Why romantic love should not be imitated

“If you really love him you can overcome all the problems.” “Will find your better half”. “If he loves you, he knows what you want without having to ask.” There are so many myths that revolve around love that you will probably have them so integrated that you will have released one of these little gems at some point in your life. And if you haven’t said them so as not to be a movie fan, you’ve surely thought about them. And that’s what he talks about the psychologist, sexologist and couples therapist Susana Ivorra in his new book, Lights, camera… Love!. How cinema has created a romanticized and sweetened idea of ​​romantic relationships that are, ultimately, a lie.

«Cinema has taught us many things, among them how to fall in love. However, it has not taught us how to love. Or at least not in a healthy way,” says the psychologist in her book. Although you would never have thought about it, few films tell us what it really is. a healthy and stable relationship, they only show us the beginnings, that time in which passion is overwhelming. Normal, on the other hand, because what comes after can be considered more bored but, although it is not tinged with the madness of the beginning, it is what is truly beautiful. «We lack references of what it is the love of the good and yet we have plenty romantic love modelsmany of them with toxic and even abusive relationships, whitewashed, romanticized and glamorized,” Ivorra points out in his text.

In cinematographic terms, it is normal to recreate the stage of falling in love, since it is the one that will awaken the most emotions in the viewer. «In that first phase everything is new, full of insecurity and very intense and the couple lives in a continuous state of need of the other person. Over the months, this high gives way to other emotions. Anxiety and insecurity lead to tranquility and security and falling in love evolves into love. Or heartbreak, of course,” Ivorra points out in her book.

It can be understood that the calmest and most mature part of love It may be less salable in a movie, but perhaps if they showed it there wouldn’t be so many dissatisfactions in real life. «Loving and being loved is something incredible and wonderful, but also an important risk when you live it from beliefs that are impossible to sustain, incoherent with each other or from asymmetry,” he warns.

Myths of romantic love

The first thing we want to clarify is what they are romantic myths that perpetuates cinema so happily. According to doctor in psychology Carlos Yela, romantic myths are a set of socially shared beliefs about the supposed true nature of love for Western culture. A kind of decalogue of good practices that at the same time explains what it means to love, according to what he tells us. Susana Ivorra in his book.

Thus, he emphasizes that they are “absurd, impractical, not very achievable and, if they are achieved, not very sustainable over time. They are behind disappointments, dissatisfactions, but also behind the reasons why a person stays in a toxic or even abusive relationship,” warns the psychologist. And what are those myths you are telling us about? In her book she talks about some.

1. Divination Myth: how many times have you heard that “If I have to ask you for it, I don’t want it anymore.”. As if your partner has to be aware of your needs even when you don’t make them explicit. «This myth has a trick and it is that in order to be able to anticipate the needs and preferences of the other you have to be very aware and all This hypervigilance is not sustainable over time without paying a price: disconnect from your own needs and preferences, make others the central axis of your life, take responsibility for their emotions… and this whole cocktail makes us drunk with emotional dependence,” Ivorra warns us in his book.
2. Myth of the better half: feel you an incomplete being that needs another to be whole It has a double fatality. On the one hand, not finding that half that is lost in the world can make you suffer a lot. On the other hand, be responsible for ensuring that the other person does not feel empty It can make you feel a lot of pressure. And Susana finds a third negative consequence and that is that, when you find that better half who has finished completing your existence, you can be able to justify anything to keep iteven at the cost of your own values ​​and needs.
3. Myth of falling in love and love as equivalents: one of the great mistakes about love is confuse it with falling in love. According to the expert, «falling in love is a state in which the person experiences highly activated physical and mental sensations. When you experience these same sensations without a person in your head we identify it as anxiety«. Curious, right? But what happens when that novelty gives way to familiarity? «Insecurity gives way to security and those feelings of anxiety are transformed, if the relationship is healthy and satisfying, in peace and tranquility. The mystery almost completely disappears and with it some feelings of intrigue, excitement to know more, to explore,” she explains.
4. Myth of durability or eternal passion: According to this myth, the initial passion of the first months can last forever, but the truth is that it only lasts a few months, then that intense desire for union in which you can’t see beyond the person you love, mitigates over time. «When you see that uncontrollable desire in the movies and in our lives our relationships They no longer have that power from the beginning, we feel dissatisfaction. Can sexual desire continue to exist for the same person you have been with for many years? Yes, it is possible but it will not happen by magic but with effort,” Ivarra assures in his text.
5. Myths of exclusivity and fidelity: «These myths come from Christian morality and they talk about how romantic love can only be felt by a single person at a time and that this endless passion must be satisfied by the same person over time and exclusively,” the expert explains to us. Is thinking this wrong? No. To think that it is the only way to understand love and, therefore, any other option is demonized and understood as immature love? Neither.
6. Marriage myth: It is the belief that love always leads to marriage or cohabitation and you can buy a house with someone and even have children who, If you don’t get married, you’re not really committing.. According to Ivorra in her book, associating marriage and love is something of the past.
7. Myth of omnipotence: This is the belief that love conquers all. «Will love also triumph if your partner despises you, controls you, mistreats you? The myth of love can do anything is behind many relationships of violence but also toxic relationships and even others in which one member of the couple sets out to save the other,” warns Ivorra.
8. Myth of free will: the belief that love is born, remains and dies alone, without there being anything you or the other person can do to change it. As if nothing influenced love. «We feel free, but we are not. We are free to make decisions, but let’s not fool ourselves, they are conditioned«, warns Ivorra.

These are the myths of romantic love most common that are recreated by cinema in the vast majority of films. But, also, in the book Lights, cameras… Love! Susana Ivorra gives a twist to movie loves that have marked your childhood. Stories that transmitted some questionable teachings passed through the sieve of this couples psychologist, so that you are able to discern how much of your idea of ​​love is conditioned by these cinematic loves.