The Secret of Happy Parents: How to Stay in Love as a Couple and True to Yourself. Steve Biddulph
of your dreams? Having had some friendliness from them in the past, there seems every reason to hope … and so you finally take the plunge and pour out your heart! To your horror, they look alarmed and utter those fateful words: ‘Oh no … oh wow … look … I really like you, but …’ It’s lucky that hope springs eternal, or we’d all be celibate!
Whatever kind of attraction you start with, a developing couple partnership will usually grow to involve all three. When liking, loving and lusting are present in symphony, then the effect is unforgettable. Since this often happens more by accident in the early years, you will sometimes be left gasping, wondering what you did right! As you get older, you will have to be your own fairy godmother. You will learn more about how to achieve the sustained and deeper communication, so that your love isn’t a lucky accident, but an achievement, a deepening well of experiences shared and lessons learned, that you can draw on at any time.
Now let’s explore how the three levels of attraction work, and then what to do when they stop working. Even if you’ve been married for fifty years, you’ll enjoy reading this part, to reminisce and understand the journey you have already made. If you’re a little younger than that, it might even help you to power your love-life along!
Liking: a meeting of minds
Liking is the safest, easiest kind of human attraction. You can like all kinds and all ages and sexes of people – you can even like people you don’t approve of, or would never buy a used car from. Often you will like some things about a person, and dislike other parts of them. (If you like everything about someone, stick around; something you won’t like is bound to show up.)
As you get more involved with a person, either as a friend or as a lover, then you might ask them to change behaviour you don’t like. Relationships involve changing ourselves all the time. It’s no big deal: if you are giving your lover a back rub, you might do it vigorously, because that’s what you enjoy. They explain they like a gentler massage, and so you change. If you live together, you might like to make the kitchen spotlessly clean and tidy after every meal. They might prefer to leave the dishes for a big once-a-week cleanup. Committed partners sometimes make big requests of their partner: to give up drinking or smoking or living a life of crime, for instance! Our partners may change, or they may not. We are all aiming to get more of what we like, and less of what we don’t.
A trap with liking, especially when we are starting out in a relationship, is that we will tend to like people just because they like us. Especially if we are inexperienced or, let’s face it, a bit desperate. In fact, it might be their liking us that is the main attraction. If their enthusiasm for our wonderful qualities fades, as well it might, then we might discover we do not like them after all.
In courtship and dating behaviour there is usually a huge amount of talking going on, hours on the phone and late into the night. But it isn’t just small talk; it carries all kinds of hidden meanings. ‘Do they like me?’ ‘Do they want to know me better?’ ‘She yawned – what did she mean by that?’ It’s a beautiful if rather anxious time, and one which we will remember all our life. Spoken words seem to acquire a powerful magic.
The jokes, repartee, questions and proclamations of what we believe in and what we like and dislike, are part of a natural screening process. We are ‘interviewing’ for the job of lifetime lover. It’s important to find out if this person, who looks great on the surface, is really a horrible psychopath, or hopelessly screwed up, or is exactly your kind of person!
What to look for
What human beings like in another person is pretty universal. Are they kind – to us, and to other people? (How do they treat their mother?) Are they funny – not the try-hard, jokester kind of funny, but good humoured about life, including its difficulties. (Why do the singles columns always have SOH – sense of humour – along with ‘likes romantic walks, candlelight dinners’, etc. Do they really mean: ‘Has to be able to put up with me being a drunk, losing the family car in a card game?’ You can just imagine the conversation six months down the track: ‘ So I burnt the house down – where’s your Sense Of Humour?’ While we’re on the subject, why do the singles ads never say ‘Good at washing up’ or ‘Excellent with crying babies’? And how about those that say ‘Children not a problem’? Who are they kidding? But we digress.)
Are they realistic, clear-headed, practical? These are likeable qualities, and very valuable in a partner-to-be. Do they have beliefs and values that you admire, and are they doing something more than just spouting words about these things ?
There are other qualities we like too, of course, that are not quite so deep. Lots of people marry or move in with someone because they like their hair, or those cute dimples, or that heaving bosom, or their country music collection. Good luck to them.
A note of caution. Our hormones can be our worst enemy at this stage. From the mid-teens on, nature wants us in love and breeding fast, so a certain amount of applying the brakes is needed. You make the best choices when you are not in such a hurry. That’s why it’s a good idea at any age to fill up your need to like and be liked with friendships of many kinds, before you get into the tangle of involving yourself in a couple. Loneliness blurs your judgement – believe it.
Loving: the heart connection
Liking usually comes first, but loving can soon follow, and everyone over the age of ten knows that this is a different and more powerful emotion. It’s the feeling that says ‘special’. Limited edition. Limit one per customer.
Love requires a certain kind of openness and trust, a willingness to be vulnerable. Listen in on this conversation between a couple in their thirties, just beginning a relationship, and tentatively beginning to risk being open:
| She: | I’ve been missing you. You haven’t called all week! |
| He: | I wanted to call. After last time, I didn’t think you wanted to see me! |
| She: | But I thought you knew how much I felt for you. |
| He: | Well … you get so critical and cold sometimes. |
| She: | I … I just don’t like to feel controlled, that’s all. |
| He: | I don’t want to control you. |
| She: | I know you don’t, it’s just, well, I’m anxious about being too close to a man again, I don’t seem to choose men well. |
| He: | Thanks very much! |
| She: | Oh, you know what I mean! |
Notice how misunderstanding and hurt can easily arise. Yet only by being honest by saying those risky things like ‘I wanted to call’ and ‘I thought you knew how much I felt for you’ can we allow love to grow.
Loving is complex because it carries the baggage and expectations from earlier love experiences, including those from childhood. In men this might include feelings about mothers who were or were not there for us. In women it will tap into memories of fathers who were kind, or mean, attentive, or absent. You might feel a strong attraction to someone who is actually a bastard, because bastards