Because films, books and love songs have too often made passionate and destructive love obvious, or even a “healthy” way of loving, we sometimes find ourselves tiring of a story without clouds. However, loving in a peaceful way, without heartbreak or roller coasters, can be lifesaving, according to Amélie Boukhobza, clinical psychologist.
Love, true love, is not necessarily tormented
It’s 8:00 p.m. The meal is ready, the children are in bed and your companion finishes folding the laundry. On paper, everything is perfect, but you are seething: is this really the life you always dreamed of? Where has this passionate romance gone that you were so promised? In reality, the problem is not so much your daily life, but the way you have been conditioned.
“We grew up with films, love songs, twists and turns. Arguments followed by reconciliations on the pillow… Love, true love, must have been a tornado. A story of lack, of tension, of reunions. So inevitably, when a relationship becomes stable, calm, reassuring… we start to doubt. We get bored. We tell ourselves that that’s not what life is. Not really. That we don’t love enough. That love, the real one is necessarily more tormented”, confides Amélie Boukhobza.
But perhaps we need to review what we call “passion“.
“Because if it is based only on too much insecurity, expectations and emotional roller coasters… Suffering is inevitable. And love, true love, is something else,” warns the psychologist.
Waiting for your toxic Prince Charming is therefore not an end goal. Perhaps it is ultimately François, your lifelong friend, who is and will remain your “great love story“. Because he alone knows you like the back of his hand and understands you like no other – despite his taciturn nature and his aversion to arguments.
Learn to love differently
Preferring calm to explosions, appeasement to evenings that end badly, can be good, recalls Amélie Boukhobza.“To be conditioned to passionate love is to confuse intensity and sincerity. To seek fusion rather than construction. To think that without drama, there is nothing to tell… Which is obviously false.”
In fact, loving differently can save you.
“Learning to love differently is first of all learning to regulate yourself. To no longer seek to be “caught” or “moved” at all costs. To understand that a simple relationship is not a bland relationship. It is a relationship in which we think, we breathe, we go away, we come back. A relationship in which we do not need to go badly to feel alive. Calm, sometimes, is proof that we are well.” concludes the practitioner.