How happiness and love are connected. What is love: stages, love and passion, facts

International Day of Happiness

Institute of Psychoanalysis
Psychology faculty

“Is love happiness or not?”

Completed by: Ionova N.V.,
I year, group 117

Moscow 2010

Love, like everything natural, is a very simple thing. And I can easily define love. Love is what makes you happy. This is a feeling that brings happiness.

How often do we mistake anything for love. How many books have been written about “unhappy love”, what amount of suffering accompanies such “love”! But love does not bring any suffering. Only happiness and joy. Illness cannot be love. Falling in love is happiness! And mutual love is, in my opinion, the dream of every normal person. After all, for True Love there are no restrictions: place or position, height or age, social status or nationality. The main thing is that a person should be a Man, and love should be Love.

Anyone can be loved, which means happy. This is an axiom.
People sincerely believe that they will wait for the moment when the one and only one loves them and then everyone will be happy. And since happiness is what everyone ultimately needs, then by chasing love we are looking for happiness. And love, and happiness, and all other good experiences, these are all just our sensations, experiencing which we feel some kind of euphoria, we are pleased, we are thrown up, we are flattened and sausage.

Happiness! Love!! Life!!!

A person who refuses love is like a gray, dusty and disgusting beech tree who sits in a room with the curtains drawn and does not believe that there can be sun outside the window. And he chases away all the romantics running in from the street with a hefty broom, “so that they don’t bring in the trash.” The beech drives away the romantics, and the romantics run out and after five minutes forget about the beech, because:

Love! Spring! Life!

Romantics are so inspired by their experiences that sometimes it becomes awkward to be around them. How so? They are in love, and me? And where do they find someone to fall in love with? Are there just freaks all around? But, looking at this romantic after some time, when he gets burned by his love, when he walks and cherishes his pain, at that moment you can think that really, why is this love needed!? Come on, with all this mental torment and tossing! It's better to be quiet, but calm.
Do you have such thoughts? I think it happens, everyone has it...

Love is the other side of not loving yourself.

Love has its pros and cons. I have no doubt that everyone can jot down a piece of paper with different thoughts about what good and bad love can bring to your life. Love is both the fear of loss and the delight of meeting, it is the pain of misunderstanding and pleasure in each other, it is the fury of jealousy and the frenzy of tenderness. Love is always a holiday, but often with unexpected and not always pleasant surprises. The benefits of love are that you seem to come alive. Life begins to play in you, you become prettier, you begin to take care of yourself so that your loved one will like you more...Stop! But this same fact suggests that before that you were lifeless, did not care about yourself and did not try to please people. How so? What were you like before you fell in love? The fact that when you fall in love you become more beautiful, healthier, and pinker, suggests that before the moment you fell in love you were not so wonderful. Then what happens? In order to start caring for yourself more than usual, you need to fall in love. Fall in love with someone. It turns out that you don’t love yourself, since you need to fall in love with someone to take care of yourself? And if you loved yourself, would you need to fall in love with someone in order to start taking care of yourself? I think not. When a person loves himself, he doesn't need to fall in love with someone to start taking care of himself.

Every person is capable of love. There is no one who “can’t do this.” If you still haven't found love, it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. You - in any condition - are capable of love and are worthy of love. There is only one obstacle - your attitude towards yourself. It doesn't need to be "changed" or "improved". It's enough just to attract attention. You need to love yourself. It is so simple! And you will have both love and happiness.
Let's try to figure it out. How do you know if you love someone? This probably means that you think about this person, care about him, etc. But how do you know that when you think about a person, you love him? You probably just feel it. It turns out that love is a feeling. If you do not feel love, then your care will not be a manifestation of love, but something else. Maybe you care because it is necessary, or demanded, or as it should be, but what does love have to do with it? You can care without love.
Love is not actions. Your tenderness towards your loved one, words of love, care for him and much more, this is not love. These are just its manifestations. You feel love, and you need to express it in actions towards your loved one.

I wonder how you express self-love?

You will feel true love when you are calm and relaxed. You will feel a real feeling only on the condition that you do not clog it with the bustle of actions, but allow it to manifest itself in the bliss of relaxation. When you are at peace, you are relaxed, and you are filled with love, that is true love. THIS IS HAPPINESS! You just feel it. And you feel it not because you fell in love, but because you like to feel loved. Love because you like to love, not because you fell in love.

A person may feel happy in love, or he may decide that he is a failure in love because all his romances ended in failure. And he, believing in his cause-and-effect relationship, will find facts that will confirm his conclusion about himself. He will start such novels with such people that will surely end in failure. This person will prove to himself that he is a loser. Prove with your life that there is no happiness in love.

But how easy it is to solve this problem if you shift attention from others to yourself. If in order to feel love, we need an object of love, and there are not enough worthy people around, we need to take it and start loving ourselves. That's all. All problems are solved. It would seem that it could be simpler - take it and love yourself. You pamper yourself, stroke, cherish, take care, and all this is based on the feeling of love. And then, when you yourself are already full, when this state becomes familiar to you - the state of love, you can give this love to others for free, free of charge, as the Owl said. Love the whole world if you want, the main thing is that you love yourself.

Many will now object to me, they will say that this is nonsense, this is selfishness, so you don’t need anyone if you only love yourself. And you don’t have to love only yourself! Love yourself and those around you! Love everyone, but first of all yourself. Because: who will love you if you don’t love yourself? How can anyone love you if you don't love yourself?
Let's try to find the reasons that prevent you from loving yourself and your loved ones. Most likely, this is selfishness, fear of opening up to a loved one, and fear of love disappointments.
Selfishness prevents you from understanding your loved one, so he is always wrong, but how can you love someone who is wrong? The fear of opening up makes you hide your feelings deep in your soul, like in a well, where the surface of the water ripples only with ripples, only echoes of those storms of passions that are hidden in the depths. The fear of love disappointments stops you at the moment when your soul is ready to open up to the feeling.

According to my observations, those people who do not love themselves love little, rarely and pettyly. This means that in order to start loving others, you must first love yourself. We already know this. But how to love yourself? What needs to be done for this? You don’t need to actively run after love, otherwise you won’t catch it. Allow yourself to feel love and it will come immediately. Love is not hidden from you somewhere far away. Love doesn't mind coming to you at any moment. Love is just waiting for you to invite it and allow it to enter. Love is always with you, your only job is to feel it.

People have been trying to explain for hundreds of years whether love is happiness or not. There is no need to explain anything. Simply loving is enough. This is happiness. Just your feeling, which you call love, is enough. And you can call any sensation with this word. No one can tell you what feelings you should feel when you love!

And most importantly! If you love yourself, you no longer need to receive love from others, you do not depend on them. Isn't this happiness! They give love, good, no, that’s also good. You become independent from the love of other people. You cannot be manipulated.
How do you feel if you don't love? Most likely fatigue, sometimes irritation, sometimes peace... The feelings are different, but something is missing. And you know what - love. And you begin to look for it, or more precisely, to look not for love, but for reasons to feel love. Stop it. Stop deceiving yourself. You always have a reason for love - that's you. Just as you always have an object of love - you, so you also have a reason - the same you. And then you are self-sufficient. You don’t need to run around frantically and beg people - well, give me the opportunity to fall in love. You don't need to look for someone to fall in love with. Everything is at your fingertips. You love yourself because you love yourself. Are you happy! You always have a reason to love - you. You always have someone to love - yourself
And then everything in life begins to align. You have no shortage of feelings, and you have no one to blame for preventing you from loving. You have no shortage of love objects, and you no longer need to complain about life. You have everything. You are rich! And when a person is rich, he can give. And people love when they are given. And they themselves begin to look for you to get a little or a lot of love from you. And now you will have another concern - how to ward off freeloaders, like, or what, you were before. You do not have to choose your husband or wife from one more or less suitable candidate. You will always have an excess of admirers and admirers because people love rich people.
They will love you because you are rich - spiritually. And then, in the end, there will be a person who will love you just like that, because he likes to love, because love is happiness. And this happiness is always in his soul. He enjoys feeling love just as much as you do. So you have found your soul mate! Congratulations!

It is no coincidence that flowers are a symbol of love in all ages, in all countries, in all societies. Love is like flowers - if it blooms in you - you need to share it, give it away. And the more you give it, the more it grows in you. If you continue to give, the day will come when you will become an unchanging, endless source of love.

And now we can summarize. So is love really happiness or not?
There are many points of view. Some believe that love is happiness, a divine gift from above. Others say that this is a punishment for sins. Someone thinks: love is just hormones, instinct, the desire to procreate. There is even such an extreme opinion: “love is a physiological or psychological disease aimed at the triumph of nature over the individual.” In the last few years, love has become a serious research topic in social psychology. Personally, I think love is the most important thing in human relationships. And this is probably not just my opinion - after all, how many poems, ballads, and legends have been written about love in the world.

Love can be happy and unhappy, joyful and bitter, flying by in an instant and lasting forever... I most like to read about eternal and true love. Maybe you just want to believe that there is at least something bright left in the world. When people are asked why they are friends or date someone, what attracts them to a partner, girlfriend or boyfriend, most readily answer: “I like him because he is gentle, witty, well-read.” Here we are losing sight of ourselves, because when we say that someone is attractive, we mean that he is attractive to ourselves. Therefore, a more psychologically accurate answer would be: “I like him because I like the way I feel when I’m around him.” We are attracted to such people, and we enjoy this intimacy.

Quite often, others do not accept and even condemn those who believe in love. “Fools,” they say, “why love, suffer, worry, if you can live calmly and carefree.”

They believe that the one who truly loves sacrifices himself. Perhaps these people are right. But they will never experience happy moments of love, as they are cold and insensitive. Happy is the one who has learned to love.

Autumn. September. Love. In my opinion, these are three wonderful words!!! What could be better than a walk with your loved one in the autumn park? Walk holding hands and just be silent. Just hear the quiet whisper of falling leaves, feel the gentle touches of the autumn sun and feel the warmth of the hand of a person walking next to you...
This HAPPINESS!!!

Anyone who has found joy, let him share it with someone else; happiness was born in a couple. Lord Byron

Two leading positive psychologists, Ed Diener and Martin Seligman, studied “very happy people” and compared them with those who were less happy. And it turned out that the only external factor that distinguishes one group from another is having “deep and satisfying relationships with other people” " Spending time with friends, family, or romantic partners is necessary (though not in itself sufficient) for happiness.

When we have people whom we care about and who care about us - people who live the same life with us, share our thoughts and feelings - this helps us to more acutely feel the meaning of our existence, consoles us in sorrows and suffering, strengthens us. We have a feeling of admiration for the beauty of this world. As the seventeenth-century philosopher Francis Bacon said, close friendship “doubles the joys and halves the sorrows.” Without friendship, writes Aristotle, no happiness is possible.

Actually, from the point of view of happiness, any human relationship is very important, but love here is still beyond competition. Summarizing the sociological research on the problem of spiritual well-being and happiness, David Myers frankly admits that “ there is no surer guarantee of happiness than close, full of tenderness and care, equal, intimate, companionate relationships with your best friend throughout your life " No other topic is written about (in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction) or talked about (in cafes, in schools, on the Internet, or on a psychoanalyst's couch) as much as about romantic love—the passionate attachment between two human beings. . And no other topic gives rise to so many misunderstandings and disputes.

Question: Think about the people closest to you. Do you spend as much time with them as you want? And if not, is there any way you can change it?

Love me just like that. Unconditional love.

When we talk about love simply as a feeling or emotion, as a state of mind that has no motives, this is a clear simplification. Love cannot last indefinitely without any rational reason: just as positive emotions alone are not enough for lasting happiness (a hedonist will never know what happiness is, because his life is meaningless), in the same way, strong feelings alone, in itself is not enough to experience love. When a man falls in love with a woman, he does so for certain conscious or unconscious reasons. He may feel that he loves her only “because she is she,” without really understanding what he means by this; if you ask him to clearly articulate why he loves her, he will most likely answer: “I don’t know, I just love her.”

We are taught that when we fall in love with someone, we are guided by the heart, not the mind, that love, by definition, is something inexplicable, mystical, without any rational basis. However, if what we feel is truly love, it is probably due to some reasons. These reasons are sometimes unconscious, that is, inaccessible to our consciousness, and yet they exist.

But if we need some real reasons to love someone, if we only fall in love under certain conditions, could there be such a thing as unconditional love? Or is the very idea of ​​unconditional love fundamentally irrational and groundless? It depends on whether the character traits we love in a person are manifestations of the core of his personality.

Core personality

The core of personality includes the most fundamental and enduring features of our self—our character. This also includes the real principles by which we live, which are not necessarily identical to the principles by which we are guided in words. Since we do not have the opportunity to observe the core of personality directly, we can know a person’s character only through his manifestations, through the analysis of human behavior, since it is observable from the outside.

Suppose a woman—sensitive, diligent, patient, and enthusiastic, because the very core of her personality contains these traits—institutes a correctional program for underprivileged children. The success or failure of this program depends entirely on countless external factors that have nothing to do with the personal qualities of the woman; after all, she took up the work motivated by inner character traits that are part of the core of her personality. This woman's behavior (the fact that she took on this program) reflects the core of her personality, while the result of her behavior (the success or failure of the program) reflects nothing. If one loved this woman unconditionally, he would certainly be happy at the success of the program and sad at its failure; but in neither case would his feelings for the woman herself have changed in any way, because the core of her personality remained unchanged.

When we are loved for wealth, fame or power, we are loved conditionally; when we are loved for constancy, strength of feelings or warmth, we are loved unconditionally.

Question : What character traits form the core of your personality?

Circle of happiness

Psychologist Donald W. Winnicott was the first to draw attention to the fact that children who play in close proximity to their mothers demonstrate higher levels of intelligence in their games than children who play at a greater distance from their mother. Children are highly creative as long as they stay within a certain
radius from their mothers, inside, so to speak, the circle of creativity. The circle of creativity is a place where children have the opportunity to take risks and experiment, to fall and get up again, to fail and to succeed because they feel safe and secure in the presence of someone who loves them unconditionally.

Because adults are capable of higher levels of abstraction than children, we do not need to always be physically close to our loved ones in order to remain within our creative circle. When we know that we are loved unconditionally, we are psychologically in a safe and secure place.

Unconditional love creates a parallel circle of happiness for us, where we are supported in our pursuit of activities that provide us with meaning and pleasure. We are free to indulge our passions - whether it be painting, banking, teaching or gardening - regardless of the prestige or success of our enterprises. Unconditional love is the foundation of a happy marriage.

If someone truly loves me, he or she will want more than anything to see me express the core of my personality to the fullest and exhibit the qualities that make me who I am.

Meaning and pleasure in love

While unconditional love is essential for a happy relationship, love alone is not enough. In human relationships - just as in learning and work - happiness cannot last long if marriage is not a source of meaning and pleasure, present and future good.

Couples who get together primarily for some future benefit - for example, because marriage will help them move up the social ladder or improve their social position - are typical "rats", participants in the rat race. The same can be said about couples who work hard and spend very little time with each other on the grounds that they do it for the sake of the family - to ensure a comfortable and happy future together. Indeed, sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice immediate benefits in order to achieve certain goals in the future, but if you live too long only for the sake of the future, this will ultimately lead to the collapse of relationships.

The other extreme is the hedonist who starts a family solely for his own pleasure, and his attitude towards it is based mainly on how much joy he gets from the family. Since the hedonist confuses pleasure with happiness, he also confuses carnal pleasure with love in a love relationship. However, the pleasures of a hedonist very quickly fade and lose all interest for him, because if the relationship does not have any significant basis, containing something more than the immediate satisfaction of desires, it is impossible to experience happiness.

And the nihilist? Perhaps he decided to get married because it was the “right thing” or because all his friends were doing it. He expects nothing from marriage and receives nothing from it, but simply floats with the flow side by side with his partner - without a goal and without happiness.

Question : Remember your past friendship or love. Which sector would you put her in? Has the very nature of this relationship changed over time?

It is important that you are known and understood, and not just told that you are good

In the United States alone, approximately 40% of marriages end in divorce; This statistic does not bode well for our ability to maintain long-term loving relationships, especially considering that the 60% of couples who stay together are not necessarily happily married. Are these statistics evidence that we are not designed for long-term monogamous relationships? Not at all. At least no more than depression statistics suggest that we are doomed to an unhappy life.

Sometimes it’s really best to get a divorce - after all, not all couples are psychologically compatible, and not everyone can smooth out their contradictions, however very often the cause of divorce is rooted in an initial misunderstanding of what love is and what it entails. Many people confuse simple sexual desire (lust, lust) with true love. But while sexual desire is necessary for romantic love, it is clearly not enough on its own. A marriage based primarily on lust will not last long. No matter how “objectively” attractive a partner is or how strong a “subjective” attraction exists between partners, the initial arousal wears off and the simple physical attraction inevitably fades. Novelty excites our feelings, “the exotic becomes erotic” - and vice versa, if you live with a partner for some time, he becomes too familiar, “one of our own.”

But while intimacy can sometimes weaken physical attraction, getting very close to a partner, truly getting to know them, takes a couple to a higher level of intimacy - which means their love becomes stronger and their sex gets better and better.

In his book The Passionate Marriage, renowned sex therapist David Schnarch challenges the conventional wisdom that sex and passion can be reduced to basic biological impulses. If sex really was all about that, we would have little hope of maintaining passionate love for each other for long. However, over decades of working with couples, Schnarch has convincingly demonstrated that sex can get better and better if we make every effort to get to know our partner better and let him get to know us better.

As Schnarch suggests, if we want to achieve true intimacy in relationships with each other, we need to shift the center of gravity - Instead of craving approval and praise, we want our partner to get to know us better l . In order for love and passion in a marriage to grow stronger over time, both partners must be willing and ready for the other party to know their secrets - and this means gradually revealing the very core of their inner selves - their desires, fears, fantasies, dreams, even when they do not show you in the most favorable light. Over the years, spouses become more and more deeply imbued with each other's moral principles, passions, fears and hopes, and they develop an increasingly detailed map of the inner world of their partners.

The process of recognizing another person, as well as the process of learning ourselves by another person, can continue indefinitely, because there is always something in which one can open up to another and what can be discovered in him. And therefore, it is much easier to maintain the exciting novelty, excitement and freshness of the relationship. Whatever we do when we are together - chatting over coffee, playing with the kids, or making love - our intimacy will be a much richer source of meaning and pleasure if, instead of trying to extract words of approval from our partner, we try better than him. find out and let him get to know us better.

Question : Think about ways you could help your partner get to know you better. Think about ways you could get to know your partner better.

Develop relationships rather than look for new love

Many people truly believe that the secret to a successful marriage is finding your soulmate. In reality, however, the most important and most time-consuming part of happiness in love is not at all in finding the one who is meant to be our husband or wife (I do not believe that each of us is destined for one and only one half), but rather in that constantly maintain, develop and improve relationships with the only person we once chose.

The misconception that causes us to believe that finding love is more important than nurturing it in our hearts can be at least partially attributed to the magic of cinema. There are a lot of movies about the search for love, about the trials and tribulations that two people go through until they find each other. At the end of the film, the lovers share a passionate kiss and live happily ever after, or so we just think. The problem is that movies end exactly where love begins. Meanwhile, the most difficult thing - to live happily ever after - comes after; problems and difficulties often arise when the sunsets fade and the nightingales sing.

We are mistaken when we believe that love itself - if only we can find it - guarantees us eternal happiness; Because of this misconception, partners do not attach due importance to those small and large everyday incidents, actions and events that precisely shape the relationship in marriage. Would anyone in their right mind and good memory argue that since he found a job or got the profession he dreamed of, he can now rest on his laurels? Such an approach would inevitably lead to a monumental failure. The same can be said about relationships in marriage: the real, hard work begins after we fall in love. In the context of marriage, the hardest work is bonding and intimacy.

We achieve greater intimacy in relationships when we get to know our partner better and allow them to get to know us better. Subsequently, relying on your knowledge of each other, this intimacy can be further deepened - To do this, it is enough just to do something together that is a source of meaning and pleasure for both of us. Over time, as we get to know each other better and spend enough time doing things together that we both enjoy, we will build a strong foundation for our relationship that can withstand the inevitable storms of life, and prepare fertile soil on which our love and happiness will blossom. .

based on the book by Tal Ben-Shahar: Learning to be Happy
Also more links from the book:

The concepts of happiness and love are interconnected. Everyone wants to believe that they were born to be happy, to believe that they are capable of loving and will be loved. Love and happiness are emotions of the highest order. And a lot in life has to do with emotions.

Love

How many people, so many opinions. But, according to scientists, these are chemical processes in the human brain. The beginning of love can be defined as. And this period is very good for creativity. In this state, reactions become more intense, physical fitness improves, and intuition works better. Falling in love ends. There comes a period in which people are capable of extraordinary things.

Then comes euphoria. At this time, lovers have an urgent need to be together, to feel and to develop their relationships very quickly. Sex at this time means a lot and can make you forget any quarrel. Over time, the acuity of feelings and the criticality of experiences decreases. The fear of the new disappears, and the desire to change something appears. And during this period, the desire to live together appears. Then feelings of tenderness and peace appear in the presence of a partner.

Hormones return to normal after 18-30 months, and people perceive each other as they really are. After 3 years, hormone levels allow you to fall in love again. Whether it will be the same person or someone else depends on how the relationship developed.

Happiness

So what is love and happiness? Do they exist, and where to look for them? Most definitions of happiness compare it to a dream. Psychology textbooks say that happiness is a state in which a person is completely satisfied with his life.

The paradox is that a person is never absolutely happy. He is always missing something. Those. Is happiness still a dream? When a dream comes true, happiness lingers in the dream for some time and eventually disappears. It turns out that a person creates happiness for himself with his dreams and their implementation.

No one has yet given an exact definition of happiness and love. But we can absolutely say that every moment of a person’s life is valuable and we should try to live it with positive emotions.

Have you ever wondered what words "Love" And "happiness" very often used in close conjunction? Why is it that when love is lacking we cannot find happiness, or when happiness is absent we cannot feel loved. We know that happiness is a feeling of great pleasure, satisfaction with one's life and joy.

And love is a deep and tender feeling of affection and devotion from one person to another. Thus, it can be said that love is the surest road to happiness. Many people say that the way to be happy in life is through caring for another person and his caring for you.

There are many forms of love: the love of a woman for a man, the love of parents for children, the love for their country, for their work, the love for God. Love has no boundaries; religion, age, and financial status of a person are not important here. We can accurately determine by looking at another person that he is in love. It seems that he is floating in the air, fluttering and not noticing anything around. This man is happy.

And a person is happy because he has found his life partner, received a promotion, his wife gave birth to a child, and for many other reasons. And people are happy because they have someone to share their feelings with. And this is the most beloved and closest person.
Because of the feeling of love, we become strong to face all the obstacles in our life. Love allows us to get rid of insecurities and “complexes” and achieve our goals in life. Our happiness becomes a powerful shield that protects us from all adversity and trouble.

Material wealth and power cannot replace love. They can only create the illusion of happiness. People who only worship power or wealth will always be in search of truth. They do not live surrounded by loving people. They are surrounded only by subordinates or hired workers.

When we are full of love, our life is full of joy because we know what we want and what makes us happy. When we give love to another person, and he loves us back, our souls and our lives become richer, more colorful and brighter. Well, the normal continuation of love is a wedding, the birth of children and their love for us. And then for sure It will become clear why the words “love” and “happiness” are very often used together.

Love and happiness to you.