They got back together after a breakup. Why do we return to former loved ones. I had someone

I think you have heard many times about stories when people broke up to meet again and continued to be together. Many couples specifically want to break up in order to meet different, new sensations in their relationship.

Every couple has a chance after parting to meet again and be together, you just need to have the right idea about relationships and love.

You can part in reality, or you can part with one of the stages in a relationship in order to enter another, new one, maybe deeper and more interesting.

The big problem for all of us is that we want to perpetuate love and relationships.

Having met a lover, a wonderful period of falling in love begins, where we show our best sides, when we are ready to give love every minute to our half and receive in return too.

And we are sure that this is happiness, this is love!

No one thinks about the fact that nothing living does not stand still. Everything changes.
Children grow up, relationships have their natural phases of development, everything in nature develops and changes, one thing leaves and another appears.
In love, we want to make time stop so that the stage of falling in love lasts a lifetime.
It's impossible.

Love, like all living things, goes through its regular stages.
One stage leaves, another comes to replace it, certain voids form between the stages. When such periods come, the person does not want to accept these changes, he thinks that love is over, that he made a mistake in choosing a partner, that this is not His person, but He is walking somewhere else.
This is how breakups and betrayals happen.

“Love in its most complete form is a series of deaths and rebirths.”
If we part with one facet of the relationship, and any parting is accompanied by pain, disappointment, loneliness, and we enter a different phase of the relationship with the same person, then we discover the depth and breadth of this feeling.
We live through loss and separation in order to meet another, and then again part with this period, and again experience pain, disappointment, loneliness, in order to enter an even deeper level of love and relationships.

We are so afraid of pain, loneliness and disappointment that we do not want to live it.

It's much safer to close your heart, move away from your partner and move on with your life, or break up with your existing partner.
Or swear, demanding that the partner become the same as he was before at the beginning of the relationship.
It is really difficult and not easy to part with a period of cloudless love, part with the former person and former self.
But without these partings and losses with one person, it is not possible to comprehend the full depth of that feeling about which so much is said.

When one stage of a relationship ends and it seems that everything is over, many people ask me:
“What to do next? Why continue to be with this person?
I always advise you to wait, not to make hasty and "careless gestures."
It takes time to understand if this is really not your person, or if this is a natural stage in any relationship.
Do not rush to conclusions during this period, do not look for someone or something that helps fill the existing void.
Just be in it and live all the pain and disappointment to the fullest.
Only after living, you will be able to understand your person or not.
Most do not have enough fortitude and patience to live through such periods, hence the betrayal destroying trust, which then can be very difficult to restore.

During such periods, it is very important to continue to fulfill your duties.
To the man his duties, to the woman hers.
It is the fulfillment of duties in relation to each other that makes it possible to keep existing relations from the final destruction.
Having lived, and not running away from such periods, you can understand whether you need this person further or not.
Do not rush to find your other halves, maybe your soul mate is next to you.

“To love means to accept and at the same time endure a great many endings and beginnings. And all this in the course of one and the same connection.

Dear women, let your men read this article.
I think one of the tasks of a woman in family life is to teach men the laws of love and family.
Yes, they do not like to listen and talk about such topics.
They will brush you off and say that all this is nonsense.
But it only seems that they brush it off, then after a while they will quote your words to their friend.

Irina Gavrilova Dempsey

“One night I was awakened by a phone call,” says 35-year-old Olesya. The ex-husband called. He said that he had been thinking about me for several weeks and asked me to come. My heart beat terribly. I didn’t even expect such a reaction from myself: we lived together for five years, parted, but I didn’t have longing for our relationship.

I decided to go. We walked for a long time, talked - about us, about our daughter. They did not come together right away - for some time they met in the apartment that Pavel rented, but then they decided to live together again. It's been three years. I could not imagine that our family life could be so exciting, although it cannot be said that it comes easily to us.

Those who start a new life with former lovers are sure: this time everything will work out. Does this mean that the breakup was a mistake?

There are no mistakes in relationships.

Everyone has crises and problems, they are inherent in human relations. But today, married couples, unable or unwilling to resolve the crisis, especially quickly come to a break.

“People feel unhappy but do nothing to change the situation. It’s easier for many to conclude: I chose the wrong person, ”comments family psychotherapist Alexander Chernikov. - Very young people often get divorced after a serious quarrel. And they are driven by the desire to take revenge on the partner for the offense.

After a divorce, spouses often quickly create new families, and many years later they meet already mature people and realize that their act was meaningless. Such plots underlie the scripts of many films - both dramas and comedies.

Alexey and Yulia got married in the first year, divorced in the fourth. After parting, the relationship was not maintained. After graduating from university, both went into the book business and met by chance at a fair. They had not seen each other for about six years - and it was as if something pushed them towards each other. Two years later, after a chance meeting, a second wedding took place.

A couple that reunites should not consider their divorce a mistake.

“I don’t think that there can be mistakes in the process of relationships, this is not a mathematical problem,” says family therapist Anna Varga. Relationships are always wrong in some way and always right.

Perhaps at the time of the divorce, these people had no choice: they believed that the only way to solve the accumulated problems was in this way, and they did what seemed right to them. Then these people can connect again - and again do the right thing.

Love or nostalgia?

It is important not to confuse nostalgia for the past with a real opportunity to rekindle a relationship. “Sex with an ex-husband or wife does not mean that people have the intention of reconnecting their lives,” says psychoanalyst Stanislav Raevsky. - This includes both the desire to maintain power over another person, and the need to increase self-esteem: “He cannot forget me” or “I am the best man in her life.” But do not cherish the hope that a marriage proposal will follow in the morning.

Living alone is difficult: loved ones criticize for the gap that has occurred, the future is unknown, and therefore frightening. But this is not a reason to resume relations. They can lead to a new break, which will be much harder to survive.

Why do we meet again

Growing up, a person becomes more tolerant: he is ready to accept the shortcomings of a partner and does not seek to get everything from marriage at once.

“When we are young, we often get married to get recognition, respect, to feel that someone needs you,” says Anna Varga. - But then children are born, and the feeling of need is realized, we make a career - and self-respect appears. And when we meet again with a former partner, there is a desire not to take, but to give, take care, create joint comfort.

“It was I who initiated the divorce after fifteen years of marriage and the birth of three children,” says 50-year-old Elena. - We lived apart for ten years, and quite successfully - both professionally and personally, although I never got married, and he did not.

We met at the wedding of our eldest son, talked about something insignificant, but I understood more and more clearly that he was still interesting to me. After thinking everything over, I sent him a letter, wrote that we should get to know each other again. He answered right away. We met, talked and decided to live together again.

Now we have a completely different family. We used to behave like selfish children. Today we are rediscovering each other, including sexually. It’s like forgiveness: it’s like all the partners we had connected us and we looked at each other in a new way.”

Over time, love can grow into friendship, a deep, stable feeling to which a person returns.

After a divorce, it often seems that the former spouse has the most unpleasant qualities. But when new partners appear, the comparison with the former spouse often turns out to be in his favor, especially if a lot of time has passed since the divorce.

“Starting relationships with others, people sometimes realize that new partners are even worse than the ones they had,” says Anna Varga. - And during the separation, the former spouses forgive each other, they have no anger, only warm memories remain. When they meet again, they usually say to each other, “I didn’t appreciate you. I've never had anything like it with you."

It happens that life does not work out in a new couple because the relationship with the former partner is not perceived as completed: the divorce occurred in a fit of feelings, and the spouses did not discuss its reasons. According to Alexander Chernikov, “a feeling of incompleteness can bring a person back to their former partner, and such options are often successful.”

They return to the former spouse even when the need for violent feelings is replaced by the need for support, understanding and real, full communication. Psychoanalyst Stanislav Raevsky confirms: “Over time, love can grow into friendship, a deep, stable feeling, to which a person returns.”

I had someone...

Which is better: to remain silent or to talk about what happened during the period of separation, in particular about your meetings with others?

“You don't have to tell everything,” says French psychoanalyst and sexologist Gilles Forme. - This is an intimate part of every person's life.

But sometimes you can hint about your adventures. First of all, if we are talking about couples in which the partners literally merged together, strangled each other with feelings. The appearance of a third person will help to avoid such a mistake and build a life on a different basis.

If one of the partners in the past considered himself ideal, then a frank conversation will help the newly come together people to finally take equal positions in the pair.

Express new words

Those couples who managed to become happy a second time have something in common - a different scheme of personal communication, which they build instead of the one that once led them to a divorce. To start all over again, you need to understand why nothing worked the first time.

“Before you start living together, you need to find out what the phrases “We fell out of love with each other” and “We fell in love with each other again” mean to you, advises Stanislav Raevsky. - They parted because the friendship was impoverished, sexual interest disappeared, there was no mutual understanding? And what exactly attracted you the second time? Answering questions will help build new relationships.”

“When Igor and I realized that living separately was boring for us, we finally started to really talk to each other,” says 33-year-old Katya. - Previously, my husband reproached me for the fact that I was for him not only a wife, but also a sister, mother and even a child! Now he understands that each of us, playing different roles in turn, reveals his fantasies - and the relationship becomes more interesting.

When we openly and in detail talk about our feelings, we understand each other better, discover the unexpected in a partner whom we seem to have seen through. “Communicating for real, you can understand that the partner is still a mystery to us,” continues Stanislav Raevsky, “Therefore, there will be both joyful and sad days in the relationship.”

Deal with the past, move into the future

Parting rarely happens calmly and benevolently.

“When we started living together again, everyone thought we were crazy,” says Fedor, 38. - We had a terrible relationship: we publicly shouted at each other, fought. Before getting together, we asked each other for forgiveness. Both had to admit that each behaved incorrectly.

It is necessary to make sure that new relationships are not destroyed by old problems. Forgiveness helps to focus not on past suffering, but on the positive aspects of living together and building a happy future on this basis. “If people have not learned to find compromises since the break, the same negative situation may arise in their family as before,” warns Anna Varga.

It won't be like before

The hope that it will be possible to recreate the same couple that you were before the divorce is a big delusion. Crises change relationships, and breakups even more so. And this must be recognized in order not to try to revive what will never be. “In the process of divorce, each of the partners has already seen the shortcomings of the other, and their own,” says French psychoanalyst Yves Prijean. “Such a test makes it possible to understand that love relationships are not a generous relationship between mother and child, but the connection of two inner lonelinesses.”

But it is not worth building a family as a union of two renewed people: we return to partners with all their habits, problems and shortcomings. It is not necessary to expect that the ex-husband or wife has changed radically during the separation. “The idea that people change over time is destructive,” explains Anna Varga. - People who decide to unite again remain the same - older, older, but the same.

Therefore, it is better to perceive a person as the former, but relationships as new. ”

Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting

It takes courage to start a new life together. It is necessary to reconsider the past, not be afraid to hear the truth about yourself, accept the characteristics of a partner and agree that they can give happiness, not suffering.

Only after this work has been done, can you allow yourself to dream that you will be able to enter the same river twice. And this time the water in the river will be a little warmer.

Some like it hot

There are people who simply cannot imagine life without violent quarrels and sweet reconciliations. Sometimes it goes to the extreme: one of the spouses is kicked out of the house or he himself leaves, slamming the door. This may be followed by a divorce, and after it, quite possibly, the wedding of the same characters.

“For such people, the most important thing in marriage is passion,” comments Alexander Chernikov. - A measured and calm life seems wrong to them, they want to live in some kind of heroic myth. Here in such a pair there can be departures, and returns, and divorces with marriages.

Sex and the City, a series that has already become a classic of stories about modern relationships, showed us how it happens. Kerry returned to the Man of her dreams over and over again, Miranda fell in love with the father of her own child, Samantha fell for Richard's bait more than once ... And this does not look like fiction at all. In life, we often try again to build relationships with those with whom we once broke up.

• “I broke up with him because I wanted a serious relationship, and he was not ready, - says K., who is familiar with such a life scheme firsthand. — Then he panicked and tried to get me back. I decided that now we are on the same wavelength. But he felt he had made a mistake. I understood this and left. It happened over and over and over the years.”

And this case is not unique. Researchers say that 44% of young people aged 17-24 have reunited with those whom they previously met, but broke up. Half of them had close relationships with former partners after breaking up.

On average, people who are either together or apart have time to disperse and reunite with each other twice a year.

Popular

Dr. Sarah Halpern-Meakin, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, says this is unique in our time: never before has this form of relationship been so common. Representatives of the generation of our parents or grandparents, as a rule, if they parted, they parted forever.

Why has everything changed?

1. First, the professor suggests, because our contemporaries wait longer before getting married. And they have more time for throwing: they broke up, got back together.
2. Secondly, we have fewer stereotypes. We are not dominated by the idea that there should be specifics in a relationship: either you are together or not.
3. Besides, in today's culture, casual sex is much more tolerant, and it's not strange or unusual to be back in bed with an ex-lover. This "friendship" often leads to the fact that the relationship begins the second (third, fourth) round.
4. And also social networks. If you have not unfriended him on Facebook, Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, you will always receive reminders of his existence. You don't have to gather your courage and write him an ink message that obliges you to a lot. It is enough to send a short “Hi! How are you? ”, which, it seems, does not mean anything, but in the end it can become the beginning of a new round.

“The result is a generation that does not know how to part,” concludes Dr. Halpern-Meekin.

Broke up, drank, reconciled. Romance…

And this stamp is willingly supported by modern mass culture, covering endless meetings and partings with a haze of romance. The aforementioned Sex and the City, Grey's Anatomy (where doctors Meredith and Derek and other couples converged and diverged endlessly), Ross and Rachel from Friends ...

There are no "swings" in a relationship - there is no plot. Without it, it's just not interesting. A happy couple is boring to watch. As a result, many people get bored of being a happy couple without ups and downs. All this gamut of emotions experienced during parting and reconciliation is much sharper than normal, stable love.

Close together, apart - boring

The couples themselves, experiencing such a rotation, say that there is a deep emotional connection between them, which again and again pushes them into each other's arms in spite of all adversity:

• “We broke up because he was not ready to take on any obligations, but got back together because no one understands us the way we understand each other.”

You are my little rat...

There is a romantic attachment to a former partner and a completely physiological explanation. Such an experiment was carried out in Canada. Professor Jim Pfaus marked male rats with a special odorous substance and crossed them with females. Then he placed the females in a cage, in which there were those rat cavaliers with whom they already had love, and new, unfamiliar rat guys. In different cages, from 80 to 100% of rats chose those males that smelled familiar.

Pfaus puts it this way: “When you reach that wonderful, magical state that happens after an orgasm with someone, your brain releases oxytocin and opioids,” forming an attachment to the person you experienced it with. Feeling the same pleasure again with someone you already know feels a lot more natural (and less scary) than with someone you don't know.

As G., who broke up with her more sophisticated lover, but continued to sleep with him, admitted, it was more convenient than looking for someone new, and better than being alone.

• “It’s psychologically more comfortable for me to communicate with the person with whom I have already slept. And I don't want to increase the number of lovers I've had she says. — I'm not a saint, but if I have a choice, I would rather try to stay with someone I've already been with than sleep with a stranger.

Random relationships have generally become unfashionable. According to statistics, only 13% of men and 10% of women admitted that they had sex with those they had just met. But those who slept with former lovers - as much as 65%.

You are my heroin

To finally end such relationships, according to their participants, is as difficult as quitting drugs. You get stuck in them. You break up with your eternal "ex", create a brand new profile on a dating site, set up a date that doesn't go quite the way you wanted ... and then wake up in a well-known bed.

The feeling that you can’t get away from him can cause frustration and depression. In addition to the strongest emotional attachment, which was mentioned above, in such couples there are more conflicts and a lower level of mutual obligations, and at the same time there is a high probability of physical and psychological violence.

We understand that it is impossible to do the same things over and over again and get different results. “I approve of sequels in relationships, but I don’t like if they turn into trilogies and so on,” says clinical psychologist Monica O’Neill of Harvard Medical School. Because it's great if people have learned from past mistakes and decided to try again, trying not to repeat the old sins. But if you relive the pain and disappointment, this is a sign that this person is not right for you.