It’s in novels, television, movies and even in the public life of celebrities.Love seems to be one of the most and best installed elements in the culture of mass media, and day by day we receive by dripping information about how a conventional love life, recognizable by all, is, or should be, normalized.

Of course, in some cases it can be comforting to have a “mold” to lead through it a couple relationship with few complications and without moments of ambiguity, but it is also true that clinging thoughtlessly to certain emotional roles can have negative consequences , subtract spontaneity from the love life and even encourage behavioral dynamics that do not fit the personality and life habits of the lovers in question.

That is why it is healthy to question certain conventions about love, its myths and everything that orbits around stereotypes about life as a couple. In the end, it is possible that your understanding of love life goes far beyond what is typical. The first step to rethinking certain things and taking love with philosophy? Reflecting on your own concept of love can be a good way to do this, and you can use these ten keys to do so.

10 reflections on conventional love

1. Love is one thing, habit is another

Following certain routines every day in life with someone is not positive in itself, nor is it something that will make the relationship progress. In fact, it is not unusual for the fulfilment of certain rituals to take place, more than as a way of showing love or affection, as a way of compensating for emotional crises that have not yet been fully manifested or as if they were part of an obligation.

Of course, for a relationship to prosper, a basis of relative stability is needed, but this is not a guarantee of anything, but rather a necessary and not sufficient condition.

2. There is nothing wrong with routine

The counterpart to the previous point is to keep in mind that there is no universal rule according to which love life must be constantly crossed by transgression and changes of environment. In principle, a quiet life without great contrasts is a perfectly valid breeding ground for a consistent relationship. Everything depends on the needs of each person.

3. Careful with idealization

Idealization is an exciting ingredient in the early stages of infatuation, but it often leads to deception . It is important to know if you feel love for the person or for the avatar he represents. To do this, there is nothing better than getting to know this person in very different contexts, not always in the same way and in the same place. Information is power.

4. Out of stereotypes about ideal couples

Stereotypes about the ideal partner serve to make certain roles immediately recognizable in series, advertisements and novels, but in love life serve little purpose and, what’s more, they usually bring problems .

Stereotypes exist precisely to guide us in matters in which we invest little time and whose results are not of great importance, such as our way of considering someone who appears for the first time in a movie, but love life can become something much more serious than that and, therefore, requires that our brain renounces the automatic pilot to take direct control of the situation.

5. Sacrifices are not proof of love

Whenever action is taken, a decision is made whose results have potential advantages and possible disadvantages. Naturally, this is also true in love, and it is quite possible that maintaining a love relationship requires efforts in several areas of life .

However, it is necessary to know how to discriminate between these small sacrifices whose roots lie in the decisions we must make as individuals who invest in staying close to the other person (and which make sense as such), and others that are artificial, created as an unjustifiable imposition by our partner or as a result of our imagination, our prejudices about love as something necessarily painful and a good portion of magic thinking .

6. Keep in mind the notion of symmetry

Love cannot and should not be alienating, or it can become an instrument of manipulation. This second scenario may seem somewhat extreme, but it is not so much so if we remember that love has a profoundly irrational component , and that many of the decisions and acts that we undertake on the basis of it do not seem to be aimed at covering our own easily expressed needs, nor do they respond to a good that can be described objectively.

Manipulation has its reason for being when the person being manipulated does not know that he is being manipulated, and it can take the most subtle forms, or even be taken as something natural by everyone (even by friends and acquaintances).

7. Collective goals? Yes, but with communication in between

If sometimes it is complicated to know what one wants, knowing what responds to the interests of the collective formed by the people who love each other is a task of titans. That is why it is worth thinking about whether these group goals really are or have been illuminated by a set of colossal misunderstandings , paradoxical communication or “I thought you believed that

If something in particular doesn’t excite you, you’d better think about the best way to say it. Gently, but definitely.

8. Where is the limit of sincerity?

Sincerity is an essential component in an intimate relationship, but so is privacy . Determining to what extent we want to expose ourselves to someone is fundamental, and so is making that person see where he or she is at the limit he or she should expect. What is important is not so much the proportion of the shared part over the private part, but the fact that the other person is aware of its existence.

9. The temporal border

There is a lot of social pressure about how much time two people who love each other should spend together, but it is not impossible that love exists even in cases where one wants to spend a lot of time alone . This point also has to do with prejudices about love life understood as the beginning of life as a couple and the germ of a new family. Once again, it is necessary to know how to discriminate between social dictates and what the body asks for.

10. What does it mean to us?

Possibly, this is the fundamental question when reflecting about love , either as something abstract or as something we try to materialize in our relationship with someone concrete. Giving clues about how to deal with it is, in fact, limiting the scope of its implications and taking away the freedom of whoever wants to answer it.

Pages and pages have been written in philosophy books about how to give meaning to all life projects worthy of being called such, and this includes, of course, treatises on love as well. In the end, a love relationship is worthwhile if it is somehow meaningful to us , even if it is difficult to express in words.

Of course, it is not necessary to dedicate oneself professionally to philosophy in order to lose one’s fear of this question and to make one reflect on it from its fruits. And even more so when we take into account that it is a private task, which must be solved with the raw material of each one’s experiences.