10 Terrible “Wisdoms” About Love — and How to Counter Them

Happy ever after, anyone? Where would romance be without a good cliché? Love was built on clichés, those timeless “wisdoms” passed down through the ages — and had life breathed into them by social media. I get it. Clichés are catchy. They sell. There’d be no movie industry without them. But as a psychologist I shrink from them. For starters, I want to be better, and offer more, than a real-life social media meme. But, also, they’re frequently weird, unrealistic or just plain wrong. If you’ve stripped them back honestly, you’ll know what I mean. Here are 10 of my favourites. <h2>1. You had me at hello.</h2> This line worked in the movies (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Maguire" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Jerry McGuire</a>), but most of us need a lot more than hello to get across the line in love. As we should. A client asked me recently how long they should wait to be sure of their new partner. There’s no research-based answer to how long people take to reveal their true selves in a relationship. Some people wear masks — and those who are good at it can keep them in place for a very long time. And even when the red flags are jabbing us in the nose we may still be inclined to ignore them. We all drip feed our oddness in relationships: It can take years — decades — to know the person you’re with. And we all change — or at least most of us do; sometimes it’s in a good way, sometimes it’s not. When people are going through a torrid break up, they’ll often ask themselves: Did I ever really know this person? Was my whole relationship built on a myth — or a lie? <a href="https://medium.com/on-the-couch/10-terrible-wisdoms-about-love-and-how-to-counter-them-e15a637ef984">Read More</a>