Love Advice: Keep your distance in relationships!
How do you make a relationship interesting? Not boring? Everlasting? When I asked my boyfriend what could cool you down in a relationship with a woman, he answered Statics. And how can we not remain static when our whole female nature wants reliability and stability? What will help us remain intriguing and mysterious? Distance!
Keep your distance!
This is the most important rule that affects everything else. When a woman and a man embark on a new relationship, they are exploring unfamiliar territory together. They are rediscovering each other and are delighted with every step they take. Moreover, they ultimately strive to become one inseparable whole—this is often considered the embodiment of the ideal of a love relationship.
But with each step taken towards rapprochement, the lightness and novelty leave the relationship. At first, it is exchanged for the sweet opportunity to fully open up to each other, and this seems like a fair exchange. People specifically seek this opportunity to open up in love, hoping that their partner will recognize and accept them wholeheartedly. They cannot reconcile themselves with themselves from the inside, so they want someone to reconcile with them from the outside.
Already at this stage, many relationships begin to fall apart because everyone wants to be loved, but few know how to love. It is impossible to accept another person as they are if you cannot accept yourself in all your qualities and manifestations. But usually no one thinks about this, and the approachment continues.
Thus, the uncertainty and inner anxiety of the partners pushes them towards each other, making them penetrate and intertwine with each other more deeply. The romantic fairy tale about the other half, about the person who will come and fill the gaping inner emptiness, is a dream of hiding from your worries in the arms of another person. Therefore, achieving complete unity with each other is considered the fundamental essence and foundation of a healthy relationship.
Because of the same self-doubt, men and women strive to tie each other to themselves. They think that by locking themselves in one cage, they can protect their relationship. Therefore, they want to control each other. Behind all these questions about time spent apart, the desire to know everything about each other, and the constant need to stay in touch, lies the desire to stay vigilant, just in case something unexpected happens.
I am describing all this in order to show how powerful a force drives people who have entered into a love relationship towards each other. And it is this tendency that we must, first of all, learn to overcome in ourselves.
People are pushed towards each other by their fears. And this is a natural process. It is important to be aware of it and not try to change anything. Fear of being alone, fear of life, fear of your inner world, fear of responsibility, fear of losing love, fear of losing each other—all fears and anxieties. In this vein, relationships quickly lose their pure original essence and become a way to avoid the difficulties of life.
But for normal, healthy relationships, such mutual penetration is absolutely not necessary. It is not at all necessary to know everything about each other in order to get comprehensive pleasure from communication. Only the presence of a partner is important. Awareness of oneself through the prism of relationships. If you do not bind yourself with vows of eternal love and fidelity, the relationship does not become frivolous and superficial; on the contrary, it becomes more honest and sober, and for this reason, more pleasant and long-lasting.
To keep a person close, you don’t need to put them in a cage—you need to give them freedom. You need to show that you are not an aggressor. You respect someone else’s territory. It is the fear of losing a loved one that most often leads to loss. All this jealousy, suspicion, and the desire to put each other on a chain—this is why relationships become heavy and tiring.
But that’s not all. Unrestricted closeness to each other has many other negative and dangerous consequences for the relationship.
As soon as the feeling arises that this person belongs to me, a false feeling immediately appears: that I have some rights to this person, that I can demand something from him, that he now owes me something, and that I can blame him for not fulfilling the obligations and assumptions that you imposed on him.
It is from this moment that partners begin to be impudent towards each other—mutual manipulations, claims, grievances, and whims begin. Caution, awe, tolerance, and respect for each other gradually disappear from the relationship. You can now shout to each other from the next room, “Hey, you there, cook me some pasta!” and so forth.
What a man and a woman would never allow themselves to do in the first weeks of dating becomes appropriate and normal after six months. It may seem that this is the very freedom of self-expression that is so valuable in close relationships, but in fact it is a loss of caution and loss of all control over oneself. That very moment when you should control yourself, but you really want to be able to completely relax next to your loved one.
And it’s not that in order to maintain a relationship, you need to continue to ostentatiously court each other, as recommended in glossy magazines. Artificial courtship does not solve anything and always looks forced. Losing interest in each other is a consequence of excessively shortening the distance. It is worth moving apart a little, and the woman will again be pleased to dress up for her man, and he in return will be pleased to be a gallant gentleman (or an impudent robber, to suit his tastes and colors).
To keep the relationship fresh, you need to give up the desire for victory, certainty, and stability. You must overcome your fear and allow the relationship to maintain a balance between the known and the unknown. Like animals play—they growl, bite, and roll on the ground—but if the enemy is knocked down, you need to let him go in time—otherwise the game is over.
Relationships are a game that is captivating for its process, not for its result. Many people think that the goal of the relationship game is to reach a point where you can say about the other person, “Well, that’s it; he’s mine now.” That is, when you can put a stamp on it: “The task is accomplished—the relationship is established” and relax.
But as soon as such a clear definition appears, the game immediately loses its meaning; the relationship turns into a boring routine and then goes downhill with increasing speed.
It is difficult to step over fears and habitual ideas, but this is the only way to build truly easy, honest, and viable relationships. The right to freedom gives rise to a very special and much deeper attachment. To understand, you need to try it on yourself.
Be brave and try: keep your distance. Let each other remain separate people. Don’t cling to each other, don’t control each other, and don’t allow yourself to be possessive. Be yourself, but don’t forget that next to you is a person who is dear to you and who should also remain himself. Keep yourself in hand.
It seems difficult and stressful, but only until you feel the result—it is really worth it.
But it only sounds complicated. After all, if you remember the time when you were alone, you had many interests and hobbies. Remember them, take care of your parents, take care of your friends, and devote yourself to work. Then the distance will be built by itself, and the interest will be natural. Well, and of course, allow your loved one to be without you and have their hobbies and little “secrets”!
