Everybody wants love, closeness, partnership. Yet most of us manage to fall in love with the wrong person — and more than once at that. Some follow this script: they search, they meet someone, they fight their way through thorns to the stars, at last he (or she) gives in, happiness and the happy ending seem to have arrived, and... something is missing. Others fall in love at first sight, spend the best part of a decade in a nerve-shredding marriage, then divorce and breathe freely again, and... they want love, closeness, partnership.
And so life keeps going round in a figure of eight, and the years pass by.. We will talk about the second script in a separate article. This one is about why and what for we walk straight past the partner who would suit us, and how to get out of this pointless "search" for goodness knows what.
Too simple, too easy and too happy with Alyona
Take, for example, Grisha Izmailov, the cop from Rublyovka (in real life the actor Alexander Petrov, in the Russian comedy series of the same name). Grisha has loved Alyona for a long time, ever since university. Alyona loves Grisha. They are around thirty and they have been circling each other through thorns to the stars: getting married, living with and having affairs with women who did not suit them. And now the stars have finally aligned, and they are together.
For Grisha, Alyona is the longed-for star he reaches out to and is afraid to touch. Because of that even the sex does not work out: they treat each other with such reverence that they are afraid to touch at all. But Grisha feels that something is missing in Alyona: she loves him too evenly, she does not tie him down enough and gives him too much freedom. In short, things with her are easy, simple and happy. And that is not it.
Life is too good — get yourself a goat
Do you remember the parable about "get yourself a goat"? A man's life was too good, and he started complaining that nothing was right. A wise man advised him to keep a goat in the house, which our whinger duly did. Everything stayed as it was, but the goat turned his life into a nightmare: it bleated, it stank and it butted him, and the whinger began to wish he were dead. The wise man advised him to sell the goat, which made the whinger's life perfect. And yet absolutely nothing had changed.
Grisha realised that something was missing with Alyona, but he did not realise what exactly. So he split up with Alyona and got together with Alisa. Alisa is a mysterious, feisty girl, a tomboy damaged by her father: she punches you in the face, kisses you on the spot, and she has a terrible secret. And it turns out that Alisa is the daughter of the man who killed Grisha's father... in the finest tradition of the little drama. And Grisha sank into an even deeper psychosis than before. In short, he got himself a goat.
I keep falling for the wrong people. Why?
What is Grisha's problem? Intuitively and evenly he is drawn to Alyona, the woman who suits him. Instinctively and compulsively he is drawn to Alisa and goodness knows who else, to women who end up hurting him. Because Grisha has a trauma, a neurosis.
Grisha has unclosed gestalts in his past. With his murdered parents, and goodness knows what else that the series "The Cop from Rublyovka" never reveals. And you can see it in the way Grisha cannot live with the woman who suits him. He is looking at the ones who do not.
Something went wrong in Grisha's childhood. The mystery of his parents' murder troubles him, for instance. Or his mother was so unattainable for him, tormented him with such mysteriousness, that Grisha will spend his whole life trying to change that unpleasant sensation through... his women. Grisha will choose women who resemble the source of his trauma in the past. Grisha's women will resemble the mysterious mother, the unknown murderer, anybody at all except Alyona, who gives Grisha calm, harmony and joy. That is exactly why Grisha will keep choosing the Alisas. What for? It is simple: if he can remake Alisa, he remakes the past, gets rid of his traumas and finds peace.
But there is a problem: the past is past, Alisa is neither the murderer nor the mother, and Grisha will not solve his own problems through his women until he decides to climb out of this "arse-deep infantilism".
How to find calm, joy and correctness?
If Grisha's story struck a chord with you, here is the good news: there is a way out of this vicious circle. We will not go into deep therapy here, that is a separate conversation. It would already help Grisha if somebody showed him and explained to him what exactly is happening to him. Showed him that Alyona is his harmonious partner and that Alisa is his search for the murderer or the mother. And then one could explain why, as well.
This is possible if you:
- know your own personality type,
- know the compatible personality type of the partner you could live with in a harmonious relationship, and
- choose not just any Alisa, but candidates of the type that suits you
None of which releases you from looking for such partners yourself. Counsellors are not going to have sex with your partner for you, that is your job. So off you go — no thorns, straight to the stars!
Want to switch into "search mode"? Take the personality type test below, and at the end you will find out about compatibility.
