The Need To Idealize In Order To Love

When we fall in love it is not only inevitable to idealize the other person, but it is also necessary. This uncontrollable and passionate state, which occurs with such intensity, is based on the special vision we have about who we fall in love with.

A special vision that makes us marvel, since any positive characteristic in the other person we expand in an exaggerated way and we diminish any negative aspect and we even see it as something nice. In idealization, what prevails is the character that we build through another person.

The process of idealizing has a certain time, since it is inevitable that the intensity decreases, this state cannot be maintained since it affects us in all areas of our day to day, decreases our concentration and attention since all our energy is focused. in being loved.

Biochemical process when idealizing

In the state of infatuation, when idealizing, a biochemical process is generated in our altered brain that is similar to addiction ; that is why it is said that this state is like being drugged and resembles mental derangement.

Being in love alters chemicals in our brain such as norepinephrine and dopamine. In addition, it increases the production of phenylethylamine, this being a neurotransmitter that causes a greater degree of excitement, generating tachycardia, redness and insomnia.

Phenylethylamine is also generated through some foods such as chocolate, that is why this food can help us to alleviate a little that feeling of anxiety due to the absence of a loved one. In the state of idealization, physical symptoms such as:

• Palpitations, chills, and tingling in the stomach (known as butterflies).
• Strong nervous excitement, flushing, cold sweats and pupillary dilation.
• Change in body odor, paralyzing fear, and physical need for the other person’s presence.

Among the psychological symptoms, the following stand out:

• Focusing on being loved, dependence and loss of one’s identity.
• Desire for fusion, idealization and alternate states of euphoria and depression.

Fantasy period of idealization

The fantasy is triggered by idealizing, everything that is part of the other person seems to us to be good and to be the best. We create an extraordinary being, playing with his personal characteristics, also adding aspects that we long for.

We fantasize about being able to meet the loved one anywhere and at any moment, we perceive that something like this can happen and we remain alert. We see it everywhere and feel it as a part of us. It is in this period when we can have hallucinations.

The fantasies we have revolve around the ideal we have created about what a romantic relationship entails. Depending on how we live love, we will look for one type of person or another to come close to this ideal: impossible loves, loves lived through pain, love based on conflicts, passionate love, tragic love, “perfect” love, etc. .

Getting in touch with reality

The process of idealizing the one we love can take a long time; at the end of this process the relationship can end or be transformed. This is something that will depend above all on how far reality is from the expectations we had. If the person we have idealized does not correspond to our ideal at all, it is likely that the relationship will cease to be motivating.

Contact with reality can be frustrating and tragic, after all the fantasy that we had built in the state of infatuation. Returning to reality is the step where our love becomes a mature love. This transition validates that we are with the person we really want to be, to share our lives.

Taking this step of returning to reality means loving in another way, without losing individuality. Idealization has the function of attachment and fusion, it gives us the strength and energy to want to know the other person, with all the intensity that this implies. Although breaking with the idealization can be frustrating, it is a positive frustration that helps us evolve and consolidate the love bond.

Love is only possible when two people communicate with each other from the center of their existence. Therefore, when each of them experiences itself from the center of its existence. Only in that “central experience” is human reality, only there is life, only there is the basis of love.

Experienced in this way, love is a constant challenge, it is not a resting place. A move, grow, work together. In this way, whether there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two beings experience each other from the essence of their existence. Understanding that they are with each other by being one with themselves and not by fleeing from the shadow they cast.

We share this great scene from the end of the movie “With skirts already crazy”: