Why do so many couples fail?

Life together is increasingly idealized. And increasingly fragile. Between the fear of getting lost and desire for perfection, what can we expect from love, the couple, and what should we give up? Inventory.
Around us, the happy couple are plethora. Everyone dreams of living the great love. Few seem to achieve it.
Marine, 37: "The happiness together, I always feel that it is for others. I meet men. Every time it starts strong and then the lives of two chokes me. I do not know how to make those who get there. "Christine, 46:" I have been married for twelve years. I am committed to our family, but our love life petered out. I want to feel my heart beat, to have the desire. I do not know how to find it with my husband. So I dream of clandestine adventures. "Pierre, 43:" At the time of our parents, the couple as a social model is not discussed. Today, the world has changed. We no longer trust the institutions. How could we still trust the couple? "
The cult of personal growth
In his latest book, Solo, Solo No, what future for the couple (PUF), the psychoanalyst Fabienne Kraemer examines this new crisis: "In a culture that values ​​individual development, single status seem almost enviable. "
To "solo" freedom, the opportunity to really accomplish, unfettered by the shackles of marriage. And she laments: "Unmarried think only of finding your soul mate while pretending to enjoy their solitude. The difficulties with their guys become the main theme evenings with friends. The men fled in work or video games ... Few are those who assume the importance of the couple for their balance and give the right to proclaim loudly their love. As if to believe in love was naive. "
Fear of commitment
Today, meeting someone is not really a problem. Specialized sites manage to break the isolation. "But, after the first dinner the first night together, it's hard to take the next steps. Everyone remains in a cautious posture for fear of getting carried too fast. It remains indefinitely on probation and it all fades, "says Peter. "The idea of ​​commitment frightens me, recognizes Navy. It is as if I had to abdicate myself. I wonder if the women of my generation can still accommodate a lifestyle that has locked their mothers and grandmothers. "
Chugging, couples form but still struggling to overcome the reign of fear. Fear of making the wrong choice, having to give up their freedom. Fear, above all, that love does not last. "If that is no longer trying to get caught up in a meeting, Kraemer says Fabienne. Rather, it seeks to suffer as little as possible. And one takes more risks necessary to live great stories. "
Why is the couple become a complicated affair? Is it because we expect too much? "I do not think so, retorted the psychoanalyst. I am even convinced that it is not ambitious enough in this area. However, too much is expected of each other and not enough self. We went in search of the right person for yourself, without seeking to be the right person to another. "We expect him to reassure us, it is a cure for all our ills by showing itself to the height of fantasy that we have him.
"But love is nestled in otherness, she says. In what in another, radically different from us and remains a mystery. In this mixed couples start out with an advantage: the other has that aura alien that must discover the tastes, language, way of thinking. We should never lose this mutual curiosity. "
Routine, a failure?
Our age does not help the couple to spend time and energy it needs. "The pressure of work reverse the order of priorities: career before love, says Fabienne Kraemer. Check-thirties, women then select a partner in a hurry, before it's too late to give birth, and too bad if the relationship is not satisfactory. "Faced with an uncertain future, the" short-termism "weighs on couples. "They are projected over ten years, twenty years, she continues. This lack of a shared vision deprives the resources to them through turbulence. "
Added to this is the need for strength, fed by permanent loads consumption and screens, which grows to absorb the inevitable daily routine to a failure of the life together. "Now moments of boredom are valuable, ensures psychoanalyst. They allow partners to renew their creativity. But when they occur it is usually in forward flight: each to his own, seeking to be entertained elsewhere. "Finally, she noted, today's couples give more importance to their role as parents than before. And not enough to allow more take time for them. The result is statistical: the peak separations occurs after the birth of the second child ...
The couple, instead of a joy like no other
If the couple is threatened, it remains, for the psychoanalyst, place of happiness unlike any other. Provided you know what to expect: "The state of love beginnings is probably the most exciting, but because it does not last, it plunges us into the torment. Change partners as soon as this state is dissipated, is to condemn oneself to not taste the entrance, never enjoy the main course: that of the deep love that moves with the times, when we manage to love the other for what it is. That love soothes us. It makes us reach the bliss of living with his best friend, the confidence of having someone at his side who gives us instead of being ourselves. And so we feel that we are stronger and freer to two. Only those who have not tasted this second stage of love imagine that it is less tasty than the initial passion. "
The secret to lasting love comes down, she said, four precepts gathered in the initial CARE: complicity, love, respect, commitment. It is to live it, to get out of the fantasy of ideal relationship and roll up their sleeves for her to be truly.