Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Nursing organized an event titled “Conscious Partner Selection for Healthy Families”. The guest of the program, moderated by Prof. Dr. Selma Doğan, Head of the Department of Nursing at Üsküdar Üniversitesi Faculty of Health Sciences, was Sivas Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi Faculty of Health Sciences Family Counselor Lecturer Sema Biçer. Biçer, stating that what we call love is becoming 'we' at the cost of eliminating the 'I's, said, “It means that if you are not in my life, I will be incomplete. Love is the inability to understand the difference between what is imagined and what is real.”
“Our boundaries in our own lives are very important”
Speaking about boundaries in relationships, Biçer said; “During the friendship and companionship period, in the periods before deciding to marry, if a person learns to set boundaries regarding their body, soul, and values in their relationships, and learns to respect the boundaries of others, they can also succeed in emotional relationships. Therefore, how we manage our boundaries in our own lives and how we respect the boundaries of others is very important.”
“They become our nightly dream, our nightly fantasy”
Speaking about emotional friendship relationships, Biçer said; “In emotional relationships, emotional friendship begins, and in these relationships, we find ourselves experiencing a feeling completely different from what we feel for anyone else, whether it's 'getting a spark' or them suddenly becoming our whole world. In our lives, the person with whom we feel that emotional closeness becomes someone very special. They become our nightly dream, our nightly fantasy. They become the person whose phone we can't put down, whose messages we immediately expect a reply to, whom we see everywhere we look, and whose image we see when we close our eyes.”
“Love is an abnormal narrowing of interest in a normal person”
Speaking about love and its definitions, Biçer said; “Love is an abnormal narrowing of interest in a normal person. It creates an intense, emotional process where everyone resembles them, and every sound we hear seems like their voice. We are normal, but there is an abnormal interest focused on the person we are in love with. We experience a period where we are deeply in love, feeling those intense emotions, and no one else remains as significant in our lives. What we call love is becoming 'we' at the cost of eliminating the 'I's. It means that if you are not in my life, I will be incomplete. In those intense emotions, we see what we imagine. Love is the inability to understand the difference between what is imagined and what is real. Love is about the person who is in love and the meaning they give to the person they love. In other words, it has nothing to do with the person being loved.”
“Love needs to be transformed into enduring love”
Addressing whether love is sufficient for marriage, Biçer said; “One needs to roll up their sleeves by stopping conflicts and starting with cooperation and a new beginning. First, one must learn to be an 'I', and then to be a 'we'. People must learn to love maturely. Because loving is an art. Marriage is like a second birth, painful like every birth. Lives need to be restructured. There is an arduous journey as marriage continues. Love does not continue throughout life with intense emotions. With marriage, love needs to be transformed into enduring love. Love is a visual impairment. The impairment corrects itself upon marriage.”