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Relationships - Falling In Love and Falling Out Of Love.Our ability to enter and maintain relationships is at the very core of human lifestyle just as the core of most religions is marriage and family. So why do more and more couples break up after taking vows of “Till death us do part.” There are many and varying reasons for this phenomenon and we will devote a different article to things like the affects of finances and communication in your lifestyle. This article will deal with the more general aspects of relationships and examine why we fall in love and, more importantly, why we fall out of love. When you understand these basics it will become much easier to settle your differences when it is called for. Let's be honest and recognize the fact that after a relationship breakup both partners go through a period of regret wondering if they made the decision for all the right reasons. That is a call that is almost impossible to achieve until you understand the role of your own mind in the decision. The first thing to learn is that our desires are driven by our brain and the way that we see others is controlled by a particular function of the brain known as the reticular activating system (RAS). It is this function that will decide how attracted two people are to each other, whether there is a future for us or whether this isn’t the right partner for me so maybe we should just move along. For the benefit of simplifying the explanation of falling in love let us picture a young lady that has just met a young man and is fascinated by certain aspects of him. This may trigger her RAS to view him in a positive manner and no matter what she discovers about him she will only see in a positive light. For instance: - He only drinks red wine – wonderful! - He likes to read for more than hour each night in bed. – Terrific! - He wears outrageously colored shirts. – How individual! - He leaves the toilet seat up. – Fabulous!
What is happening is that her RAS is focused only in a positive manner on all matters pertaining to this man and it does not matter what he does she accommodates it without too much change to her routine. She is falling in love and has found her ideal man, the person she wishes to share her life and love with and they marry. Now let’s fast forward life by a couple of years and we find the same lady confiding in a girlfriend that she is unhappy with her marriage. She confides things such as: - He only orders red wine despite the fact that I like white. - Every night he goes to bed and wants to read for an hour or more. - I feel embarrassed walking with him when he wears one of those garish shirts. - If he leaves the toilet seat up just one more time I’ll walk out for sure.
Do those complaints look suspiciously like the all the things that she loved about him two years ago? Of course they do, so now we must discover why she is falling out of love with him and endangering the relationship. Just look at the complaints she is making and a neutral by-stander could easily draw the conclusion that he has not changed because: - He still likes red wine just as he did when they first met and fell in love. - He still reads for an hour after going to bed. - He still wears brightly colored shirts. - He still leaves the toilet seat up.
In fact he is the same person with the same habits, so why is he unbearable now and he wasn’t when they met and were falling in love? It is simply because her RAS is now viewing these once positive traits as negative traits. What has moved is her RAS, not his behaviour. She now views him with a different set of standards. She has probably hinted a thousand times that she would like him to change certain things. She is wasting her time, few men understand hints – they have to be told that something that was acceptable is now unacceptable and most ladies will be surprised at how willing they are to change. So we are now starting to see this problem as one of two perfectly normal problems that occur in all relationships: - The RAS has changed focus and this is normally due to negative thinking. - It is normal and will happen frequently during life. - She tried to use a feminine method of hinting at dissatisfaction when he only understands the masculine approach which is: “If she doesn’t tell me something is wrong then everything must be right.” To make relationships work we must all be aware that it is normal for our RAS to change the way it views many things from positive to negative and then back to positive. This changing of your RAS from a positive view to a negative view is the way most relationships start to break up and this is because the majority of people fail to understand that this is a normal life process. It can be changed, or mellowed, by recognizing it and rejecting many of the negatives that creep in. But it also signals that the time is right to have an open and honest chat and ensure that both parties are conversant with the operation of their RAS before starting that chat. In the hypothetical case we give in this article the lady should raise such points as: - I like white wine and would appreciate being given a choice from time to time. - I would rather you stay up to read and treat the bed as a place where we share our personal life. - Those bright shirts do have a place, like on younger people on the beach, but they no longer send the right message at your age. - Would it hurt too much if you were to lower the toilet seat occasionally? These statements are all clear and understandable by men and the majority of men will react favourably to them. So be aware of your RAS and take control of it rather than have it control you and your relationships will prosper. When things go wrong and appear to be out of control it is good to have
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