Relationships rebound, or replace the ex after a breakup

If something characterizes love, it is that it is irrational, confused and turbulent. We know that it has a very powerful impact on our habits and our emotional state, but it is not always easy to describe these sensations and recognize what kind they are.

And it is that unlike other intense emotions such as fear or disgust, in love the source of what What we feel is almost never clear: is it the person we are in a relationship with, or is it something the relationship helps us to remember?

Rebound relationships, which occur after having gone through a love breakup from which we have not yet recovered, are precisely those in which what keeps the couple together is manipulation and fear of facing that feeling of emptiness and which, at the same time, are fueled by our inability to recognize what really sorry.

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Hiding affective deficiencies

Any couple relationship has a double edge. They are exciting and sources of many good moments, but if they end they can sink us emotionally.

We cannot control the appearance of that feeling of emptiness, frustration and sadness that invades us when a relationship ends in which we would like to continue living, but we can learn to effectively manage how to adapt to this change. Many people manage to get over this hard blow, but others refuse to accept their new situation and try to mask the reality. Rebound relationships are one of the strategies used to achieve this.

Starting one of those rebound relationships is a way of fooling ourselves into forcing ourselves to act and feel. in a similar way to how we did it with that person we miss. The bad thing is not only that we manipulate someone to get it; furthermore, we are usually not fully aware that we are doing it.

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Why do rebound relationships appear?

In the same way that better special effects can serve to create a very immersive film, the surrogate lovers that are used in rebound relationships they are a support for our imagination, with the aim of fantasizing what life would be like if that break had not happened produced.

This means, among other things, that rebound relationships are highly unfair, since there is someone in them who is wasting his time, his effort and his illusions in a project that has no future because it is the remedy for a lack affective But it also means that the person who has started one of these relationships rebounds there is an unresolved psychological problem: emotional dependence.

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The source of the pain is called emotional dependency.

We call affective dependence a way of relating that is deeply internalized in certain people and that puts us in a vulnerable situation without us realizing it. It has two facets: one cognitive, one emotional, and one behavioral.

cognitively, makes us transform our self-concept (that is, the idea we have of ourselves) into something composed of two people, so that we do not conceive of our life without the loved one.

emotionally, causes that throughout the day anything makes us remember emotions linked to the couple, with which it is very easy to think obsessively about it.

behaviorally, makes us undertake the necessary actions to avoid the discomfort caused by the absence of that person. In these situations of longing, the metaphor of love conceived as a drug becomes clearer.

Rebound relationships are a consequence of these three effects. On the one hand, everything that happens to us makes us focus our attention on the discomfort caused by not continuing to be in the relationship we long for. On the other, we go to the extreme of giving false hope to another person to alleviate that discomfort, and on the other, in the moments in which we can think that we are manipulating someone, the self-concept leads us to think that even if it were true that we go out with two people at the same time (one real and one imagined) that is not bad in itself.

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How to recognize the rebound effect in love

The bad thing about rebound relationships is that many times they can only be detected by the person who is trying to make up for the absence of her ex-partner by incorporating a new lover into her life.

This last person can detect some strange details, usually related to samples of unhappiness on the part of the person you are dating, but it is very difficult for them to know what makes them unhappy act like that

To find out if you're fueling the existence of one of those rebound relationships, ask yourself the following questions.

Do you try to change that person so that they look like your ex?

This is a recurring action in rebound relationships. Asking the other person to change in the context of a romance is already inappropriate, but if in addition to that the change is directed towards a situation in which the person is more similar to the ex-partner physically or mentally, the likely rebound relationship alarm should start to sound.

Do you think of your ex on a recurring basis in the context of the relationship?

If being with the other person often evokes memories of that old partner you miss, it is possible that this is exactly what you are looking for in this new relationship: more situations in which it is possible to fantasize about that person who is no longer by your side.

Have you gotten out of a turbulent relationship recently?

The more recent the breakup of a relationship that was something very intense for us, the more likely it is that it is a rebound relationship. However, this fact alone is not an indication.

Conclusion: love well and love yourself better. Loving relationships are something that always entails sacrifice, and that is why you have to reflect before starting the habits of life as a couple with someone. Otherwise, we can reach a point where we realize that our own shortcomings have made us another person embarks on a path that is not supported by anything, only false expectations of loving and being loved.