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Hello everyone. My name is Faya. I'm a consulting psychologist, primarily in family psychology. It's more about the approach, yes, in which I work with a systemic family approach. I'm also the author of a content blog and courses on
Psychologist Faya Fataliyeva explains the 'hope for love instead of love itself' scenario in relationships and how to recognize and move beyond it.
Key Takeaways
- True love develops through mutual, steady desire and growing intimacy, not just hope.
- Long-term hope without reciprocal effort often signals a dysfunctional relationship pattern.
- Obstacles like addiction or avoidance can block intimacy and need to be acknowledged.
- Recognizing when hope replaces love is crucial for emotional well-being and relationship health.
- Personal reflection and realistic expectations help break the cycle of waiting for love.
What the video covers
- Faya Fataliyeva, a consulting psychologist, discusses a common relationship scenario where one partner hopes for love rather than experiencing it.
- She explains the difference between developing intimacy through mutual desire and being stuck in hope without real connection.
- The scenario involves one partner waiting for change or a miracle to start mutual closeness, often over long periods.
- Obstacles such as addiction, workaholism, or avoidance of intimacy can prevent the development of true intimacy.
- Hope replaces actual love, causing one partner to invest emotionally without receiving reciprocal affection.
- The video highlights the importance of mutual effort and steady desire to build intimacy and love.
- Faya shares personal insights about workaholism as a form of escape from intimacy.
- She emphasizes recognizing when hope becomes a barrier to genuine connection and the need to address underlying issues.
- The video encourages viewers to reflect on their relationship dynamics and avoid idealizing or justifying unreciprocated hope.
- Understanding this scenario can help individuals make healthier decisions about their romantic relationships.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Approach
- 02:46Mutual Desire and Intimacy in Relationships
- 05:11Hope Instead of Love Scenario Explained
- 07:41Obstacles to Intimacy: Addiction and Avoidance
- 10:13Personal Insights on Workaholism and Escape
- 12:13Recognizing the Hope Trap in Relationships
- 18:35Impact of Childhood and Past Experiences
- 23:00Breaking the Cycle and Moving Forward
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
the psychology of human relationships with significant others, with ourselves, and with the external reality that surrounds us. Today, I wanted to record a video about a scenario in romantic relationships that I would call "hope for love instead of love itself."
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Moreover, this hope is very long-lasting and, as a rule, very unfounded. I recorded a vertical video about it, and it actually resonated quite well. Ah, yes, I saw that many people are interested in this topic, many of whom recognize themselves in it
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to some extent, so I decided to expand on this thought and idea. Because no matter how hard I try to make a short vertical video—even when it's not a minute long, but two, almost three minutes—and I also provide it with a
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description where I provide some clarifications, and then a little bit in stories, and on the day of publishing the video, yes, I clarify some questions, clarify some things—but still, in the library, let's say, yes, it still remains quite laconic and
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concise. And this, of course, is not how to develop this topic, and not how I would like to develop such topics, because these are topics, ah, interesting and deserving of our attention. I dressed the same as I was
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dressed in that conversational video, to draw some kind of visual parallel, yes, to draw. So, hope for love instead of love itself. What kind of scenario is this? I mean, what kind of, ah, yes, relationship is this. This is a
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configuration of your love, romantic relationships, maybe even family relationships, in which their entire content is reduced, as it were, not to your interpersonal intimacy with your partner, but to one that develops and grows through a mutual, sustained, albeit varying intensities, but still
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mutual desire for each other, yes, for each of you. You get to know each other, you experience life together, you share, right? This is how you develop your intimacy, which in the long run can lead to what we call love, union,
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family. But even this sustainable intimacy doesn't begin to develop the kind that could ultimately lead to love. Because it's normal for intimacy to develop and grow, but at some point it doesn't lead to love, and at some point
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you break up because we fall in love, we get to know each other, that is, there is already a mutual desire, yes, for each other. And in this mutual desire for each other, we open up to each other, share some experiences,
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that is, we get to know each other, see how we interact on VKontakte, each of us, with the other. And at some point, we might discover, discover some major mismatch, yes, or somewhere, the idealization that is characteristic, at
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least to some degree, of everyone in love will subside, and we will see that what seemed so at first was just that, and the discrepancies that emerged are critical, and we will break up, yes.
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But there was still a moment when we both invested in developing this relationship, this intimacy, and at some point it happened and grew. But hoping for love instead of love is a configuration in which even this simple dynamic toward possible love, yes, and
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the strong, mutual, stable attachment that is necessary for a family, marital relationship, doesn't even begin to develop. But one of you persistently hopes that something will change now, some miracle will happen, the other will fix something in themselves,
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change something, reconsider, re-decide, and then it will finally start to happen. And it's important that this doesn't happen over weeks or months (because that's normal for falling in love), but when you're stuck in this situation, stuck for years, yes, or
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maybe more than six months, and you still don't see the other person warming up to the idea of you trying to get closer and, in fact, starting some mutual desire for each other. It's not even about, you know, him or her having
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to choose me, but at least he or she chooses to try to get closer, to see if we can choose each other. Right? That is, as I've said many times, a steady desire for each other, even if only for
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the purpose of getting to know each other—this, in general, is the beginning of the development of intimacy. And even this, as something so stable that it doesn't happen in periodic bursts, yes, like these peaks, eh, short-lived, like a few weeks, a
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couple of months, but something that can happen steadily, and we can become closer and closer—it doesn't happen.
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And so, one of you in this relationship constantly lives with this hope that this will begin to happen, this expectation, this anticipation that the process of this growing rapprochement will begin to unfold. That is, the content of your intimacy is largely
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filled with this hope of one of the partners. That is, this is a configuration where the other has one hopeful, right? So I hope, I keep waiting. I hope that here I need to do something on my part, and my partner
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needs to do something on theirs. You just have to wait, and it will start happening, right? And the other person, in my eyes and in his own eyes, or in his own eyes, as he himself says, has some kind of obstacle, some kind of
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"but," because of which it can't start happening now. That is, there is some kind of obstacle, and among, for example, the qualities of the object of your affections, yes, your lover, some external circumstance to which it is easy to shift the responsibility, uh,
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for the fact that this intimacy is not happening, and you just wait for this obstacle to either be eliminated or have less of an impact on us, or for the partner to do something about it now, and then it will begin. And often
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this obstacle is, for example, the addiction of the second partner, that is, the one with whom you are still hoping for intimacy. Addiction varies: chemical, alcoholic, I don't know, gambling. Workaholism to a very pronounced degree, yes, that is also an
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addiction. Well, in general, workaholism is an addiction. When a person loves and enjoys work, it doesn't always mean they're a workaholic. We call someone a workaholic someone who truly struggles without work. That is, a very large part of their identity is invested in
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their professional life. And this is a very fragile construct, because there are few other supports in their life.
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But their own value is located in this sphere, and it seems not to belong entirely to them or to be appropriated.
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And they, in their work, if we call them a workaholic, essentially escape from reality, from the intimacy, perhaps, that occurs in other areas of their life with other people. And, in fact, from themselves, or from themselves, outside of this type of
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realization, outside of this sphere of manifestation. I can tell you this 100%, because it's me. And I know that this is real, at least to some extent, escaping. But the most important thing is that in such a scenario, hoping for
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love instead of love itself will inevitably be perceived either by you yourself as an obstacle, preventing intimacy from happening, from even beginning, from being built, or from the words and perceptions of the person themselves, the objects of your, uh,
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feelings. Ah, so he or she says: "I can't right now, I'm working now, my priority is here, I don't have time to get close, I don't really need it, I can't." Or, for example, a strong avoidance of intimacy for various
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reasons. Mm, well, the person might even say: "This is obvious:" I'm not made for this, this is not for me. I find this super difficult and challenging. And perhaps he doesn't even tell you that he plans to do
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something about it and change it somehow, but it's very important that people for whom this scenario is typical, hope instead of receiving love. That is, I don't receive this love, and instead of receiving it, I only hope that receiving it will someday
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become possible.
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scenario, because some kind of one thing appears, but overall he's a great person, who is very suitable for me, but there is this wart, so to speak, on his body. This is his avoidance, his workaholism or some other more
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destructive addiction, or just some generally extremely incompatible with my priorities in life. And that's why I say "wart": because Often, those who prefer to sit for a very long time and hope that something will change perceive it as something, roughly
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speaking, somewhere here in a person, yes, it has grown, so to speak, and then it can be easily taken, cut off, and eliminated. But it is not something that is hanging in one place on a person, yes, I don’t know, or like
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some kind of weight, I don’t know, tied to his arm. And at some point he just needs to take it and untie it. And how will he become capable of the intimacy that you expect, yes, about which in theory you somehow fantasize
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and, in fact, with fantasies, which is what keeps you here. No, if a person has been in your life for so long, you are in some kind of pre-term relationship or even in a relationship status, but this is only an external
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framework, and you do not feel that any sufficient intimacy is happening there for you, that this intimacy has any developing dynamics, then this most likely means that This "something" that you think is interfering, hindering— this "but"—is one of the supporting
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structures of a person's personality. Yes, when, for example, we take alcohol addiction—that's a very common perception, right? Even if you listen, for example, to people who belong to the ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) , if, for example, their alcoholic
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parent wasn't violent—that is, wasn't the perpetrator of any obvious violence in the family—and, you know, was a quiet person, who would get drunk and simply get emotional, and he would rather, you know, complain, and even, perhaps, become very soft when
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intoxicated. But it's the child who suffers most openly, whose empathy is much more developed than critical thinking and the ability to appreciate that this is an adult who is out of control, who cannot even connect with his feelings without this state of
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intoxication. The child He can't, yes, appreciate it that way. For this child, the image of the parent, you know, also fits into this phrase: a wonderful person, a wonderful, loving father.
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Well, he just drank, yes, he just drank . It sounds like something really trivial, although the whole family may have revolved around it. And the whole family also seemed to adapt to the cycles of sobriety and intoxication of
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this parent. And in fact, he was the main problem child there, yes, because alcoholics are almost always traumatized children in the bodies of adults, mm, around whom everything revolved, so to speak. That is, when a person is dependent on alcohol for a
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long time, their addiction is like another member of the family. But such a split, yes, in the child's perception of the parental object, it can exist, even if the addicted parent was very aggressive, also in a state of
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accusation, because, perhaps, there were apologies later. And when he wasn't on a drinking binge or wasn't drunk—or she, Actually, it's rare for mothers to drink, both often drank, yes , if it's an alcoholic dysfunctional family, and even if during an
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explanation this person is more aggressive, dangerous, posing a threat, then outside of this state, he was also quite somehow, well, functioning, at least, and this is in contrast. And to the child, and perhaps to the other parent, it seemed like something that
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constantly revives hope and allows mm, too, to perceive this person somehow positively. And so such a habit appears , ah, perceptions. A good, wonderful person, except for one "but." Yes, well , he beat, yes, as it were, but you
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need to understand that this is simply an example that most easily explains it with alcohol addiction, that it is such a large part of him, and, perhaps, this person could only be a functioning, more or less reliable, responsible,
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good person because these states alternate with states of intoxication, where, hiding behind in an altered state of consciousness, he can openly, without filtering, without trying to do it in an ecological way, express his aggression, disappointment, cruelty and something else, and then say: “Well,
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I was drunk, but when I’m not drunk, I don’t do that.” We’ve already gotten a little ahead of ourselves, and I began to talk about where this habit of yours might come from: not so much receiving, yes, love and directly being
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in intimacy, but how much regularly hoping for it, periodically experiencing some episodes when it is still possible, but it is unstable, and constantly, as it were, a person falls out of it. If we return, yes, to examples of how this can be played out
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with whom, that is, what could be the but, interfering, as I hope, it seems to us, our intimacy, and the elimination of the disappearance of what obstacle I am waiting for. Yes, for example, with a workaholic. With a
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workaholic, it is generally interesting , because workaholism is very easy to romanticize and idealize and pull it like a quality, ah, that would characterize a person very well. That is, a hard worker, a good girl, independent, right? But it’s like her
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main focus right now, or his, and, well , there’s little room for our relationship. He’ll finish this startup in three years. Or he says in three months, but he’s already said that four times. And then, yes, when he
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can, well, sleep not just a maximum of 5-6 hours and work, but 18, uh, constantly justifying investors’ money or something. And then we’ll finally be together. And I’m sitting here and waiting for it to happen. And we’re not talking about, you know,
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when a person actually says: “Listen, you’re great, I really wouldn’t want to lose the opportunity to be with you. I’m going through such a period now. Literally, give me about a month or two, I have a really big project.
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And after that, I’ll, well, take our relationship into account. That’s one thing. Indeed, you meet, for example, you get to know each other when the person is in the midst of some kind of active phase, in a certain area, in a
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professional field. But it's still the same, you see: if the person has made an internal decision that they want to get closer to you and build some kind of relationship, then you will still feel that your relationship is becoming
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, as it were, some part of their reality, which they try to take into account and integrate as much as possible. And not when, you know, for a year, a year and a half, or two, in the same configuration: when the person
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works every day, has one day off, when they don't want to talk to anyone, you don't even go for a walk together a couple of times in the evening and don't talk over dinner. That is, you really don't have any intimacy.
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Meanwhile, you can, for example, live together. And it's as if the person constantly says: "I have a job, and until I earn this, this, this, this, this, this, this, I become this, don't expect anything like that from me." But
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if this happens, as I said, for more than a few months—because, for example, you met when the person was engaged in some kind of project activity—then it's more like, well, this is really the only way the person knows how and prefers to function and
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build their life. It's a kind of avoidance within the external framework of the relationship. Of course, everything is very contextual and there are different situations, but this example could be exactly the same in a situation in which, in fact, the other
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person exists within a scenario. I constantly hope for love and intimacy, instead of receiving it. And here it's also very important that the intimacy I'm hoping for, it's as if it never existed here. There was never any prolonged period, not like these
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flashes, like five dates or five weekends where everything was great, and we never had a single long period where I felt that our intimacy was stable on both sides, as was the desire for it. Well, that's an example, right?
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Someone who says, "I have completely different priorities in life. I work a lot, and I'm not trying to change my routine at all to make time for you and your relationship." There's an important caveat here. Look, if intimacy for you means talking for
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three hours every day, about everything and nothing, but for the other person, it doesn't mean you're in that scenario . That is, the intensity, the closeness , and the desire for each other can vary. The need for quantitative and
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qualitative time between partners can vary, but you feel that the person, roughly speaking, has made a choice, that they're in a relationship with you , and they're kind of building it, taking into account your needs and preferences, and they're also somehow
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developing intimacy in their own way. Yes. Well, another question is that it might not be spending three hours together five times a week, but two, yes, but you feel like you're truly together, that you, each of you, are a
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part of the other's life. And it's also very important that this isn't a period when, roughly speaking, you've been together for three or five years and you, for example, decide to take a big step together or you experience a major
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crisis—for example, some external circumstance, or one of you loses a job , or, I don't know, some problems arise in the family, debts, I don't know, one of you has a relative divorced—in short, something changes from, well, from the outside world, because of
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which one of you sort of falls out of the relationship because they start working hard or toiling, or falls out of the relationship because they start a severe depressive episode. And then hope is a very important part of your
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love, which, in fact, will help maintain this relationship and overcome this crisis. But it's based on memories and the assumed experience of your existing closeness. That is, you're hoping for the restoration of contact and intimacy, not for it to ever begin.
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It's already been here and has been for a long time. So here I hope, I rather believe, yes, that we will cope with this. It's very important to distinguish this. That is, when, from the very beginning, it was as if what I
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expect from this contact never existed, yes, that's precisely the scenario; this could be called the scenario of hoping for love instead of love itself.
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And another thing is when we, we've already been in a relationship for quite a long time, I don't know, 5, 6, 7, 8 years, we've already dealt with certain crises. And now, well, our intimacy has weakened, because one of
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us is trying to cope with some external crisis, or one is experiencing a major internal crisis. Here, this hope, well, it's realistic, because it's based on some specific experience you've had with each other. That is, you know for
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sure that this person is capable of the intimacy and contact, the restoration, the return that you expect. Understand, right? There's a difference here, and it's very important, because without such hope and faith—well, not based on what you've already had—it will be
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difficult for you to even try and overcome a crisis. Another issue is that sometimes even this hope and faith isn't enough, because sometimes relationships don't survive crises, and this needs to be accepted and somehow come to terms with it. Sometimes,
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someone experiences such a severe internal crisis that they're unable to maintain a relationship at all. That is , we, every couple, every person has their own limit of tolerance for another person in such a severe crisis, in which they can't be intimate with us
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for a long time. This is important to understand. But it's also clear that this lasts, well, a week, several weeks , a couple of months. Of course, if you want a lifelong relationship, then this will happen a lot. Especially if you're
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planning on becoming parents, then your closeness and connection will periodically be sacrificed for the sake of caring for each other and your child . Or one cares for the child, while the other cares for the other. That's what
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happens, generally speaking, when a family expands from a dyad to a triad. But I'm talking specifically about scenarios where, as I've said many times before, that closeness, but the steady movement toward intimacy, the mutual desire for it, hasn't even begun
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. Or when there's a big "but," like alcohol addiction, you know, some part of you hopes that, despite this, everything will be okay, or it will pass for my sake, that they'll change and quit. Yeah, well, a person can only
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quit for themselves. And if a person truly suffered from addiction, it's not a matter of just up and quitting one Monday. It's a matter of long-term, specific, meaningful treatment and long-term psychotherapy. When I say long-term, I'm not talking about a few
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months, but about a year and a half, probably. And another good example of where this scenario of hoping for love instead of love itself can flourish— yes, with what kind of partner can this scenario flourish—with a highly avoidant person who, for some reason,
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can't feel stable intimacy, and is either on a swing, or she swings you. Women swing on swings too, yes, as if borderline personality types, borderline mental functioning, don't have a single gender. Actually, there are many women with borderline
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functioning, too. Mm, and they, too, can be the creators of the swings on which their male partner swings. And in relationships, sometimes I love you, sometimes I can't, sometimes I adore you, that is, I highly idealize, I wait
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for you to ask me to marry me, and then suddenly I change my mind, I don't want to anymore, and it's goodbye, right? Or a man who's like, "You're really important to me," this relationship is really important to me, and it could be
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completely sincere, right? And he really does feel that way, but he can't really, you know, fully commit to it.
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And you have to understand that, of course, this isn't a reason to, you know, call these people childish or whatever. Of course not. It's actually, well, there's a great tragedy inside a person, but it's very easy, when you're
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in love with someone like that, to fall into this scenario of hoping for love instead of love. Moreover, their inner suffering can evoke a lot of sincere response from you, sympathy. But you also have to understand that here, uh,
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until a person looks at themselves from the outside, maybe you can tell them, like, "Listen, we've been going back and forth for three years now, neither this nor that, sort of in a relationship." So, it's not like the
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person is choosing you, that's it, we're in a relationship, we'll somehow manage, even though it's hard for me, but we'll get closer, yes, and you see that he or she is trying very hard to be consistent. Yes, it's difficult for
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them, but they're trying. Well, they've already decided how they would like to develop this intimacy, right? But when it's constantly hot, cold, closer, further, and yet the person still won't let you go. So, it's like you exist in
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limbo, in this state of expectation that now something will happen, and now they'll just up and say, "Okay, let's go, let's go." Right? Or something will just happen one Monday, mm, yes, if the reason is that this person has such a
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level of trauma, attachment, uh, give me intimacy, separation, individuation, that he—or she—will just one Monday , like their psyche, grow to the capacity for sustainable intimacy, and everything will immediately become super, right? And your task here, if you are this person who lives, you
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understand that you now recognize yourself in someone who endlessly hopes for something that never happened here.
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Well, or there were very few, yes, just crumbs of bread. And sometimes, like, in these flashes that simply do not allow you to completely bury this hope, but to a large extent, your relationships occur and are supported by your hope, by their potential. So
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much directly by the very content of the relationship. If you recognize yourself in this person who hopes for love more than they receive, then it's crucial to stop trying to figure out to what extent this obstacle, yes, within
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another person's life or within them, is surmountable, correctable, and influenceable. This is what needs to be stopped. And you need to explore when and why I got used to or learned to only hope for love and not receive it.
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Why is this dynamic of relationships suitable for me? There was a spoiler already, for example, when I talked about one of my parents, yes, or primary adults, being an alcoholic. Let me explain how this happens. When we are little children, for us, the adults
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around us, parents or their surrogates, are like kings and gods, because a child's psyche, when they are born, is relatively empty, and it is filled, as it were, yes, so external experience becomes the content of our psyche. And
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we understand ourselves, we generally understand that we exist, that our existence is a good thing, right? That is, we somehow acquire a positive background around our sense of existence precisely from how our significant adults constantly react to us. To what extent they react to us at
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all. They notice us, they talk to us, they come to our call, they smile, they are present. They are somehow involved.
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Well, if you listen and watch this video, but at some minimal level, your significant adults provided you with this, because your psyche is, in fact, in a state in which you are capable of reflection, and you have some interest
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that made you watch this video. But in some way, there was a deficit, yes, a deficit of attention, a deficit of a sense of my own unconditional value.
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This may have been poorly conveyed by my significant adults. And this is not necessary. We are talking about some kind of cruel neglect, about where criticism greatly exceeded, and, yes, the message that I acknowledge you, accept you, love you, see you, respect
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you. This could also be about situations where there was simply very little contact. A parent was absent because, for example, they were working a lot and times were hard. So, this doesn't necessarily mean some kind of blatant neglect on the part of the
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parents or some kind of outright abuse. It could simply be an absent parent, but we would also classify this as a neglectful type of care. And we, as children, don't develop a sense of our own invincible value. That is, we are
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valuable in ourselves, that simply by existing, we deserve good treatment, deserve attention, deserve to be taken into account in someone else's life.
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And it turns out that in our relationships with significant adults, we lacked the reception, yes, of this love. But when we are children, we can't see it that way. We can't think critically from the outside. And since our significant adult is such an
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important figure in our psyche, because our overall identity is formed around them, around what they convey to us through their attitude, we strive to preserve their positive image to the very end. In fact, idealization in our lives, as a phenomenon, stems from our
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relationships with our parents, where we sometimes tend to justify even an abusive parent to the very end and strive to see something good in them.
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This happens because a small child's loyalty to the significant adult on whom they depend is very high, because a child is not independent, and if they call things by their proper names and see this person as a bad person, even a
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danger, then where will they go? They will leave and die, right? We feel this way at a young age. It's as if no one needs us anymore. We ourselves are not yet able to live fully, yes, but who
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else needs us? And this desire of ours to maintain a positive image of the parent to the last, coupled with this childish egocentricity, this omnipotence complex—you've probably heard this term when a child, as I already said, has empathy that far
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exceeds critical thinking and the ability to assess a situation from the outside. Well, because there's no real knowledge yet about what's right and what's wrong, what parent-child relationships should consist of.
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Empathy far exceeds critical thinking. Oh, and we try to justify the parent to the last, who simply doesn't give us something—yes, something we need by right of birth and existence within this system as children. Mm, or is cruel to us, for example. And when we
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don't receive love, but we try to maintain a positive image, and the parent, well, we still have an attachment to them, this attachment is filled with our ability to hope that something will change. So, it's like some of our relationships with someone
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very significant to us, a significant adult in the primary experience of familial attachment, where we learned to cope with the absence of love, and, uh, the hope for it, right? So, to some extent, this is how we eventually
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adapted to external reality. And you have to understand that this strategy for a child is quite effective, because it really does help cope with pain. So, a person, a child, chooses this strategy; their psyche offers them an option. Let's just hope that this will
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change. Let's try, let's wait, let's justify it, so that, well, we can somehow survive, right, because the pain of my parent, for example, being incapable of love or that they, uh, are so weak and dysfunctional, that they're an alcoholic—that would be unbearable
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for a child. It would be, well, perceived as a threat to life. I can't, as a child, evaluate it that way. And so I need to convince myself a little that things are a little different here than they actually are. It's precisely
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this perception, this dynamic, and the fact that we've learned to hope for love instead of receiving it, that we reproduce when we find ourselves in a similar situation as adults. So, again, this could stem from, for example, your
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mother being cruel, cold, narcissistic, and often critical of you, loving you only when she showed you some love, care, when you deserved it. She didn't have that—again, that's the word for it—that kind of stable feeling for you, something you could be confident
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in and feel was always there. A disposition, yes. A position toward you . Mm, and you're used to constantly trying to win her love, her attention, her approval, and hoping that you'll win her over, do this, this, this, this
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, and she'll be like that, like she is when you've done everything right and she loves you and praises you. Then she'll always be like that, right? Or, for example, your dad is an alcoholic, or maybe your dad was like that. That's
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also very common. Or, for example, your dad is an alcoholic, and you think everyone should try to somehow love him back, or feel sorry for him. And then he'll just stop drinking, right? Then it will all magically resolve itself.
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And this hope, where it appeared, was your way of coping with the pain, the pain of reality, yes, which you would have to face if you could see everything as it is. So what do you do if you're that person who's always
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hoping for love? And for love that's not planned, that doesn't happen, and, in fact, never happened here, or maybe only happened there for the first few weeks, months, and then for a year and a half, you're just hoping that somehow
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it will continue, yes, that it will move on somewhere. Explore your past experiences, and where did you learn why this kind of attachment dynamic, this kind of attachment content, is even normal for you. Why? When it started to suit you, spoiler alert, not
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here, not here, somewhere else. And call a spade a spade. That is, where you were hoping the other person would change, when in fact they were just this or that person. That is, call them what they are. I'm not saying you need
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to call everyone abusive or narcissistic, yes, if we're talking about parents, but at least call them, you know, by names like, "My parent was absent." Yes, how can we understand that he didn't do this for the good of
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his life: he would have really wanted to be present, but the circumstances were different. Or, well, as a child I was isolated, and I didn't receive love , and I was left only hoping for love instead of experiencing and receiving
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it. Or, for most of my life, I was raised by a grandmother who was very critical, and she instilled in me, yes, a kind of scenario that in order to receive even a little bit of love, you need to wait, try, and hope that it
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will work, right? That is, you need to name what happened to you, where you learned this. Like, you learned to feel and build relationships the way you build them within this scenario. Hope for love instead of love itself. Once
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you name it, of course, you will have to sort of get closer to the pain that lies behind it. It often happens that simply naming and seeing this pain is not enough, and you will need to bring it somewhere. Well, I mean a
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psychologist's office. Because, uh, sometimes understanding and awareness are not enough for us. Sometimes it's crucial for us to draw out these emotions, to confront them, to live through them, to rethink them in the presence of a stable other, who will
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definitely be there at that moment, with the primary goal of helping us endure and cope. The next thing you need to understand is that this "but" —some external circumstance about your partner who never seems to give you what you expect—is precisely why
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you chose them, or at least one of the reasons why you ended up in a relationship with this particular person. Because, without knowing firsthand what it's like to receive love and be in love, you yourself were unconsciously seeking a relationship
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where your usual dynamics would play out. That is, where there's always some obstacle, causing you to hope and expect more than you actually receive.
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This is about what transference is, right? Transference, the one everyone talks about—transference, reinvention —is an attempt to repeat the dynamic and feel the same way I've already felt . And it's not necessarily the external manifestations of the relationship
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you're in that will literally repeat, " My dad's an alcoholic and my partner is an alcoholic." My dad might be an alcoholic and my partner a workaholic.
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But even there, you were constantly weaning the person off their addiction, off alcohol, so they'd be in touch with you, or my mom was constantly doing the same to them. And now you're constantly tearing the person away from their
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dependent relationship with work, with their professional activities, right? So the dynamic is repeating itself. You feel yourself, you're in an approximate position. The external circumstances may not be so literally repetitive. If you've realized that you tend to idealize, justify to the last, and hope
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, please don't jump to the conclusion: that's it, I'll never do that again. When I feel something like that, I'll immediately. No, this is your thread, which you pull on like this, and you come into contact with a vast amount of
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your own experience, which can reveal itself to you. This is fundamentally important in building relationships with yourself, with others, with the outside world. Use this as an excuse for great exploration—long, vulnerable, and painful. But trying to remove it, simply stifle it, suppress
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it—well, at the very least, it simply won't work. It's pointless. It won't work for you. It will still surface at some point. If not in this relationship , then in another area of life, but most likely, right in this relationship
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. Or you'll go to the other extreme and never have any hope at all, always quickly becoming disillusioned and simply flying at the speed of light at the slightest mishap, which is the other extreme of the same problem. And
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it's very important to learn to recognize your limitations, the limitations of your influence on another person, and to see that the other person has a reality they don't want or can't change. And no matter how wonderful a person he is according to
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his list of virtues, if this persists for a long time, it's a good reason to perhaps leave the relationship and save yourself from getting stuck in this scenario of hope instead of love. With that, I say goodbye. I hope this was
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interesting. I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments.
Topics:hope for loverelationship psychologyintimacy developmentfamily psychologyworkaholismavoidance of intimacyromantic relationshipsemotional healthrelationship adviceFaya Fataliyeva
