Love Life Defenses
This is the last post in the series of posts analyzing common love life defenses that interfere with and complicate a peson’s ability to give and receive love. In this post we will talk about misrepresentation, defined as the act of misrepresenting oneself in a love life situation in order to manipulate its outcome. A…
The last two psychological love life defenses I will analyze in this series of posts are, changing your partner and misrepresentation. These two are a bit more creative than the other love life defenses I’ve discussed so far. But not necessarily in a way that helps preserve and develop the feeling of love. There are…
Avoiding love relationships is the ultimate love life defense because the individual is out of the game, so to speak. The most effective way to manage the disappointment and hurt that is possible in a love life is to avoid love relationships altogether. For many individuals, this is the conscious or unconscious plan as a…
Some psychological love life defenses are used to make a love relationship “tolerable.” This is the case with what I am calling habitual conflict. The usual unconscious motivation is to be able to be in a love relationship protected from hurt. As in all the psychological defenses I am describing in this series of posts, past…
One of the easiest ways to be in a love relationship when you have unresolved emotional intimacy issues, is to keep a certain distance from the person you are in love with. Here in this article, the primary focus is on “emotional distance.” Although physical distancing, for some people, may be involved as well. There…
Ever since I began studying the unhealthy love life from an interpersonal psychoanalytic perspective, I’ve noticed quite a few people cope with and/or prevent the hurt that often accompanies a love life with an array of psychological defenses. Problem here is that these defenses interfere with the ability to give and receive love. They harden…