Do You Know This Trick To Rekindle A Sleeping Love?
A sleeping love is like a bird locked in a cage. He exists, he lives there, we are able to hear his singing, his heartbeat, but he cannot spread his wings to fly free. It’s a situation that many couples who love each other can experience. There is deep affection, they both know it, but it doesn’t end up being enough to fill their lives with magic.
This feeling can be confusing. Sometimes you may feel that you don’t want this person anymore, even though you feel affection for them. But if you are in danger of losing it, you will immediately detect that what exists is a sleeping love. Still, you doubt it. Will it be worth following a relationship that doesn’t make you vibrate? Is it really love or just custom?
After a few years of relationship, almost all couples ask themselves these questions, also asked by a group of researchers from Florida State University (United States). Based on this finding, they carried out a study to investigate whether, with a specific change in relationships, they would blossom again. They found that yes.
From passion to sleeping love
We know that the early stages of a relationship are always the most exciting. In that initial phase, which is called “in love”, the world seems different. Yes, we feel butterflies in our stomach. But beyond that, everything seems to have meaning and also no meaning, a full and true meaning. As if you’ve found a piece that completes a puzzle. And as if that, in turn, revealed an exultant and wonderful figure.
When we’re in love, we know what eternity tastes like. However, as much as we don’t want to, this magic from the beginning slowly dissipates. Butterflies fly slower and we find that infinity also has limits. If love were a dish of food, we could say that the aesthetic with which we were presented was broken, in part because of what we chose and the fact that we started to eat it.
At this point, there is literally a disappointment: it’s not uncommon for us to encounter some nuances we don’t like. We gradually let go of the illusion and return to reality, which is always a little more disappointing. If there is a valuable bond between the couple, they manage to get around the moment to move forward at a calmer, less exciting, but deeper pace.
However, over time, there is also a certain nostalgia for what was lost, for how we felt when we were in love. This nostalgia is the one that specifically asks us whether love remains, has changed, or is gone.
We don’t reject our partner, but the enthusiasm of the first meetings is no longer there. There is no desire to end the bond, but there is a feeling of reluctance about it. Furthermore, we realize that what was previously not difficult to do for another is now, at a cost, what we used to do with real pleasure and joy has now turned into a steep climb.
This was the moment explored by researchers at the University of Florida and for which they managed to find a key that reactivates the couple. Let’s see.
How a slumbering love is rewarmed
Scientists wondered what would happen if participants were trained to change these automatic associations. The experiment, taking this hypothesis into account, was focused on getting each person to associate with their partner new images and ideas, all of them positive. That she, instead of seeing some slippers, saw, for example, a puppy. And he didn’t see a pile of vials, but a cute animal.
Psychologists used the method of operant conditioning. This consisted of giving reinforcement whenever the person associated his partner’s image with a positive image. And no stimulus or negative stimulus if you didn’t. The experience involved a group of 144 volunteer couples. To draw more objective conclusions, some were presented with positive images and others neutral.
The experiment showed that the researchers were right in their hypotheses about “sleeping love.” Effectively, those who received the conditioning of positive associations with their partners felt that the relationship had been revitalized. Those who were conditioned with neutral images (eg, a fork) did not show major transformations. It turned out, then, that love is also a subject that fits and falls in the brain, and that it is very sensitive to associations.
Thus, it was discovered that, by rescuing and improving the couple’s image, creating connections from this image with positive stimuli, love was resurrected. Perhaps this is why, in couples where there is mutual admiration, love hardly ever starts to rumble and needs to be awakened.
Images courtesy of Astrid Torres.
