Psychologie der Liebe

One may admit today that one needs another person and wants to be needed. There is a new longing for connection, for closeness and tenderness, for stable companionship. Being alone is only accepted as a transitional state, not as a way of life. Marriage and family are once again seen as a refuge of security; lasting companionship is viewed as a coveted luxury.

Human beings have recognized that they need the other, the romantic partner, because the love relationship is of great and irreplaceable importance for their personal development and the unfolding of their potential. A love relationship is never merely harmonious and selfless; it is always self-serving and charged with tension. The partners challenge each other, serve as each other's most competent critics, and are the most relentless challengers, as each is directly affected by the other's development and growth. Partners are the voice of the subconscious for one another, which also means confronting the repressed aspects of their own personal development. The love between partners remains ambivalent—tense in the question of how far the relationship fosters or hinders the unfolding of one's own potential. A partnership in which there are no frictions and no developments has come to a standstill. In a vibrant relationship, partners are always also a mystery to each other; they remain in lifelong search of one another.