The couple is not what it used to be. Formerly announced by the engagement, then sealed by marriage, the couple is now onlya singular choice which is imposed more or less suddenly on both parties. It is no longer the result of an oath taken at the altar for various reasons (including money or power relations between two families), but the simple affirmation of two individuals to form a couple, cohabitation n ‘being even more a requisite to be one.

The couple is formed when two people discover that they have for each other a selective affinity that pushes them to create a lasting relationship. This phenomenon appears to both individuals as natural, inevitable and strong enough to disrupt the individual plans they had before they met.

For Robert Neuburger, the couple is formed when “ two people start to tell each other a couple and this couple’s story will tell them in return ”. a akụkọ is no longer on the same logical plane as the daily reality which preceded their meeting and is immediately imbued with a ” founding myth Which explains the irrationality of their encounter. It is a story that gives meaning to their meeting and its coincidence, from the depth to their couple: the two lovers believe in it for real and each idealizes the other.

This account is reinforced, as in all beliefs, by emume like the celebration of the anniversary of the meeting, the wedding, the Valentine’s Day as well as other metaphorical reminders of their love, the scenario of the meeting or the milestones of their couple. If any of these rituals, which constantly reinforce the myth, are suppressed or forgotten, the narrative is shaken: ” If he forgot our wedding anniversary, or didn’t take me to the mythical places we met every year, is it because he loves me less, maybe not at all? “. The same goes for the codes of the story: the way to say hello, the way to call one another, to knock on the door, and a whole bunch of distinctive signs that are difficult for others to detect, who are foreign to the story. .

The “meeting” does not necessarily take place at the time of the first interaction between the two future lovers: it is an experience of temporal rupture which causes the interactions to switch and upset the existential order of the two subjects. Indeed, when couples recount their meeting, they often lose the memory of their first interaction. They tell the story of when it all started for them. Sometimes this moment is even different for the two lovers.

How do they meet? First, we must admit that the nso nso, which designates all modes of proximity in space, has a strong influence on the choices of partners. Geographical, cultural, structural or functional proximity is a vector that brings together individuals of similar status, style, age, and taste, creating as many potential couples. So in a way we can say « Nnụnụ nke nku nku na-agbakọta ọnụ ". The two individuals in love will then believe in a story that persuades them that they are a couple made up of two individuals made for each other, similar, soul mates.

If we are to believe the polls, the ball, which was for a long time the first place for the formation of couples, is no longer really at the party. And nightclubs have not really taken over: around 10% of couples would have formed there during the 2000s. Meetings in the neighborhood or within the family have followed the same path. It is now private parties with friends na the links forged during studies, which feed the meetings, representing respectively 20% and 18% of these. The tendencies to live in couple with a socially close person remain, it is the methods of putting in contact that change. ” We get together with someone at the same level as ourselves, with whom we can talk ” assures sociologist Michel Bozon.

The loving passion that drives the two individuals in the early stages of the relationship does not last forever. It can disappear as it came and has nothing to do with attachment, which can only take hold in lasting exchanges. If their love lasts, if they want it to last, they can become attached, so that each will be able to develop a stable emotional bond with a partner considered as a unique individual, not interchangeable and with whom we want to stay close. . It is a form of relationship that is biologically necessary for man to regulate his emotions, to think better. If they maintain their links, and cultivate them, the two lovers end up forming a positive, real, concrete, higher-order organism. At this point, the illusions of coincidence, soul mates and similar beings no longer hold. For Jean-Claude Maes, lovers have two choices to “stay in love”:

Mkpokọta which implies that each of the partners agree to develop only parts of themselves that meet the needs of the other.

The compromise which implies that each one gives up certain things which are dear to him, to make compromises, thus transforming the risk of conflict in the couple to an internal conflict. It is this second option that William Shakespeare develops in Troilus and Cressida, of which here is an eloquent extract.

TROILUS – What, madame, hurts you?

CRESSIDA – My own company, sir.

TROILUS – You cannot run away from yourself.

CRESSIDA – Let me go, let me try. I have a self that dwells with you, but also another nasty self that tends to alienate itself to be another’s plaything. I would like to be gone … Where has my reason fled? I don’t know what I’m saying anymore …

TROILUS – When you express yourself with so much wisdom, you know what you are saying.

CRESSIDA – Perhaps I showed less love than cunning, Lord, and openly made such a big confession to probe your thoughts; now I find you wise, therefore without love, because being wise and in love is beyond human strength and is only suitable for the gods.

« It is that any couple, and this is particularly evident today, is nothing other than a story to which we give credit, therefore a tale in the noble sense of the term. » Curd Philippe

“Iwu nke okike bụ na anyị na-achọ ihe megidere anyị, mana ka anyị na mmadụ ibe anyị na-emekọrịta ihe. Ịhụnanya na-egosi ọdịiche. Enyi na-ebute ụzọ ịha nhata, myirịta nke ụtọ, ike na iwe. " Françoise Parturier

“In life, the prince and the shepherdess are unlikely to meet. ” Michel Bozon