HOW CAN MY RELATIONSHIP BE HAPPY IF I HAVE NEGATIVE THOUGHTS?

Want to feel happy in a relationship? Let’s start first with how the negative attitude in a relationship is created. Negative thought and more negative thought together form a negative accumulation, which grows and grows at the expense of accumulating small positive thoughts.

Happiness in a life together has nothing to do with luck, but all the connection in the world with our desire. Because happiness in a relationship does not happen by chance and no one is happy by chance. Happy couples decide to be happy. 

Because when it comes to happiness in a relationship and unhappiness in a relationship, in the end we are always the ones who decide which side we want to live on, on the side of smiling and joy of life or on the side of anger and tears. It’s hard to internalize and hard to believe. Still, if you think you are happy, then that is all you need to be happy.

What is on the negative side of our consciousness?

Self-pity, searching for guilt in someone else, concentrating on shortcomings and what is “not”.

What is on the positive side of our consciousness?

Internal leadership, assertiveness and determination. It is a consciousness that has decided to use its positive side, and does so with a strong intention.

But why are there both happy and unhappy among us ? Because there are those of us who for many years give priority to a negative feeling, and their minds have become accustomed to thinking negatively and feeling negative and seeing the negative. You certainly would not believe it, but it all depends on the food you have given to your mind for years: much more positive food or much more negative food. And it has used your mind to think much more this way or much more that way.

Happiness in a relationship is in being able to overcome, over and over again, this negative part of our consciousness

Believe it or not, negative thinking is just a habit. You have become accustomed to getting upset about what is wrong, and seeing what is wrong, and talking about what is wrong, and listening to what is wrong with others. And gradually the positive side of your consciousness has almost degenerated from lack of use.

Therefore it is much easier for you to criticize your spouse than to praise and appreciate him, and it is much easier for you to remind him of the bad things he has done to you than the good things he has done for you. Many of us find it very difficult to say “yes”, and they begin almost every sentence with “no” even if it is completely irrelevant. And if you were to put on one side of a scale the negative thoughts that occupy you and on the other side the positive thoughts that pass through your head, you would not miss the imbalance between your negative world and your positive world.

So yes, that’s the whole story: a negative thought and another negative thought and another negative thought together form a negative accumulation, which grows and grows at the expense of the accumulating small positive thoughts. And thus accustoms the mind to use its negative side much more often than its positive side.

Just think what place you give to anger: how long do you keep it with you? What emotional power are you pouring into it? How convincing are the justifications and explanations in which you wrap it? And now think about when you invested such power of emotions in joy or love? When did you talk to friends about the good in your life? When did you feel lucky for all the good you have?

This is the way each of us has trained ourselves unconsciously to be mostly positive or mostly negative. Hence, the consciousness begins to work automatically as it is now normal to be in a positive feeling most of the time or to be in a negative feeling most of the time. Then two people can enter the same room, but one of them will feel good in it and the other will feel bad in it.

And so it is with relationships. Circumstances can be very difficult: the child’s developmental problem, the unpleasant attitude of one parent’s parents to the other spouse, dismissal, financial crisis, and so on and so forth. But for one couple these circumstances will cause them to break down, and for another couple they will cause them to come closer and unite. That is, it is not the circumstances that cause spouses to be happy or unhappy together, but the couple themselves, and the habit of being positive or being negative that each of them brings to the relationship.

Because here’s the point: positivity does not come by itself. By nature we are negative, because by nature we are egotists, and for the egoist other people are a nuisance. And so the work we need to do is to overcome, again and again, this negative part of our consciousness, in order to free up more and more space for its positive part.

That is, in exactly the same way that negativity has taken over our consciousness, only in reverse. That is, to create a growing body of positive thoughts, at the expense of a growing body of negative thoughts. That is, to make life difficult for any negative thought that infiltrates our consciousness by a positive answer that we will immediately bring to us.

This does not mean that there will be no difficulties, or that there will be no anger or that there will be no self-pity. But you will begin to be more prepared for them with a winning answer: “True, difficult, but a way is found to overcome. We are Golani.” Do you understand why happiness in a relationship depends on you?

THE CHEMISTRY OF LOVE, EINSTEIN, and the Bible

When one thinks of the connection between chemistry and love, the automatic thought immediately arises that between loving people there should be chemistry. In the world of science, the definition of a connection is very simple – “a connection is created if the forces of gravity outweigh the forces of repulsion”. This definition certainly also reflects the creation of connections between human beings. In the world of science a connection is made between opposing charges, while identical charges repel each other. Can we conclude from the parallel that love can only exist between people who are opposites of each other? The answer to this is complex. On the one hand we tend to fall in love with people who are culturally, externally and intellectually similar to us. But on the other hand we are more attracted to people with genetic diversity (especially of the immune system).

The Bible On Being Together

In the book of Genesis chapter 2, verse 18, it is written: “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone;” Unsurprisingly, “paired electrons.” The state of an unpaired or single electron is considered an unstable “radical” state, and it usually seeks an electron for pairing. By the way, in the past they were called “free radicals”. Indeed, singles have more freedom, which does not prevent them from losing it through pairing. What is special about love and electrons is that electrons can fill all space, going through a quantum tunnel. What is it if not love?

In Ecclesiastes chapter 4, verses 9-10, it is said: “The two are better than the one, who have a good reward for their labor. This sentence exhausts the essence of chemical bonding. When a chemical bond is formed between two individual atoms, a state of a whole greater than the sum of its parts – a synergy – is formed. This phenomenon is not possible at any temperature (the energy of the environment). And if there are severe disagreements due to an unsupportive environment (one with high external energy), the relationship is doomed to fall apart. This sentence is intended for all in-laws for their generations.

Love and Science

Let us return to the comforting embrace and the molecular connection between chemistry and love. Albert Einstein once argued that an explanation of feelings of love in terms of chemistry, takes all the magic out of love. It should be noted that Albert Einstein was a wizard in Sheffer’s sayings, but was not exactly a wizard in expressing feelings or love, as his tormented ex-wife Mileva Einstein would testify. The magic or its absence can be argued, but it cannot be argued that processes of attraction or obsessive passion involve neurochemical processes, which are molecularly based. In philosophical romantic terms, love is mysterious and shrouded in uncertainty. While from a biochemical point of view, neurological activity presents the most accurate perspectives for falling in love.

In the process of falling in love, we actually become a private and legal chemical plant of intoxicating drugs (sometimes even lies), and our bodies produce, among other things, compounds such as serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, phenylethylamine, oxytocin and more. Each and every one of them plays an important and significant role in our tendency to fall in love, make contact and maintain it over time. These substances are used as neurotransmitters (mediators of nerve stimulation) and / or hormones that will determine whether or not there will be “chemistry” between humans. So love is an outgrowth of chemical reactions and electrical impulses. So without going into too much chemistry, I’ll talk a little bit about chemistry:

• Dopamine plays an important role in emotional arousal, increasing and strengthening feelings of pleasure and enjoyment.
• Norepinephrine causes the feeling of obsession and allows us to wrap around our partner even with eyes wide open.
• Phenylethylamine is a stimulating and addictive organic compound that simply makes us addicted to love and motivated. By the way, this compound is present in chocolate and yellow cheese. That explains a lot of things.
• Serotonin makes us feel that the relationship brings us happiness and joy, so we must maintain and persevere in it, even fiercely.
• And oxytocin, of course, explicitly known as the love hormone, is secreted as a result of touch, caress or hug. When it is secreted it gives us feelings of comfort and security and reduces anxiety. In the effect of positive feedback, this hormone increases our need to caress and hug and instill confidence in our loved ones. So whoever claimed that only love brings love was right. Oxytocin makes us better, more generous, and more empathetic. Studies show that alcohol and oxytocin work on the same receptors in the brain, so it is not for nothing that wine releases inhibitions and strengthens love. 

Oxytocin is secreted immediately after birth (especially in the process of sucking the breast during breastfeeding) and allows the initial bonding between the mother and the newborn. Oxytocin is linked to every type of love, not just sexual love, which is why we cannot be indifferent to the howling of cats as this howling frequency causes oxytocin secretion. All of these do not detract from the wondrous magic of connecting people, long-term commitment and love.

I will end with a quote from one of my favorite psychoanalysts, Carl Gustav Jung: “The encounter of two people is like the contact of two chemicals: if there is a reaction, both change.” This sentence sums up the uncompromising chemical connection between love and chemistry in the spiritual aspect and in the scientific aspect, since there is really no difference between them.

WHY ARE OUR RELATIONSHIPS NOT INTIMATE ENOUGH?

The intimate friendship between us is the reason why we are together. But it’s very difficult, and the problem is that intimate friendships are also the thing that makes us unable to be together.

Intimate friendship forever is the hardest thing to achieve, because it requires us to overcome many things we have become so accustomed to that it seems to us that they are our nature. And because we are so connected to these things, that’s why there are so few couples among us who manage to live in intimate friendships forever.

Create intimate friendships

So what do we need to do to live in intimate friendships forever? In fact, only one thing: to change our scale of priorities, and to put intimate friendships ahead of many of the things we are so used to.

Today we do not really have a scale of priorities, so everything we are used to jumps to first priority, even if it destroys our relationship in the meantime. And so, without a scale of priorities we repeatedly choose actions that serve only our low interests: to be right, to defend our way, to ignore our part in every situation.

When we have a scale of priorities we always know what is most important to us, so our choices always serve our highest interests: to live together in peace, to bring joy to our relationship, to maintain our love. Don Juravin has some ideas on how we might prioritize:

Intimate friendships before our comfort zone. That is, before the habits and customs we brought with us, in favor of new habits and customs that are better suited to life in twos.

Intimate friendships before our immediate gratification. That is, before what is important to us now, for the sake of what is important to us forever.

Intimate friendships before our need for personal space. That is, it is an understanding that we have a part of a closeness and a part of a distance, and giving priority to the balance between the two.

Intimate friendship before personal lusts for comfort and pleasure, that is, before our low passions for sex outside of relationships, extravagance, and ostentation, for the benefit of our high needs in love and stability and security.

Intimate friendships before the need to be right. That is, first of all, respect for each other by an awareness that we are two and not one: we are always opinion and more opinion, desire and more desire, expectation and more expectation, and those are just as legitimate as these.

Things can be summed up in the simplest way: Intimate friendship is the result of an inner transition from preferring our personal needs to preferring the intimate friendship between us. That is, it is always a change of inner preference between our two desires: a desire to connect with our spouse and a desire to satisfy our own lusts and habits and justice.

So note: it is never a struggle between the two of us, but it is always a struggle within each of us, between the two inner forces that push us in opposite directions: getting closer and farther away, worrying about our own lusts or worrying about our friendships. And each of the thousands of big or small things we do every day tell us the truth about what we really prefer, and why we have or do not have intimate friendships together.