Why Do Relationships Fail?
We are all social beings. We live by communicating with each other – we maintain our social lives by talking to, listening, and understanding one another. These are vital needs for us. Relationships are a part of communication and taking pleasure in this communication. That’s why we assign meanings to communication itself. Clearly, communication takes many deep and different forms.
I want you to take a step back and look at yourself, your surroundings, your loved ones and those closest to you. Some people have very successful relationships, whereas others constantly fail at them. But why? Why are some people always disappointed in their relationships? What’s the reason behind their unhappiness, their loneliness? This is what we’ll focus on today.
Dear friends… Distorted perspectives greatly affect relationships. What exactly do we mean by distorted perspectives? The biggest reason for relationships to fail is our level of mind and consciousness. Another reason is assigning meanings to ourselves and the other person.
Because when a person cannot fully accept the other person for who they are, their relationship will probably not work. This is due to the distorted perspectives that prevent us from accepting ourselves as we are and cause us to assign much meaning to the other person.
Distorted Perspectives
In the cycle of our lives, we come across two types of distorted perspectives: About ourselves and other people. If we assign too much meaning to someone, think too highly of them, and admire them, it means that we have a distorted perspective. The opposite is also true. If we look down on someone and think of them as insufficient, worthless, and bad, then it’s still the distorted perspective that’s at play.
People with distorted perspectives cannot successfully maintain relationships. Because two people need to be on the same level for their relationship to continue lovingly. The distorted perspectives in our minds and the meanings we place on other people find their way to the surface one way or the other. We already have problems with communication as the outside world constantly reflects our minds, and we keep dismissing others as not our equals.
Moreover, our relationships don’t work because we don’t see their traits in ourselves – and vice versa. And most importantly, if we cannot accept this, we lose ourselves in intense emotions like desire or hate.
As we all know, Freud has done a lot of research on this subject. According to him, the energy we feel towards a person, or an idea, means we’re heavily concentrating on something, which happens when we assign meaning to a certain thing. This causes the person to switch to the superego side or fall into the pit of id.
I would like to explore this further with a few examples. Thinking too highly of ourselves causes us to climb the ego ladder and show narcissistic behaviours. In contrast, when we think too highly of others, we reduce ourselves to nothing.
Physical Attraction and True Love
This is exactly what we refer to as physical attraction. Finding someone attractive is all about the distorted perspectives in our minds and the meanings we assign to life. What we’re feeling is not love— that’s not what true love is.
Love doesn’t have an opposite. Love is only experienced in the neutral state of mind where we think of ourselves as another’s equal. And when we lose this neutrality, we experience physical attraction and find ourselves in an illusory situation, which is not love.
That’s why the more meaning we assign to someone, the more we desire them. In the end, because we have glorified the person in front of us, we find them checking the boxes for behaviours that we see as the most despicable in our minds. Love itself is a more balanced state. Emotion, though, is not.
