By: Ana Patricia Vera (psychoterapist)

Falling in love… period of dreams, smiles, illusions and pleasant feelings. Necessary stage to start a couple relation, but, what does falling in love really mean?

It appears as a projection of two people involved at a conscious and unconscious level. It means to see in the other what I would like to have, and I don’t; as well as the things I do not like of myself and the other has.

Actually, at the beginning of the falling in love, I cannot see in the other something that I do not have myself, it is a pure projection of my self from which I form a psycho-affective image of the other. This image that I make of the other is focused only in the positive part, introducing a defense mechanism called “denial” that avoids those aspects I do not like of myself that I cannot see in the other, considering the other person as the object of my happiness; for the things he/she gives me, for the sensations he/she produces in me when I have him/her near, as well as for the fact of receiving interest and affection details.

After a while, the falling in love period comes to an end and the level of sensations that a person feels when he/she is near the other person or even just by thinking on him/her decreases. We start seeing the other just the way he/she is, with his/her qualities that we overqualified at the beginning, and his/her defects that we did not see at the start. The image we created of the other is broken and we have the doubt if we made a good or bad decision; or if we feel resentful because the other “lied” showing something that was not real. But the reality is that that first image we had, was only an IMAGE, the positive projection of myself, but not the other person.

Maturity in love is recognized when a person is capable of relating in a whole way, accepting positive and negative feelings that the other person generates to us with his/her specific personality. It is very satisfactory to feel related to the other because of those positive aspects that the other has and that I can see now. It also implies the acceptance of my own qualities and defects that my partner can see now and makes me see more clearly, having still the satisfaction to relate to one another by the positive aspects.

Laing mentions that it is necessary to have a solid feeling of our identity reality in order to be able to establish a relationship with the other and not feeling threatened to lose oneself. If one does not have that maturity base on oneself, the relationship will be superficial and will make us look for another person who does not demand a deep love, going from one relationship to another in a constant search of that moment that we know as falling in love.

Love, unlike falling in love that only makes us feel good, has another objective: letting the other be as he/she really is, encouraging him/her to be better, causing in me a feeling of completeness, growing with the other in spite of the difficulties we face.

Falling in love is wonderful, but loving and being loved is even better.

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