Searching for Love?      

                                                                                                    

   How to find true love ...

  ... And laugh at our mistakes in the process!

Must-read article 

 

When you're not in love but you think you are!  

Understand your love search! 

I am so grateful that I finally learnt a very valuable lesson in my love search: sometimes, no matter how strongly we feel, we are NOT in love, but something else is in play. Had I known this earlier as I was searching for love, I would have avoided a few painful infatuations and relationships that went nowhere.

 

What I am about to write is also enlightening if you used to be head over heels about someone only to wake up, one day, feeling very little for him/her and being very confused about it all. It is one of the reasons why we should never just marry someone because our feelings at the time are incredibly strong. We should wait!

 

A few years ago I experienced an example of 'displacement' (this is also mentioned on my page 'falling in love?'). This is what happened: 

 

I had been, over a long period of time, interested in a man at work who, however, was 'out of bounds' for me. Despite the fact that he was clearly interested, he was married and I didn't want to pursue it in any way. It was painful, though, to see him whilst knowing that I couldn't be with him. We were approaching the Christmas holidays and all I could think was how he was going to spend it with his wife whilst I was longing for him. Pathetic, right? I was dreading the festivities, envisaging that I'd be in even more pain than when I saw him regularly.

 

What is a true soul mate? Find out here


But, something happened. Just a few days into the holidays, I met someone I hadn't seen in a long time. A casual meeting, nothing significant. That same night I had a dream about this 'new man', a strong dream, and I woke up wanting to see him again. All I could think about was this new guy, and I fantasized about him all the time. I was scheming ways to meet him and I finally succeeded on New Year's Eve. We hit it off immediately and days later we were texting each other romantic messages like love-sick puppies.

 

I had completely forgotten about the married man I had been infatuated with for months and I was on a real 'high'. I looked better, I felt sensual, I was elated. I thought I was onto a winner!  I thought my searching for love was over and had found a great partner!  After all, I felt so wonderfully!

A great book about love reviewed here

A list of great self-help material is here

But, only 3 months later, it all ended for me. I felt increasingly less interested in seeing him, I wasn't replying to his messages, I wasn't feeling the 'high' I had been feeling before. The diminuishing intensity of the 'crush' was not a huge surprise for me because I was already aware that infatuation does not last forever and that it's often replaced by milder, more long-term feelings which, if we want that person on a long-term basis, we need to 'work on'. But this was different: I felt very little and, after a while, I felt NOTHING.  Definitely NOTHING in a ROMANTIC sense.  At times I was almost annoyed to see him and, the more he insisted on seeing me, the more I could see his 'faults' and wanted less and less to do with him.

 

 

I felt guilty about the situation; moreover, this behaviour of mine was uncharacteristic of me; I had usually been the one on the receiving end of such 'treatments'; I was always loyal, faithful in my feelings. What on earth was going on?

 

Luckily, it was during the period in which I sought therapy, and I learnt what was going on. What had happened was that I experienced what, in psychological terms, is referred to as 'displacement'. 

 

Displacement is something that takes place subconsciously as a defense mechanism against (in this case) pain; the mind redirects the emotions from someone who is felt as unobtainable or unacceptable towards a more acceptable (or safer, or easier) substitute. 

 

So, in essence, my mind subconsciously redirected all the feelings I had for the married man towards the 'new man'. The 'new man' did look, very mildly, like the 'married man', and perhaps that was the psychological trigger for me (but at times there may be others, more subtle triggers we are not aware of); however, the point is that unfortunately that enamourment was based on nothing to do with him (the 'new guy'). Nothing. It was all coming from me and, like all artificial bubbles, it had to burst. 

 

Interestingly, it's very useful to bear in mind that sometimes we are the receivers of displacement (and similar mechanisms);  it is therefore very important to understand the person you are interested in, to know him/her, before we invest our own emotions deeply. 

 

Moreover, if we are 'dumped' and we don't understand why his/her feelings could change so quickly, when we felt that he/she was completely in love with us just recently, it'd be healthy to bear in mind that it probably has a lot to do with 'them' and very little to do with us.  So there's no point in changing ourselves in our love search (we should never try and change ourselves anyway if it's merely to try and please anybody else) in any way, because the bubble has burst.  Move on.  Resume your searching for real love! 

 

♥ Attraction is Addiction:  read my latest article on this page.

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