To Arouse Dormant Love
Sleeping love is like a bird caught in a cage. It exists, it lives, we can hear its song and its heartbeat. But it cannot open its wings and fly freely. It is a situation that many couples who love each other experience.
They have a deep affection for each other and both know about it. However, they do not fully express it, and therefore it does not fill their lives with magic.
This feeling can be confusing. You can feel as if you no longer love someone, even though you still feel affection. But if you worry about losing the person, you can immediately see that you are dealing with a dormant love.
Nevertheless, you have your doubts: is it worth staying in a relationship that does not excite me? Is it really love or just a habit?
Almost all couples have these types of issues during a long-term relationship. A group of researchers at Florida State University in the United States also asked these questions. They designed a study to find out if the introduction of change in a relationship can make it bloom again. The answer they found was “yes”.
We all know that the first stages of a relationship are exciting. In the first phase, which we call love, it is like living in another world.
We feel butterflies in the stomach, of course, but beyond that it is as if everything falls into place. Nothing is ordinary, everything is complete and true. It’s like finding a piece that was missing in a puzzle. When the puzzle is complete, a celebration and fantastic picture is revealed.
When we are in love, we get a little taste of eternity. It is such an extraordinary feeling that we never want to give up. However much we want to keep it, however, the magic of the initial stages begins to disappear. The butterflies fly a little slower. We discover that eternity, after all, has its limits.
If love was a plate of food, we have destroyed the aesthetics of the presentation (partly because we wanted to) and started eating. At that point, literal disappointment arises. It is not uncommon. It is not uncommon for us to find an aspect of the other person that we do not like.
We come out of a dream and return to reality, which is always a minor disappointment. If we have a strong bond with our partner, we succeed in navigating this transition and moving on to a new stage. It’s less exciting, but also deeper.
As time goes on, however, we can feel nostalgia for how we felt before. This nostalgia is exactly what leads us to question whether there is still love – whether it has been transformed or is no longer there.
We may not reject our partner, but we also do not feel the same enthusiasm as we did in the beginning. We may not want to end the relationship, but we feel indifferent to it. We also realize that things we gladly did for our partner in the past have now become a burden.
This is the stage that the researchers at Florida State University studied. They also found the key to reviving relationships. Let’s see what it is.
The researchers found that each person automatically associates their partner with a series of images and ideas in the presence of dormant love. These subconsciously appear in the mind, so when a woman sees her partner, for example, an image of a pair of slippers is projected, while a man can see his partner and think of a sink full of dishes.
The researchers asked themselves what would happen if the trained couples exchanged these automatic answers. The experiment – with this hypothesis in mind – focused on getting each person to associate their partner with new, positive images. Instead of seeing old slippers, the woman saw a puppy. Instead of a sink with a sink, the man saw a cute animal.
Psychologists used the method of operant conditioning. This consists of giving a reward every time the person associated the image of their partner with something positive. When he did not, he received negative encouragement or nothing at all.
The experiment was performed with a group of 144 volunteer pairs. To achieve more objective results, positive images were shown for some couples and neutral for others.
The experiment showed that the researchers’ hypothesis was correct regarding dormant love. Those who received a positive association condition with their partners felt that the relationship was given new life. Those who received neutral association condition (for example, an image of a fork) showed no major change.
They showed that love is also something that changes and adapts in the brain and that it is very sensitive to associations. They showed that love can be revived by saving and strengthening it.
The key is to create bonds between the people’s images of each other and positive stimuli. Maybe that’s why partners who have mutual admiration for each other have no problem keeping love awake and alive.
