When interaction between family members increases during movement control order (MCO) in Malaysia, the conflict between individual increases. This happened in China during lock-down of Wu Han City. After unlocked of the city, the first things people did in Wu Han – arrange to get divorce!
In Malaysia, Ministry of Women proposed that wife needs to dress professionally at home even they do not work and they have to speak like a Doremon when interacting with the husband. Does it work?
The divorce rate is on the rise, almost like a global pandemic. In the US, almost 49% of the marriages end up in divorces.
First marriages end up in divorces with an average duration of just less than eight years, 60% of all divorces are related to individuals aged 25 to 39, and there were more than 21 million divorces in the year 2017.
According to Department of Statistics, Malaysia, the number of marriages increased 1.2 per cent from 203,741 (2017) to 206,253 (2018). However, the crude marriage rate (CMR) remained at 6.4 per 1,000 population. The number of Muslim marriages recorded in 2018 was 150,098, increased 1.9 per cent as compared to 147,282 (2017). CMR increased from 7.5 (2017) to 7.6 (2018) per 1,000 Muslim population. The number of Non-Muslim marriages declined 0.5 per cent from 56,459 (2017) to 56,155 (2018). However, CMR remained at 4.5 per 1,000 Non-Muslim population.
The number of divorces increased 0.1 per cent from 50,314 (2017) to 50,356 (2018). However, the crude divorce rate (CDR) remained at 1.6 per 1,000 population. The number of Muslim divorces recorded in 2018 was 40,269, increased 1.4 per cent as compared to 39,709 (2017). CDR remained at 2.0 per 1,000 Muslim population. On the contrary, Non-Muslim divorces declined 4.9 per cent from 10,605 (2017) to 10,087 (2018). Therefore, CDR for Non-Muslim improved slightly from 0.9 (2017) to 0.8 (2018).
As a result, many people end up experiencing deep pain of loving someone who does not or cannot love them back. This trauma can also cause personality or emotion disorders, leading to abnormal or maladaptive behaviour when they cannot stand the stress of the rejection.
Love is Blind?
Falling in love is not a rational process. There is an uncountable number of definitions of what love is. It is an intensely emotional and intuitive experience. A lot of it is magic and chemistry.
Yet, it can also be seen to be planned or reasoned as falling in love is emotionally learned on many levels. As such, love is simply too individual and subjective to fit into any simple or objective definition.
Given this wide range of possibilities, the experience for a teenager whose sweetheart has moved away is different in many ways from the widower whose wife of forty years has just died.
Since falling in love is emotionally learned, it has to be emotionally unlearned if you are going to fall out of love. That is why insights, rational thinking and exploring the reasons you fell in love are all inefficient and ineffective.
Just how many ways you love someone can be intriguing. However, it is unlikely that knowing them will help you to stop the pain of being in love with someone who does not love you.
Instead of struggling with the shadows of your past or trying to decide who’s to blame or why this or that happened, or even why you feel the way you do, try the following to get away the old relationship and develop new ones.
“There is no point just talking or looking for insights, and it is critical to deal with emotional pain in a direct, systematic way.”
In psychotherapy sessions, the first and the most important fact the therapist would ask the client is if he or she would like to stop the pain. Therapy would remind the client the critical way to stop the pain is not by talking about it or by looking for insights or finding insights. It is by dealing with that pain in a direct, systematic way.
When you feel about someone is largely in response to the person – complex responses to the things they’ve done and said, to the way they look and feel, to the things you have done and said. These are learned responses.
You didn’t feel them about the person before you knew what the person looked and felt like before you’d conversed and did things together.
Over a period of time, those responses become deeply ingrained among the patterns of your mind. Constantly thinking about the person, constantly repeating fixed images of him or her can reinforce those images and make them stronger and more persistent.
Since love is a learned process, we need to unlearn to let our emotions become freed and only then be able to stop the pain. With a determined mind, you won’t have to rely on wishful thinking (“if only, if only, if only”), the advice of friends or outsiders, a random chance of inspiration, some insight or the slow passage of time. You can do it yourself – now.
“WHY IDEALISE SOMEONE WHO CAN’T OR WON’T RETURN YOUR LOVE? SILENT RIDICULE USES HUMOUR TO ERODE THE PEDESTAL YOU HAVE SO KINDLY BUILT FOR THAT PERSON.”
We can fall out of love by first adopting the thought-stopping method commonly used in behaviour therapy. Thought-stopping is the first step that takes you away from being in love; that is, it reduces the time you spend thinking about that person and leaves you more time for yourself and other people.
You may start by defining a specific goal. Try to observe the frequency when you think of the person. Then, control and instruct your mind to stop thinking about it immediately when you realise you’re thinking of your previous partner.
The second step is the silent ridicule. This step helps falling out of love easier. Thought-stopping helps you to reduce the frequency of thinking about the person you love while silent ridicule reduces the intensity of those thoughts.
It seems that one of our most human traits is to idealise someone who can’t or won’t return to our love. Silent ridicule uses humour to erode that pedestal you have so kindly built for the person you love.
It is also an especially useful method if you have to see that person from time to time. You can achieve these steps by designing scenes in which the person you love ends up looking, acting and/or talking absurdly.
You should practice this often in your mind, evoking the scene three to five times a day, especially whenever you see, talk to or hear of that person – or when you feel yourself unconsciously putting them on a pedestal.
The third step focuses and places firm attention on yourself. You are vulnerable now as depression and doubt make poor companions.
Your own self-review can realistically improve with a little perspective, so focus on a series of positive exercises to help develop your strength to stand alone if you need to, along with the courage to meet other people and build bridges to new relationships.
The next step continues with desensitisation to deal with jealousy and rejection. This can be achieved with organic reconditioning, positive reinforcement, and many useful skills for developing warmth and intimacy with a new person.
The article ends with a classical poem by William Shakespeare.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate,
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date,
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d,
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
by Datuk Dr Leow Chee Seng
