Rebound relationships, or replacing the ex after a breakup: does one nail pulls out another nail?

How to identify a relationship based on manipulation and the need to fill a void?

If there is one thing that characterizes love, it is that it is irrational, confusing 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 feelings and recognize what kind they are.

Unlike other intense emotions such as fear or disgust, in love the source of what we feel is almost never clear: is it the person we are in a relationship with, or is it something they help us remember?

Rebound relationships, which occur after having gone through a love breakup, can be a very common cause of rebound feelings. 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 that, at the same time, are fueled by our inability to recognize what we really feel.

Hiding affective shortcomings

Any couple relationship is double-edged. 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, frustration and sadness that invades us when a relationship ends. in which we would like to continue living, but we can learn to manage in an effective way how to adapt to this change. Many people manage to overcome 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.

Initiating one of these rebound relationships is a way of cheating ourselves by forcing ourselves to act and feel in a similar way as we did with the person we miss. in a similar way as we did with the person we miss.. The bad thing is not only that we manipulate someone to get it; in addition, we are usually not fully aware that we are doing it.

Why do rebound relationships appear?

In the same way that better special effects can serve to create a very inverse movie, the substitute lovers that are used in rebound relationships are a support for our imagination, with the aim of fantasizing how life would be if that breakup had not occurred.

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

The source of the Pain is called emotional dependence

We call affective dependency to a way of relating to us that is very internalized in certain people and that puts us in a situation of vulnerability without us realizing it.. It has two facets: a cognitive, an emotional and a behavioral one.

CognitivelyThe emotional and emotional aspect of our life, 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 our life without the loved one.

EmotionallyEmotionally, it makes that throughout the day anything makes us remember emotions linked to the partner, so it is very easy to think obsessively about it.

BehaviorallyBehaviorally, it makes us take the necessary actions to avoid the discomfort produced 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 produced by not being in the relationship we long for. On the other hand, we go to the extreme of giving false hope to another person to alleviate this discomfort. moments in which we may think that we are manipulating someone else.The self-concept leads us to think that even if it were true that we go out with two people at the same time (a real one and another imagined one) that is not bad in itself.

• Article related: "Emotional dependency: the pathological addiction to your sentimental partner".

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 one who is trying to to make up for the absence of his or her ex-partner by incorporating a new lover into his or her life..

This last person can detect some strange details, usually related to signs of unhappiness on the part of the person he or she is dating, but it is very complicated for him or her to identify what makes him or her act this way.

To find out if you are feeding the existence of one of these rebound relationships, ask yourself the following questions.

Are you trying to change that person to be like your ex?

This is a recurring action in rebound relationships. Asking the other person to change in the context of an affair is already inappropriate, but if on top of that the change is directed toward a situation in which the person is more physically or mentally similar to the ex-partner. a situation in which the person is more similar to the ex-partner physically or mentally, the alarm of a probable rebound relationship is raised.the alarm of a probable rebound relationship should start ringing.

Do you think recurrently of your ex in the context of the relationship?

If while you are with the other person, you often evoke memories of that former partner that 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 recently gotten out of a turbulent relationship?

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

Conclusion: loving well and loving each other better Love relationships are something that always entails sacrifice, and for that reason it is necessary to reflect before initiating the habits of life as a couple with someone.. Otherwise, we may reach a point where we realize that our own shortcomings have made another person embark on a path that is not supported by anything, only false expectations of loving and being loved.