D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
April
2009
Beyond the Rose Garden
How to survive the transition from "in-love" to "loving."
By Bina Breitner
When you fall in love, it's a fabulous rush. The lover is marvelous. Everything she does is fun and sexy. He is so capable, fascinating, exciting, sensitive, considerate, everything you've dreamed of.
If your relationship lasts long enough, the rush subsides. It turns out your lover is another person, with complicated feelings, some irritating habits, occasional bad moods or unkind comments. What happened? Or, as a married client of mine named Rosalie put it, "One morning I rolled over in bed and looked at Bob sleeping, and I thought, 'Who is this stranger, and what is he doing in my bed?'"
What's happened is that your serotonin level has returned to normal. I'm not joking. A study conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of Pisa, Italy, found that people in love had serotonin levels 40 percent below normal. In that regard they resembled people diagnosed with obsessional disorders. Given shifts in serotonin levels, the researchers concluded, "true love is pre-set to last no longer than 18 months at a time."
Most of us probably aren't going to say to our partners, "You know, we've been lovers for 18 months, so that's that." We might still be in love. Or we've made a commitment and choose to keep going. Or we keep hoping the flush of in-love will return regularly — and sometimes it does. (We have the template for loving each other in our nervous systems; Rosalie really does experience moments, even years later, of the love she initially felt for Bob.) Besides, if we can adjust our relationship over time, we get other, quieter, and perhaps even more valuable rewards like companionship, loyalty, a shared history, a sense of family, warmth, respect and friendship. These are precious privileges, worth working to develop.
But couples really do shift out of being in-love, so when the bloom is off the rose, Rosalie has a challenge on her hands — and so does Bob, because he's been in the relationship for just as long as she has. Can they survive the transition from in-love to loving each other? Can they adjust their expectations to accommodate the reality of the other person? Can Rosalie recover from seeing Bob as the stranger in her bed instead of the ideal man she married? And can Bob deal with Rosalie after he's misplaced his rose-colored glasses?
Here are some clues on how to make that transition when the moment arrives:
Stop. Recognize that you've been living in the fragrance of the love roses, and now you're out of the garden. Things are going to have to change. You can't stay in the garden any longer; it's time to take stock of your life together outside the garden.
Examine your partner. Think about what you fell in love with — which qualities you saw in him or her — and compare those with what you now see before you in the clearer (less flattering) light outside the garden. Try to stop kidding yourself, and try to stop blaming.
Examine yourself. What did you want him or her to be, for your sake? What did you need? Was he supposed to compensate for your sorrows, hurts, fear or loneliness? Were her good looks going to make you feel better about your own not-so-perfect looks (but now you're seeing she's not so perfect, either)? Was his income or position supposed to help you feel more important in the world (but now you realize his job, too, can be a bore, and anyway that's his job so you're not any more important than you ever were)? Was his sense of fun and excitement going to enliven your routine world? Was she supposed to be your drinking partner and party companion (but now she wants to stay home at night and go to bed early)?
In other words, look at yourself as a story in progress, and ask yourself how your lover was going to add to, or improve, your story.
This process takes a while — it's always harder to know ourselves than to evaluate the other person — so give yourself as long as you need to honestly recognize what you hoped your lover could fix, or compensate for, in your life.
Can you live with what you're learning? Now that you've figured out what you needed, and have a clearer picture of who your lover really is, can you cope? Can you adjust to knowing your lover isn't magical, that he or she is just another flawed person and not an ideal, that the phase of in-love is over and both of you have your gnarly feet on the ground outside the garden. . . ?
This adjustment is more difficult than it sounds, because you're dealing with what feels like a broken contract. In your mind, you say to your lover, "But you promised you'd always find me fascinating!" No, she didn't. She found you fascinating while she was in-love, but you made up the "always" part because you were in-love, too. "But I thought you'd change once we were married!" Well, you thought that, but you were wrong. Once he's emerged from the garden, he's the same fellow he was before he went in. The truth is, each of you invented those contracts, and they don't hold up in the court of reality because the other partner never signed on (or they were high on the smell of roses when they did).
The adjustment is difficult also because it's so extreme. You're not starting from a neutral position and just now factoring in some of your lover's imperfections. You've been living in the ecstatic garden, so returning to normalcy feels brutal.
Because of the complexity and severity of these let-downs, the transition is tough for couples to navigate. While Rosalie was in-love with Bob, he was a player in her own script and doing fine. Now that she sees him as a stranger in her bed (the separate person, the not-her), she's deeply disappointed. Consciously or unconsciously, she now says to herself, "If you aren't going to say your lines properly, why should I put up with you?"
And a lot of couples break up. If not, read on. . . .
Can your lover live with it? Let's remember that your lover has been booted out of the in-love garden, too. Take a look at how willing he or she is to make the necessary adjustments. It isn't enough for you to get realistic about him; he also has to get realistic about you. ("Oh, you mean he's going to see me as I really am?")
Start dealing with your own needs. You did a good thing when you figured out what role your lover was supposed to play in your life story: you defined what you actually need to attend to. If your life is dull, figure out how to enliven it. If you feel unattractive or unimportant and wanted your lover to compensate for it, do whatever it takes for you to feel attractive or important in your own right. If you carry misery within you, call a therapist to help you unload it.
This is the part of the transition that makes people angry — giving up the unrealistic belief that the other person has special powers and is going to be what you need him or her to be. When you're in-love, you project marvelous gifts onto your lover. You really feel he or she can relieve your memories of an alcoholic parent, the divorce, the worries about money, the drugs, the anger, the callousness, the shame, the loneliness and confusion, the failures, the illness. Life is strewn with dreadful things, and most of our lives are touched by a few of them. The lover is going to make up for all of them!
Well. . . only while you're together in the garden. And now you're out, so here they are again, and your lover is failing you. But the truth is, it's your job to come to some kind of terms with what you've been through and what you need.
Find things you enjoy and that feel meaningful to you. If you like TV and movies, but your lover wants to read in silence, find a movie pal. If you like tennis and he likes football, round up some tennis partners. Go to church alone if your lover isn't interested. Seek out a hiking or biking buddy. Overlap and share where you can, but your lover is a person, not someone you got through mail order or Internet auction. And you, too, are a person, not created only to fulfill his or her wishes and dreams. Each of you needs to take care of yourselves.
Appreciate your lover. Now that you're clearer about who's who and who can provide what, tell your lover often and out loud what you enjoy, like, admire, love and appreciate about her or him. There are ways you benefit from the relationship. Let your beloved know you realize it and value it.
Why not? We're all imperfect and limited, and it feels great to be appreciated rather than taken for granted. We all need the nourishment. If you want to develop a fresh, loving and more lasting relationship with this person you're getting to know, try valuing and respecting each other — not just in the garden of in-love but on terra firma. It's a great way to grow.
Bina Breitner, MA, is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist in private practice at 808 W. 8th St. in Silver City. She can be reached at 538-4380.