Love Me Please

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

Eerie yet insanely common dynamics in relationships: a woman looks into a man's mouth in an attempt to guess his desires and modify hers so that her emotional and physical needs match those of her prince.

Girls of my generation (25-35) years and about a similar age, even during their upbringing, were inspired by the idea that a man is an incredible value. The ability to start a family and get married happily, and then maintain a marriage, are fundamental skills in a woman's life.

At the same time, from everywhere we hear that a good man is a rarity, that the role of a woman is to be able to mold a gentleman out of a plasticine horse, and this must be done so that the future gentleman does not realize that something is being molded out of him, and thinks that he is molding himself … Thus, we were helped to replenish the chipped subpersonality, which was mired in helplessness: they say, this is the power of a Real Woman - to be the neck on which the man's head revolves.

And don't get it wrong: the purpose of this article is not to discount men. I am a young woman. I do not live in a male body, so I can only speculatively come to conclusions about what it is like to be a man. From the point of view of a woman, I can say with confidence that the attitude “Love me, please” cost me a lot of nerves and efforts spent on maintaining the image of an ideal, as I saw it, wife; and by learning to stop this servility, I begin to understand myself better and discover important, lost talents in myself. And, paradoxically, I find that my current rejected devotion to my true values is having a positive effect on my relationship with my husband.

Let me now move from the point of view of the wife to the point of view of the psychotherapist.

What happens to a woman that she feels the need to adjust to the desires and interests of a man, completely ignoring her own?

As they grow up, many women develop the following stance:

“In a relationship, you have to make sacrifices. I cannot keep the relationship while keeping myself and at the same time keeping the man."

Because the emphasis on successfully marrying and keeping a man is incredibly strong, a woman does not find it necessary - and courageous - to dig deep into herself and discover her interests. Unlike most men who have come to me for therapy, when counseling women, we usually devote a lot of time to discovering the true interests and reorganizing the patient's life in accordance with what is important to HER.

Here you need to pay attention to the understanding of personal boundaries. Personal boundaries are easy to understand. I love cats - this is my border. If another person asks me whom I love more - cats or dogs - I will not violate my boundary if I answer the truth: that I love cats. If I suspect that this person loves dogs, and I want to synchronize with his point of view in order to please him, I will answer that I love dogs - and thereby violate my boundary.

More serious manifestation - a woman who dreams of becoming a mother informs her man that she does not want to have children, because she feels the need to express solidarity with him in order to look like a desirable life companion in the eyes of a man.

Boundaries are broken when I act against my true desire. When I say yes when I really feel no. For example, by agreeing to join my man's friends in the pub in fear of losing his man if I refuse, but not really wanting to go to the pub, I violate my boundary.

When we build a relationship with a man, our inherent models of behavior aimed at marriage, maintaining relationships and creating a family pull the strings of our consciousness, like a puppeteer guiding a puppet. We try our best to please a man, often stepping on our throats. Not seeing a retaliatory attack on our throat from a man, we take offense and reproach him that he does not know how to compromise, and that we, from our bell tower, are doing everything possible to preserve the relationship.

What is the fate of a relationship in which a woman feels called upon to please endlessly? If you have a “Love me please” pattern of behavior, you have probably noticed that life throws you into relationships with men who tend to emotionally withdraw themselves at critical moments. When a man withdraws himself, a woman feels a desire to control the process, heart-rendingly trying to understand what is happening. In moments of conflict, an attempt is made to maintain the relationship. The woman is looking for a renewed emotional connection with her partner. She asks: “What's wrong with you? I see that something is wrong. The woman cries out: “Can you tell me directly?.. I will understand…”, hoping to hear that the man still loves her and that his dissatisfaction will not lead to a break in the relationship.

In fact, a woman whose behavior is based on “reading the minds” of a man is doing a disservice to herself and her partner. A woman tells her man that she loves this and that, wanting to match her preferences as closely as possible with his point of view - after all, as we are all told, community of interests is a guarantee of compatibility! A man perceives the words of his half as a guide to action, but the fulfillment of these desires does not make his beloved truly happy! The man is at a loss and thinks that something is wrong with him, since he is unable to satisfy the desire of his beloved. He is worried that he is not able to give happiness to his beloved (although he really wants to!). Since it is unbearably difficult to be in a state of internal conflict, the man withdraws himself and begins to seek satisfaction in other things.

So, how can we women overcome the dynamic in which we sacrifice ourselves every now and then?

Realizing your real boundaries and interests - especially those who do not overlap with the addictions of a man - fundamental step.

Here are some exercises to help you define your boundaries:

1. Ask yourself the following questions and write the answers in your observation log:

What inspires me?

What did I love to do as a child simply because I truly loved it?

When do I feel most creative?

What things, places, events and experiences make me happy?

As soon as you feel that you feel resistance while writing this or that answer, stop and ask yourself a question:

Am I honest enough with myself about this answer?

When I wrote my list, my unconscious urge was to include in it all the hobbies that we do with my husband. Subsequently, I discovered, concentrating on this resistance, that my attempt to include some of our common hobbies in the answers was informed by the self-hypnosis defense mechanism: they say, really, here! I really love these things and it makes me a better wife! By honestly admitting to myself the true state of affairs and deleting self-imposed interests, I felt a great relief.

2. Write on a piece of paper 10 facts about your life that make you unhappy. As you read each point, ask yourself:

In what way do I violate my own boundaries or the boundaries of other people here?

For example, I may be unhappy with the fact that I feel lonely and that I would like to spend more time with my beloved friend. The violation of my boundary here is that I deny myself the time with a friend, which I sincerely want, rationalizing this by the need to spend more time with my husband at home.

3. Discover where the legs of your fear of asserting your boundaries grow from

As a child, you may have had to fight for the attention of your parents - especially your father. Perhaps you wanted to be your father's daughter - but due to your father's busyness or his isolation from his family, have you never been? Maybe you were once rejected and you are afraid that you are doomed to be rejected in any relationship, unless you learn how to rationalize it, “seek a compromise” - and in fact, completely surrender your emotional needs in an attempt to keep a man?

4. Practice benevolent truthfulness and caring for your partner's feelings

Respect is contagious. The ability to hear your own desires does not mean that from today on you need to constantly go into conflict, should you find that your desires do not coincide with the desires of your loved one. A loved one and a beloved one is that you voluntarily enter into a relationship with him in order to share your life with a person whose presence magnifies you both and spending time with whom brings joy to both halves.

Be prepared to defend your point of view without hurting the feelings of your loved one.

Contrary to how we are used to viewing conflict, healthy conflict resolution is to find an option that is acceptable to both sides and does not cross the boundaries of either side. At the same time, partners entering into a conflict do not begin to behave like opponents and continue to act as a team

Today we have found out that the fear that every quarrel may be the last makes many of us surrender our interests to a partner. Caring for a man's emotional comfort, which comes from love and mutual respect, does not negate caring for his own emotional well-being. The position of an understanding friend, whom a loved one can trust and trust, will help resolve conflict much more effectively than throwing knives in an attempt to wound a loved one in the most vulnerable place. Just imagine how difficult it is to learn to trust the person to whom you gave the innermost secret of your heart, and at the moment of a quarrel he uses this secret in order to blackmail you, threaten you and manipulate you.

I want each of us, each beautiful, wonderful, amazing woman reading this article, through the application of the above techniques, to be able to build her life on the basis of love and tranquility. The fear of losing a man and the desire to keep a man, not to be a cheated wife, is based on a misunderstanding of personal boundaries, piled up over the years. Feeling what your own strength is, recognizing it and living in tune with your talents is the highest aspiration of every person. Denying and losing oneself in the desire to keep another person inevitably leads to suffering.

The goal of every person living on earth is to feel what it is like: to be yourself and live in accordance with your credo. This feeling is irreplaceable, and I wish that every woman and every man could synchronize with the call of his heart and share his amazing, wonderful talent with the world.

Lilia Cardenas, integral psychologist, psychotherapist

Art by Ivana Besevic