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In the beginning, everything was bliss.
You fell in love even though you didn’t know each other very well. Maybe you liked the way you felt around each other: giddy, cheesy, and like a kid in a candy store. You emphasized what you had in common and either overlooked the small differences or didn’t pay much attention to them. You put each other on a pedestal and thought you would stay up there forever.
Puppy Love Forever?
If you think your love story starts when you worry about whether she will call you back or whether he will want to see you again, you’re probably a romantic. Being a romantic is great, but if your understanding of love has been mistakenly taken over by how you felt in the beginning of relationship, you may be stuck in puppy love. Grown up love is different.
Along the way, something happens that destabilizes a relationship and takes it out of the romantic stage. It can happen shortly after you start living together, when you add children to the family, or when you need to make a big career decision or move.
Sometimes it happens within the first six months of a relationship. It can take longer, but it always happens. The “kid in the candy store” feeling begins to wane, as it should. If it were to continue, you wouldn’t be able to concentrate at work or you may neglect your other roles and responsibilities.
When you fall in love, the exhilarating feeling has more to do with relief than with real love. We are relieved that somebody can accept us and that we can reveal so much of what we needed to be kept secret and hidden before. We put forth the best version of ourselves in order to be seen and accepted. We may not show immediately what happens when we get frustrated, when we feel insecure, when we don’t like our bodies, when we are hungry and tired.
The more insecure we are to begin with, the more doubts we have about our self-worth, capacities and imperfections, the more we struggle with our own sense of self, the more intoxicating and exhilarating the seemingly bottomless acceptance of another person is.
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