Healthy Relationship – Mature Love

Healthy Relationship:

 

In order to have a Healthy Relationship it is necessary to be willing to care for and also be open to be cared for.

– Be responsible for the relationship

– Loving does not ensure a healthy mature love.

Erich Fromm (Psychoanalyst, Sociologist):

– “Love that is compounded of maturity, self-knowledge, and courage.”

– “Love: discipline, concentration, patience.”

 

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This article is for people of any gender, age, and sexual orientation, it is for those who relate, or seek a mature and healthy relationship, afterall, maturity is a synonym for health.

Yet, remember: in order to reach the mature love, in all kinds of relationships, it is necessary to have a lot of persistency, especially during the maturational process and also have good possibilities to have a more enthusiastic existence.

The healthy relationship can be applied in all kinds of relationships: romantic love, brotherly love, family love, and even with your pet, no matter your personality, moral values, culture, your vision of the world, or social class.

It is necessary to have responsibility for you and for the other, the healthy love is something serious, a goal to be pursued with persistence and dedication, because it depends a lot on reflection, self-knowledge, exercise and patience.

 

How I have developed the concept of “healthy love” – The mature love that makes sense

The purpose of this article is to define a healthy relationship concept, a beneficial one, the kind of mature love experienced by couples, and that I like to describe as: “loving (affection and care) added to sexual relation”, and, when it is mature, it is given in a healthy way.  Of course it is different from the brotherly love, for an idea, a life goal, an object and others.

This kind of relationship, the one I call healthy love (mature), is similar to the Greek word for a specific kind of love: Storge: where the couple is satisfied with themselves, and knowing each other, the trust, affinity, stability and tranquility are the basis for this relationship.  And the way that allows this love to happen is based on the philosophical thinking – Existential-phenomenology – which prioritizes the understanding of “we are always taking care”, and how we take care.

I have searched in great psychologists and psychoanalysts, apart from thinkers, a good theory to help me in the clinic practice a way to deal with cases where the love relationship has serious problems, or at least could be improved.  To my surprise, I found very little about it, or something broader and deeper, that would make me satisfied. I just found some complex academic concepts, nothing focused on a “quality love relationship”.

So I dedicated myself to my actuation theory, “clinic approach” (that I use with my clients), and I found the fundamental proposals that led me to build the theme “Healthy Relationship – Mature Love”:

1) The theoretical basis from the clinic analyst Dr. Donald W. Winnicott, who developed the “Maturational Psychoanalysis “, and that says in its essence:

 

“Every human being is endowed with an innate tendency to maturity.”

“and maturity is health.”

 

 2) To the philosopher Heidegger, based on the Existential phenomenology, we are always taking care (in all situations). There are many ways to take care (or “not take care”, which is a way to take care of other things, etc) Anyway, the proposal here is the mature care.  “Involved and projected by what makes sense to us.”

Taking care is fundamental for a relationship.  Even if you love, have projects in common, affinities like the vision of the world, sexual attraction and others, without taking care (mature care) of one another, no relationship can be maintained, except if it is taken in an unhealthy, cold an tedious way, with divergences.

We are always taking care of things, since the basic things like quenching your thirst; and also the most complex ones like raising a child or driving a car.  We are always taking care, and if we stop doing it, we are being irresponsible towards the others and even towards ourselves.

The nature of this “care” is important: we can take care in a controlling and authoritative way, which is immature; or take care in a democratic way, together with, understanding, sharing and helping in what the other really needs or wants, and that we are able to give.

 

What is Maturity according to

the ” Maturational Paradigm Psychoanalyst”, D.W. Winnicott.

– Every person has a natural tendency to maturity.

 

In maturity, the person will be able to:

– Develop a deal (with themselves, with the other, and with life), being responsible in all means.

– Accept that life is how it is presented, accepting doesn’t mean to agree, but to admit and assume.

– Understand that the fantasies of perfection and imperfection, (of themselves, the other and life), are impossible.

– Accept their impotence, accept that not everything is possible, we can´t always win, or always get what we want.  And, depending on the situation, these things are not possible in most of the times.

– In maturity, we are led to “integrity”, to unity.  This way, there is a feeling of being complete and whole.

– Moreover, the maturity reaches the unity in time and space.

– In the “adult” stage, the individual will be ready to live healthily, responsibly, and self-consciously.  They will face the challenges of life without losing enthusiasm, sensibility and creativity, even if they naturally suffer.  Life is hard, but they know that, if they fall, they will stand up again.  Avoiding then, the moments of depression and anxiety (the longest and most intense ones), without needing to be tough or closing themselves (in order to be protected) The person will also be more prepared for the body and mind weakening, as death comes closer.

 

Philosopher F. Nietzsche in “The Gay Science” –

Maturity / Being healthy, is something that

pursues and always improves:

 

The great health.  We need it, to a new end, also a new middle, that is, a new health, a stronger, a more ingenious, more tenacious, a more joyful health. Such health that you not only have, but you are also constantly achieving, and you have to conquer …

 

In order to reach Maturity, as in the examples above, one must be involved with this process; dedication is the most used route, especially as we are referring to the SELF, personality. Of course, professional activities, family responsibilities, study and questioning; also bring maturity. But this maturity does not allow for such broad and deep personal development and self-knowledge as something specific for this purpose: psychotherapy, psychoanalysis.

As Nietzsche wrote, health is something that “is also constantly being achieved.” So, in our process of being connected to our maturity process; in this “calling” of ourselves to this path, we need to be open and projected.

 

 

Bacellart Clinic Psychologist – Psycotherapist

Approach: Existential Phenomenology and  Psychoanalist in Winnicott maturing process;

Guest Student – Gilberto Safra – PhD/USP and Zeljko Loparic/PUC;

Specialist in depression, professional development, marriage and dating relationships;

Originator of the Social Project Arvorecendo

Available for TV, radio, magazine and newspaper interviews.

Healthy Love/Mature Relationship – The Mature Love/Healthy Relationship – Let’s do it?

Collected Works of Winnicott