This week, D is for drama.
Wild love, or mild love? The whirling dervish of a ruinous romance, filled with flare-ups and falling-outs? Or a simple, stable, dependable relationship, filled with cosy fireside chats and the Sunday papers in bed with breakfast?
It sometimes feels like mad and bad is the way love should be. A symphony of smashed-up china, broken promises and busted hearts.
A famous psychologist, when told that a particular patient had fallen in love, asked: ‘Who against?’ For some, love seems a battlefield with no winners.
DRAMA IS...
· Exhausting. Conflict engages the adrenal glands, prompting a fight-or-flight response and conspiring against lasting love.
· Disagreement is an inevitable part of a relationship. Accepting that an argument is just an argument means you’re on the first step to resolving your differences.
· It’s not whether you argue that matters, but the way you do it. ‘Clean Communications’ — those that begin with the phrase ‘When you do (X), I feel (Y)’ — are constructive and non-judgmental. They make love last.
But this is love as a disease — a dis-ease — and not the path to true happiness.
Psychologists tell us that drama is an addiction, a romantic Polyfilla in the gaps where intimacy should be.
But we have a choice. Between tragedy, which is based on human suffering, and comedy, which enjoys happy endings.
We can choose the role we take — our own love story.
While tragedy wins Oscars, comedy is much harder to perform.
It takes timing, wit and a lightness of touch. But it also provides a much bigger prize — love that lasts.
alphaheart.com (Daily Mail)
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