go through crises, through confrontations, through complicated situations; moments of dissatisfaction; where pain and the feeling of abandonment is frequent.

Talking and trying to solve problems from that feeling of anguish can seriously jeopardize the relationship. Since everything is amplified and both positions will go on the defensive.

You must avoid speaking when you are upset and under the influence in full effervescence of emotion, when you are hurt, because many things can be said with a tone in which the other person is blamed, falling into accusations and reproaches.

Many relationships, despite the fact that they are with the couple who gathers the necessary ingredients for the relationship to come back afloat and everything can go forward from love. They end up ending the relationship in a hasty manner without leading to the process and development of the relationship.

Under this situation we do not do the corresponding learning ; so we drag back our problems in the couple, resentment and fears to the next relationships that we establish.

Making it possible for it to be repeated again, and over time the same dissatisfactions occur , making the same mistakes, and returning to feel frustration, pain and abandonment. Believing again that everything will be solved by ending the relationship.

We can continue in that circle without going out over and over again, taking the same turns through life, with one relationship and another, wearing ourselves out more and more.

When we become aware of what is happening, that it is not about the partner we are with but that we do not know what we want, and that we have not solved our conflicts which in turn are mixed and strengthened in conjunction with those of the another person.

In the love story we play a role that corresponds to what represents us, what we feel most comfortable with, how we have learned to live through the experience of love, how we believe it should be.

If we let our love story be the dominant force in our relationships, it will always be the cause of dissatisfaction and dissolution of the love relationship.

“If we understand the ideas behind the stories that we accept as our own, we are in a position to ask ourselves certain questions. We can ask ourselves what we like and what we don’t like about our current (or past) relationship and how to change it. Then we will ask ourselves how we can reconstruct history. The act of rebuilding can mean changing the stories or transforming them to better suit the circumstances.

J. Sternberg

Consulted bibliography:

– Sternberg, RJ (1999). Love is like a story: a new theory of relationships .