Do You Know This Trick To Wake Up A Sleeping Love?
A sleeping love is like a bird locked in a cage. It exists, it lives there, we are able to feel its song, its heartbeat, but it does not finish spreading its wings to fly freely. It is a situation that many couples who love each other can experience. There is deep affection, they both know it, but it does not end up being present and filling their lives with magic.
That feeling can be confusing. At times you may feel that you no longer love that person, even if you care for them. But if you see yourself at risk of losing it, you immediately detect that what there is is a sleeping love. Still, you doubt. Will it be worth it to continue in a relationship that does not make me vibrate? Is it really love or just custom?
After a few years of relationship, almost all couples ask themselves these questions. They were also raised by a group of researchers from Florida State University (United States). Based on this, they developed a study to investigate whether introducing a specific change in relationships would make them green again. They discovered that it was.
From infatuation to sleeping love
We know that the early stages of a relationship are always the most exciting. In that initial phase, which is called falling in love , the world seems different. Yes: butterflies are felt in the stomach. But beyond this, it seems as if everything has meaning and also not just any meaning, a full and true meaning. As if a piece has been found that completes a puzzle. And as if this, in turn, revealed an exultant and wonderful figure.
When we are in love we taste what eternity tastes like . This feeling is so extraordinary that we never resign ourselves to not feeling it. However, as much as we want it, that magic of the beginnings little by little begins to dissipate. Butterflies fly more slowly and we discover that infinity, despite everything, also has limits. If love were a plate of food, we could say that we have broken the aesthetic with which it has been presented to us, in part because of what we choose it, and we begin to eat it.
At that point there is, literally, a disappointment: it is not uncommon for us to find some nuance that we do not like . He gradually comes out of the illusion to return to reality, which is always a little more disappointing. If there is a valuable bond with the couple, he manages to avoid the moment to move on to another stage that is more leisurely, less exciting, but also deeper.
However, as time goes by, a certain nostalgia also appears for what has been lost, for how we felt then. This nostalgia is precisely what questions us about whether love has stayed, transformed, or has left.
The couple is not rejected, but neither is the enthusiasm of the first encounters felt. There is no desire to end the bond, but there is a sense of reluctance towards it. In addition, we realize that what was not difficult for us to do for the other before and that we even did with real pleasure and joy has now turned into an uphill slope with a certain slope.
That was the moment that researchers at the University of Florida explored and for which they managed to find a key that would reactivate the couple. If you like, let’s go with him.
This is how a sleeping love awakens
The researchers found that when there is a sleeping love, each one automatically associates his partner with a series of images and ideas. These appear in the mind without the person being aware of it. Thus, for example, a woman sees her man and slippers are drawn immediately in her mind. Or a man looks at his wife and the idea of a stack of jars emerges.
The scientists wondered what would happen if the partners were trained to change those automatic associations. Taking this hypothesis into account, the experiment focused on getting each person to associate their partner with new images, all of them positive. That she, instead of seeing slippers, see, for example, a puppy. And he didn’t see a pile of jars, but a cute animal.
Psychologists used the operant conditioning method. This consisted of giving a reinforcement each time the person associated the image of their partner with a positive image. And no stimulus or negative stimulus if you didn’t. For the experiment, a group of 144 volunteer couples was taken. To draw more objective conclusions, some were presented with positive images and others neutral.
The experiment showed that the researchers were correct in their hypotheses about “sleeping love.” Indeed, those who received the conditioning of positive associations with their partners felt that the relationship had been revitalized. Those who received the conditioning with neutral images (eg, a fork) did not show major transformations. It was proven, then, that love is also a matter that adjusts and misaligns in the cerebral framework and that it is very sensitive to associations.
In this way, it was found that by rescuing and enhancing the image of the couple by creating connections of this image with positive stimuli, love was resurrected. Perhaps this is why, in couples in which there is mutual admiration, love hardly begins to snore and needs to be awakened.
Images courtesy of Astrid Torres
