Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

Family relationships comprise a completely different world than the one we see on television, read on book pages or hear in songs. This is far from what we once were told by grandmother. This is not something that we had in our children's long-living dreams.

The myth of the all-consuming, everlasting and airy feeling gets its confirmation when once in youth each of us sees a sample of a "model" feeling. Sooner or later we suddenly discover what it means to fall in love. Lack of experience and an excessive false information obtained from without, lead us to believe that these new sensations will last interminably long without significant efforts from our side. But what happens in the end? This feeling, let’s call it infatuation, lasts at the average from two weeks to six months, and then practically disappears without a trace. Why?

Infatuation leaves us for several reasons, major of which is superiority of needs over our abilities. Now we are not so obsessed with the desire to show partner best sides of us and weaknesses are being exposed. We now less idealize our partner and all beautiful things that we thought out in our dreams has just broken against the one real set of qualities that this man or woman possesses. Now emotions got by your partner’s side are not as striking as when you once threw up your business and rushed headlong to meet him/her. Is it possible to avoid this?

At first let's look at what underlies infatuation. In fact, INFATUATION ARISES WHEN THE DESIRE TO GET SOMETHING IS GREATER THAN OUR ABILITY TO ACHIEVE THIS. Indeed, we do not fall in love with everybody, but only those from whom we want to get something and for some reason are not able to fully satisfy our need. What most people mean by saying "I love you"? Typically, this phrase conceals two simple words: "I want". Or, if we reduce these two words to one: "Give". Thus, by saying "I love you" or the question with equivalent meaning "Do you love me?" a person claims: "I have needs that only you can fulfill. And until you do it, I'm willing to be helpful to you".

Very often at this point, sometimes sooner or sometimes later, one of the partners becomes the leader and the other one - the follower. I’m not talking of leadership in a classic psychological meaning. I use this word pointing up the fact that usually one partner is more dependent on the relationship itself and the other one is less dependent.

The leader is the person for whom the thought about collapse of the relationship seems much less tragedic than for the follower. The role of follower belongs to those who need much more attention then they get, they want to spend much more time together, they wish to have sex more often, and they want all these things much more than their partner does. The following person is always emotionally dependent on the leading person. In this situation he/she usually starts doing the same things that he/she used to do at the initial stage of this very relationship or did successfully in the other relationships.

Indeed, the affairs often begin with courtship, long and frequent meetings, heightened attention. And such behavior is usually fruitful at this stage since the needs of the partner exceed the amount of investment he/she gets. But then one of the partners or both feel saturated and former enthusiasm evaporates. The partner whose interest in this respect is lower takes the emotional leadership in the relationship. The leading person also has hard times since he or she does not understand what is happening to him, why he cannot reciprocate any more the feelings of the person he or she once needed so much, and why the partner's actions which he liked before now cause just irritation. Often leading people feel guilty that aggravates the situation even more.

However, once a leader feels that he is losing control over relationship he either immediately changes his role into a follower and his partner does vice versa, or emotional imbalance straightens out, if the right corrective proportions have been selected. Here is an example.

Consider the situation where a leader and a follower person split up. The follower feels sick at heart; he/she wants to make the leader know his feelings, his anxieties, and his complaints. Leading person, on the contrary, feels liberation; he/she enjoys the opportunity to get away from all attempts of the follower to get closer while maintaining confidence that at any time can restore the relationship. But as soon as he gets to know that the follower has got a new partner things change dramatically. The leader’s resources greatly decrease and can easily become lower than his needs. In such case the leader may become a follower. He may feel like he/she fell in love again. He/she would blame himself for his stupidity, for not to appreciating what he/she possessed, for ruining his/her happiness by his/her own hands. Often it happens that a follower "burns out" and starts a new relationship with a new partner while his former life’s companion instantly becomes a follower and begins to pursue him/her.

The majority of people on our planet live as if they are going to live forever: they don’t learn by their own mistakes made in the past and do not build long-term plans for the future. The situations of the same type are being repeated in their lives again and again but they don’t make a serious effort to understand the laws of this world. As I mentioned earlier it is tough to find reliable external sources to obtain detailed information on love life. However, this does not deny the opportunity to make logical conclusions basing on personal experience. Everyone has this opportunity but not everyone has a desire to use it. Avoiding responsibility takes one of the the leading places among the common unconscious benefits so for many people is much easier to say that relationships and love could not be put under a microscope and fully understood by a human.

All living beings, by order not lower than mammals, have such psychological mechanisms as dependence, affection and infatuation in their nature. And the question arises: “What is the meaning of love feeling from the viewpoint of nature?” From the perspective of procreation instinct the dependence on a partner can seem useless. In fact, why should you suffer dreaming of someone who ignores you when you can find someone just as good who will reciprocate your feelings? I believe the answer to this question lies in the requirement of higher order beings for parents to participate in the upbringing of descendants. In addition, family as a system provides a greater ability to survive not only for children but also for parents. This state of things requires the creation of relationships which last much longer than a normal sexual act. And such feelings as love and affection can provide the best ground for this.

The famous American psychotherapist Dean C. Delis offers the following list of questions in order to determine whether there is an element of dependence in the relationships:

* Is one of the partners more jealous than the other?

* Does one of the partners usually wait for the other to call or come home?

* May one describe one partner with the word "good" and the other one with the word "bad"?

* Does one of the partners exert greater efforts to maintain a conversation and communication in general?

* Does one partner say “I love you" more often than the other one?

* Is one of the partners more attractive to the opposite sex than the other?

* Is one partner less affectionate after sex than the other?

* Does one of the partners work more on the relationship than the other?

* Does one of the partners tend to feel abandoned at parties, while the other feels constrained and tense (or temporarily uninhibited)?

* Is the career of one partner more successful than that of the other?

* Does one of the partners tend to feel anxiety and uncertainty in the relationship, while the other one takes things for granted?

* Does one partner feel irritated by how the other partner behaves in public?

* If you are not married does one partner raise a question of mutual commitments and marriage more often than the other?

* If you are married does one partner raise a question of kid birth (or second child) more often than the other?

* During the quarrels does one partner say to the other words like "shrank into your shell", "selfish" or "inconsiderate", while the other one accuses him/her of tenacious, caviling and exigent behavior?

If you answered "yes" to some of the abovementioned questions that means there is an element of emotional imbalance in your relationship. The more positive answers you have the greater extent, to which one partner is the leader and the other is the follower.

What can one advice to the leading person in order to strengthen the relationships? Of course, pay maximum attention to your partner's life, his interests and his needs. Make the effort to destroy the huge steel wall erected around you. Sometimes force yourself to make a mindblower for your partner. Let yourself have open and vivid emotions at home within your family but not beyond it.

And what does it makes sense to do for a follower to restore the emotional balance? Anything that will make him gradually pass from the follower into the leader. Here are a few examples of how to achieve this:

* Find a hobby that you will be greatly excited with;

* Involve yourself in personal, communication, physical and career development;

* Flirt with other members of the opposite sex, provoke jealousy;

* Provide less physical availability;

* Propose role games within daily activities and sex, take a leading position in them;

* Follow the principle: "if you're afraid - don't do it, if you do - don't be afraid"; in your decisions go to the end without changing the course trying to avoid risk;

* More actively, passionately and dominantly behave in sex;

* Fight for just relationship, in which each partner has equal number of rights, privileges and responsibilities.

* Practice finding something positive in every situation;

* Find a source of consolation and communication in external environment.

Emotional balance shift in the relationships in your favor is one of the most effective manipulative instruments successfully used by seducers for ages. Nothing attracts as much as a sudden temperature change from warm to cold.

However, in order to construct a harmonious relationship you should manage emotional balance carefully and deliberately, look at the relationship as a partner’ alliance rather than a competition. Perhaps the most successful formula is your coolness in response to your partner’s estrangement and, vice versa, getting closer to your partner in the case he/she starts to pay more attention to you.

I won’t be surprised if you are thrilled with the idea that playing emotional balance shift is a panacea for all problems in a relationship. In practice, it’s not true. Decline in love passion and the emotional imbalance are not the only things that cause crises in relationships. Relationship may not get going for a thousand other reasons. Partners may just be incompatible at each level of the three brains, i.e. the logical, emotional, and instinctive, and as a result endure endless problems. Therefore, you need to take into account that not every relationships should be saved. However, any relationship can be improved by displaying desire and making well-considered actions.

In fact the visible division of partners into the leader and the follower usually occurs if from the very beginning the interest of one partner in the development of relationship has been being greater than that of the other. In those unions that develop in a more harmonious way, it often happens that both partners become strongly disappointed in the relationship, though, the interest of the leading person will certainly be lower. At this very point, infatuation comes down and relationships come to the next stage which I usually call adaptation. Adaptation is a period when the partners begin to see each other in their true light, actively quarrel and have it out with each other. All that is keeping them together is the desire to preserve the beauty of the relationship they had in the past. But in the end, they both cannot stand the situation and start discussing and working out an appropriate decision about their future. This decision may be either parting or attempt to make a fresh start. If you decided to continue the relationship it is likely that pretty soon you’ll face the adaptation again and you’ll have to return to the decision-making process. The only option to successfully pass the adaptation stage is to agree on what each partner will do to ensure that the old problems will not pop up again.

Of course, to get the desired outcome you need to implement all things you agreed upon with your partner, otherwise the adaptation will repeat again. In case the adaptation stage has been successfully passed the relationship moves to the next stage, which I call intimate connection. At this stage the couple finds a balance of emotional control for their relationship. Such relationships are based on friendship, mutual understanding and support. But once one of the partners loses former self-confidence or, on the contrary, shows a rapid progress in self-development, the relationship falls into an emotional imbalance trap and the couple goes through adaptation once again. On the other hand, at the intimate connection stage the relationship may be improved by wise actions, including mindblowers which we shall discuss below.

Here is the scheme of long term relationship:

It is important for you to understand, that love is not the result, not the outcome. Love is a never ending process, which you can control by yourself. Building a harmonious relationship is a hard work. But just like in many other areas of life it is a process to be repaid, and its fruits bring us a large variety of positive emotions and make the life meaningful.