Let's start with the main one. Indeed, there is a feeling that lives for about three years. And you can even call it love.

But in social psychology it is called more precisely - love-passion. This is a specific psychological state, which is accompanied by arousal (not only in the sexual sense), directed at a specific person. In addition to excitement, there is also an obsessive desire to be with this person and serious feelings in case of separation (even temporary).

According to the description, by the way, it is very similar to the behavior of an alcoholic - he shakes with the desire to drink, overcomes all obstacles on the way to the coveted bottle and suffers greatly if he fails to drink.


On the psychological level, love-passion is experienced as bliss - a person flutters, flies, full of euphoria, everything is beautiful and fragrant with violets. True, there are psychologists who consider this all as a disease, but this is still only a point of view, albeit a well-founded one.

The main thing is not this. The main thing is the duration of love-passion.

Everything ends someday
Man is an addictive being. As studies have shown, we very quickly adapt to both good and bad. People who have won a lot of money are no more happy after two months than those who have not won anything. People who have been diagnosed with HIV feel the same way after five weeks as those who have not.

The ability to adapt is our great evolutionary advantage.

True, in the case of love-passion, it goes sideways to us. It lasts an average of three years (those same three years!), And then a terrible time comes.

Still, everything was fine, both were shaking with passion, everything was painted in iridescent tones, wings seemed to grow behind our backs ... But we are already quarreling, rolling out mutual claims and telling our friends, girlfriends, what a monster our partner turned out to be "actually ".

Once again, it seems to us that our partner was pretending, but in fact he was different. This is mistake. Most likely, love-passion just ended.

At such a moment, a person is faced with unexpected news - it turns out that relationships are quite difficult, albeit rewarding work. But I don't want to work! When there was love-passion, you didn’t have to work, everything was spinning by itself, without any effort.

The easiest thing in this situation is to blame the partner for everything and get a divorce. It is curious that in all countries where divorce is possible, the highest frequency, according to the research of the American scientist Randy Fisher, falls on the fourth year of marriage (I quote: "during and about the fourth year"). At least that was the case in 1994.

Everything converges. They met for a year, two lived in marriage, for a year they suffered from a discrepancy between dreams and reality - and broke up. Disappointment, you know, is a terrible joke.

See the world soberly
What can be done here? How to avoid the fading of love-passion? Alas, my answer will not please many.
There is no way to avoid it - love-passion will pass, remaining only in relatively rare and unpredictable bursts. This is inevitable, like the onset of winter in Minsk - it will come anyway, do not hope for a miracle.

But something is really available to people - you can sober up.

Yes, just sober up. Do not fill your head with fairy tales about beautiful love that arises by itself and develops by itself, It's not like that - relationships are always work, difficult, but rewarding.
Here is some interesting data from India (from 1982). Indian scientists Usha Gupta and Pushpa Singh studied 50 married couples. It turned out that the spouses who married “for love” after five years no longer love each other so much. Their love has grown cold.

But the spouses who were combined by an arranged marriage began to love each other more. And, as a result, they are very happy with their marriage.

Why is that? Because they had no illusions and subsequent disappointments. They immediately knew that it would be difficult - and calmly treated the difficulties of marriage. Therefore, it was easier for them to overcome them.

In social psychology, in addition to love-passion, love-friendship is also distinguished. If passion love is about excitement, then love-friendship is about tender affection.

That's just on love-friendship and keep all happy marriages. Yes, love-passion is pleasant and attractive. But it ends, inevitably ends.

And if you don’t want to get divorced, you can switch to love-friendship. It does not exclude lust and passion, it will only be less exalted and more demanding on the efforts of partners.

How to go to it? It's simple (though not easy). No need to focus on what has stopped working in a relationship. Start noticing what keeps working. Keep it up, make an effort