Love Triangle: Why And Why

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

I have been dealing with the theme of love triangles in my life for a very long time. I discovered a lot of interesting things. I will share what I found on this topic within myself. This is not a complete and optional list of reasons for the formation of love triangles. Just what was in my story.

What is the article about

• Why is a triangle "needed" at all?
• 19 "female reasons" for the formation of a triangle of the type "one man, two women" (personal experience).
• In short: how to get out of the love triangle.
• Does "karma" exist: if you sleep "nee" with a married person, then your husband will cheat?
• Does the omen work - "if you climb into your husband's pockets, your husband will cheat"?
• My view on the statement about male polygamy and about female monogamy "by nature", as well as the statement that physical contact is more important for men, and emotional contact for women.

I am writing about the FFM-type triangle: husband, wife and mistresses. But this does not mean that women are victims, and men are scoundrels. In love polygons, each of the vertices receives its portion of suffering and its portion of secondary benefits, each of the vertices has its own reasons for being in this polygon. My attitude to all the peaks is now neutral.

Why a triangle at all?

A moment of theory. According to Bowen's concept of triangulation, in a couple, when they approach, the level of tension increases, if the couple cannot cope with this tension, then triangulation occurs - in order to relieve the tension that has created, the couple involves a third participant in their relationship and through this stabilizes the relationship. This can be TV, alcohol, friends, work, kitten, child, etc. Including his mistress.

What does it mean in life

For example, in a couple, dissatisfaction with each other increases, anger at each other. The couple does not know how to deal with this - there is no skill to cope with their anger and there is no skill to constructively discuss what is happening, talk about feelings, express dissatisfaction in an environmentally friendly manner, talk and negotiate. The mistress is involved in the couple.

On the one hand, this increases the distance in the couple, the level of tension drops, and the spouses feel better. On the other hand, the anger that arose in the married couple can be directed to the mistress.

A man can be harsh and rude in his treatment of his mistress, practice more harsh forms of sexual contact with her. It may look like "I want anal sex, I am ashamed to offer my wife, but with a mistress / prostitute you can." But the point is not in "anal" as such, but in the desire to express aggression.

If a man has anger of the type of resentment, then he, on the contrary, can be affectionate and choose a soft and comforting mistress to "regret".

If the wife finds out or suspects about her mistress, then the wife also has the opportunity to legalize and express her anger. Both the mistress herself and the husband for her presence. Although initially the anger was about something else, but to say about it was "embarrassing." But to swear over the presence of a mistress is no longer a shame, this is a pious deed.

Why is tension building up in a couple at all?

In addition to domestic discontent, inability to deal with anger and discuss what is happening, there are other reasons. The projection / transfer mechanism works in any relationship - at some moments a person "sees" in a partner not a partner as such, but another figure (more often a parent), and experiences feelings inherent in relations with this seen figure, and not with a real partner. For example, a spouse's question - "how are you, how was your day?"

The closer and deeper the relationship of the spouses, the more feelings arise from the relationship with the parents. The more difficult the relationship with the parents was, the heavier these feelings. And the stronger the desire to create a triangle, relieving tension."Close" relationship - it can be both in the direct, healthy, sense, and in the sense of fusion, codependent dynamics.

But why does someone choose a kitten for triangulation, and someone a lover? 19 "female reasons" for the formation of the FFM triangle

Why does a woman form her relationship according to the triangle principle. Moreover, both in the position of the wife and in the position of the mistress.

The first block of reasons is the position of the "woman from the triangle" in her parental family. In the same family, a girl can occupy several positions.

1. Family image "Competition". The mother takes a competitive position in relation to her daughter, sees her daughter at the same hierarchical level with herself and her husband, and perceives her daughter as a threat. The father, perhaps, also perceives his daughter not as a child, but as a woman. Then the girl develops the image of the family "One beloved man and two competing women", which is transferred and unconsciously built up in her male-female relationship.
2. Family image "Sibling-foundling". If the father is prone to infantility, he can take the position of a child in relation to his wife and a position of a sibling in relation to his daughter. Then the daughter competes for the love of her mother with a false sibling (her father). The image of the girl's family captures the need to compete for the love of a significant person with someone who is generally "leftist", illegally occupying a place. And in a male-female relationship, the girl transfers the feeling that the love and energy of her husband intended for her is flowing somewhere to the side.
3. Family image "Mom to her mom". If a mother is prone to infantility, then she may be inclined to transfer the functions of her mother to her daughter. The daughter, as it were, takes the place of the grandmother, and the mother and father take the place of children (daughter and "son-in-law"). Then, in her male-female relationship, the grown up girl in relation to her husband will take the position of the mother, and the husband will almost legally have a woman in the position of the wife.
4. Family image "Replacing my mother in bed with my father." If the mother is prone to infantility and does not want to take the position of wife and mother, she can sort of switch places with her daughter. The daughter takes the position of her father's wife, and the mother takes the position of their child. Physically, the wife sleeps with her husband (although she may not sleep), and symbolically, the daughter is in bed with him. This again forms the "one man and two women" image. This image of the family is complementary to the previous image: a woman who was a mother to her parents will be the same mother-wife in a relationship with her husband, who will have a daughter-lover from the position of "substituting for mother in bed with father."
5. Family image "Girl-back and forth-plug" … When a mother starts having problems with her husband, she turns her attention to her daughter, devotes a lot of time to her, as if she loves her more, and then relations with her husband improve, and the daughter becomes unnecessary again. The girl feels abandoned, betrayed. Feelings of abandonment, betrayal, being used, as well as the very dynamics of "need-not-need" then influence the formation of male-female relations.
6. Family image "Unfinished" … The mother cannot stand close and intimate contact with her daughter. And he is constantly distracted by something or someone. Those. also a kind of triangulation. The girl has a feeling that in a relationship with a loved one there must be someone or something else that constantly interferes with love and contact.
7. Family image "Secret Excluded". If there are relatives in the family, about whom it is not customary to speak, who are, as it were, excluded, especially if they are lost or aborted children, then the girl forms an image of the family that there is someone “secret”, “illegal”. Then a woman can involve a mistress in her life, who will take the place of her deceased sister, for example. Or she can identify herself with a relative who occupies a "secret" place in the family and become a mistress.
8. The image of the Eternal Daughter family. The girl was given the message "not to grow", and she never grew up. Then she cannot be a wife to her husband. Can become a mistress, as if adopted in a married couple. Maybe, being a wife, "attract" a more mature mistress, symbolically replacing her mother, as if creating a pair of parents from a husband and a mistress.

Then there are other reasons, not so strongly related to the position in the family, but nevertheless related to childhood and family.

1. Splitting according to the type "Madonna" - "Prostitute". Then the woman feels not entirely a woman, but only "half a woman" - either about love and care, light and purity (a kind of maternal function), or about sex, passion, the functions of a lover. Then she attracts the second woman into the relationship in order to "complement herself" to the whole woman.
2. Unformed or injured female identity. A woman seeks a woman through a man in order to find herself as a woman. But he doesn't.
3. Strong need for a mother. For a reason that could have formed a same-sex relationship in an attempt to make up for the maternal deficit. But the woman has an internal ban on lesbian relationships. Then she forms a relationship with a woman, but indirectly - through a man.
4. Permission for violence. If a girl has experienced sexual abuse, violence, humiliation, then she (trauma, of course) forms a permission for violence. And even the "need" to live in such sensations. Then the presence of other women in the husband can be a form of reproduction of sexual humiliation and violence.
5. Sexualization. "I am only valuable for sex" … For certain reasons, in particular - sexual abuse, the incestuous nature of family relationships, the girl develops a feeling - "I am valuable only for sex." Then she cannot build a full-fledged relationship and remains in the position of a sex toy.
6. The victim's position as a lifestyle. Most likely, a lifestyle taken over from the family. Depending on who seems to her to be a victim to a greater extent (wife or lover), the woman will occupy that position in the triangle.
7. Loyalty to the family system. Perhaps in the family system there were already stories with triangles and the woman reproduces them.
8. Codependency. Attracting and supportive of a sex addicted man.
9. Own desire to have a lover, for which there is an inner prohibition. Then the husband is in the function of a mirror. Why such a desire, and why it is forbidden is a separate long topic.
10. The wounded right to "have," "possess," "have good," the attitude "you must share everything." For example, in order not to "raise an egoist," the child was forced to share food, toys, etc., and was not given the right to have something of his own, personal - space, toys, things. Or, for example, due to financial circumstances, you had to wear someone's clothes, finish someone's food.
11. Badly injured or broken boundaries.

If you have found something from this list, this does not mean that you have or will necessarily form a triangle. If you live in a triangle, then there may be some of these reasons in your story, but there may be other reasons as well.

Why men maintain relationships in a triangle of the FFM format, and also why triangles of the FFM type are formed, these are already separate topics.

In short: how to get out of the love triangle

Raise your inner child and separate from the parental family. Learn to maintain deep contact with a partner, bring in all the feelings that arise in him and develop healthy communication skills (talk constructively, negotiate). Heal your wounded value and your sexuality-related wounds.

Does "karma" exist: if you sleep "nee" with a married person, then your husband will cheat?

If a woman "sticks" to a married man (or a man who has a partner), regardless of whether she sleeps with him or not, it can be assumed that the woman has a tendency to build relationships in a triangle. And then it is possible that a woman will form her own marital relationship as a triangle. But this is not because she slept with a married one. Interest in incompetent men and the formation of triangles in your married family are branches from the same root.

Does the omen work - "if you climb into your husband's pockets, your husband will cheat"?

As in the case of "karma" - distrust, desire to control, fear of betrayal, which "force" you to climb your pockets, and the choice of a partner who can have a mistress - these are branches of the same root - an internal unconscious need to build relationships like a triangle.

My view on the statement about male polygamy and female monogamy "by nature"

I do not pretend to be an expert. But in the course of zoopsychology, I did not hear about such a form of marriage in primates, in which females strictly "remain faithful" to the male, who is "ordered to inseminate as many females as possible."

• There are forms of marriage with voluntary real monogamy on the part of both partners.
• There are forms of marriage, where officially monogamy, but in fact - how it will turn out: females choose "smart and caring" males as husbands, and "strong and beautiful" - as lovers. But males are not forbidden to play pranks on the side.
• There are forms of marriage where promiscuity is practiced on the part of both sexes.
• There are harem forms of marriage with one male or several males, however, other males can officially or informally (so far no one sees) take possession of females. At the same time, in a harem organization, a male is faced with the task of protecting females, and the presence of several partners in one male is not the reason for creating a harem, but a consequence.

The task of "inseminating as many females as possible", as it is often formulated in society in support of the idea of male polygamy and female monogamy, is for males in the case of promiscuous family organization. But with such an organization, females also have the task of surrendering to as many males as possible.

Those. the question of polygamy-monogamy between the sexes in primates is solved more or less symmetrically.

My view on the statement that physical contact is more important for men, and emotional

I believe that for a hypothetical healthy person, regardless of gender, a combination of both types of contact is important. The balance in this combination can vary depending on the individual characteristics of the person and on the stage of the person's life or the stage of the couple's relationship.

However, in a culture with neurotic prescriptions, we have what we have - "men do not cry", and women hover in the clouds with pink ponies, denying "filth and lust." Nevertheless, a woman can learn to receive sensual pleasure from bodily contact, and a man can learn from deep emotional intimacy.

You may be interested in my books " What do we confuse love with, or is Love" and " Codependency in its own juice"Books are available on Liters and MyBook."

Image - still from Gaspard Noe's film "Love"