Why do couples remain together in times of crisis? Could we all require a mirror to love ourselves? Perhaps because, even if it is not perfect, it is close enough? Exists something that continues to fulfill us despite the complaint and the inconvenience?
When we fall in love, we look for what we lack in the other, a void left by Oedipus, whose narcissistic imprint forced us to reject either our father or mother. This imprint, this void, compels us to search for someone who, like us, also has a path and a gap (his parents left that in his Oedipus). Because in love, we give the other what we lack, what we had to give up, and in this further, there also appears a person who gives us what he lacks, who offers us his lack, his trace. This is the essence of Lacanian love: giving what we lack to the one who lacks it. That is to say, and we offer what we lack to someone who lacks it as well, someone who shares our deficiency. It is not a matter of filling someone’s void, as each individual is accountable for their flaws and being.
This union gives birth to the couple. And it occurs that they fall in love and crave one another. In this case, they are believed to complement each other, although they do not know each other. Thus begins a “game,” that of the pair, in which we idealize in the other what we have lost due to our symbolic castration and what was forbidden to us. When we begin to realize that reality exceeds fantasy, and in this realization that the other does not fill the void, a crisis arises, which we often try to avoid by filling the gap with new projects or desires; we buy a house, we have a child, or two, we go on a trip, we have a lover or anything that maintains this relationship and averts the crisis, which is often inevitable.
The conflict occurs when it becomes apparent that what is has little to nothing to do with what we had romanticized. We hope and wish for the other person to change. Always do so. And the other person remains unchanged, remaining the same as always. Perhaps because, when confronted with a scenario change, the only difference that needs to occur is inside the subject and its ability to adjust to this new reality. And… indeed, as we mentioned at the outset, the relationship may not change entirely, but it adapts enough to sustain the pair, to keep them together…because we all need that mirror in which to love each other.
And… despite everything, we remain together or not. Maybe we must set aside the “romantic” love of previous eras, which leans towards perfection (which is unachievable) and leads nowhere, and accept that each member of the couple derives sufficient benefits from the partnership to deem it worthwhile to be together.
Leave a Comment