Rebound relationships, or replace the ex after a break: a nail pulls out another nail?
If something characterizes love, it is that it is irrational, confusing and turbulent. We know that it has a very powerful impact on our habits and on our emotional state, but it is not always easy to describe those sensations and recognize what type they are.
And is that unlike other intense emotions such as fear or disgust, in love the source of what we feel is almost never clear: is the person with whom we have a relationship, or is it something that is helps remember?
Rebound relationships, which occur after having gone through a loving break of which we have not yet recovered, are precisely those in which what holds the couple together is the manipulation and fear to face that feeling of emptiness and, at the same time, are fed by our inability to recognize what We really feel.
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Hiding affective deficiencies
Any relationship of couple has double edge. They are exciting and sources of many good times, but if they end they can get to sink emotionally.
We can not control the appearance of that feeling of emptiness, frustration and sadness that invades us when a relationship ends in which we would like to continue living, but we can learn to manage in an effective way how to adapt to this change. Many people manage to overcome this hard blow, but others refuse to accept their new situation and try to mask reality. Rebound relationships are one of the strategies used to achieve it.
Starting one of those bouncing relationships is a way to fool ourselves by forcing ourselves to act and feel in a way similar to what we did with that person we miss . The bad thing is not just that we manipulate someone to get it; In addition, we are not normally fully aware that we do it.
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Why do rebound relationships appear?
In the same way in which better special effects can be used to create a very inverted film, the substitute lovers that are used in the rebound relationships are a support for our imagination, with the objective of fantasizing what life would be like if that rupture had not occurred. produced.
This means, among other things, that rebounding relationships are highly unfair, given that in them there is someone who is wasting their time, effort and illusions in a project that has no future because it is the patch to an affective lack. But it also means that in the person who has initiated one of these relationships, rebound There is an unresolved psychological problem: emotional dependence .
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The source of pain is called emotional dependence
We call affective dependence to a way of relating that is very internalized in certain people and that puts us in a situation of vulnerability without us noticing . It has two facets: one cognitive, one emotional and one behavioral.
Cognitively , makes us transform our self-concept (that is, the idea we have of ourselves) into something composed of two people, so that we do not conceive our life without the beloved one.
Emotionally , makes that throughout the day anything reminds us of emotions linked to the couple, which makes it very easy to think obsessively about it.
Conductually , makes us take the necessary actions to avoid the discomfort that the absence of that person produces. In these situations of longing, the metaphor of love conceived as a drug becomes clearer.
Rebound relationships are a consequence of these three effects. On the one hand, everything that happens to us makes us focus our attention on the discomfort that results from not remaining in the relationship we miss. On the other hand, we go to the extreme of giving false hope to another person to alleviate that discomfort, and on the other, in the moments when we can think that we are manipulating someone , the self-concept leads us to think that even if it were true that we went out with two people at once (one real and one imagined) that is not bad in itself.
- Related article: "Emotional dependence: the pathological addiction to your sentimental partner"
How to recognize the rebound effect in love
The downside of rebounding relationships is that many times they can only be detected by whoever is trying replace the absence of his ex-partner by incorporating a new lover into his life .
This last person can detect some strange details, usually related to signs of unhappiness on the part of the person with whom he / she leaves, but it is very complicated that he / she knows how to identify what makes her act like that.
To know if you are feeding the existence of one of those rebound relationships, ask yourself the following questions.
Do you try to change that person to look like your ex?
This is a recurring action in bouncing relationships. Asking the other person to change in the context of a romance is already inappropriate, but if the change is directed towards a situation in which the person resembles the ex-partner physically or mentally , the alarm of probable rebound relationship should start to sound.
Do you think recurrently in your ex in the context of the relationship?
If being with the other person is frequent that you evoke memories of that old couple that you miss, it is possible that this is exactly what you are looking for in this new relationship : more situations in which it is possible to fantasize with that person who is no longer by your side.
Have you left a turbulent relationship recently?
The more recent the breakup of a relationship that involved something very intense for us, the more likely it is that it is a rebound relationship. But nevertheless, this fact alone is not a clue .
Conclusion: love well and love oneself better Relationships are something that always involves sacrifice, and that's why you have to think before starting the habits of life as a couple with someone . Otherwise, we can reach a point where we realize that own shortcomings have caused another person to take a path that is not based on anything, just false expectations of love and being loved.
