NosVies

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Today we were fortunate enough to have one of our cartoons chosen to appear on tv: Toute une Histoire (The Whole Story) on France 2, the main French public tv channel,  at 1:50 p.m., presented by Jean-Luc Delarue.

The programme’s subject is “Do you have to separate to save your relationship?” Taking a little break from each other so you can start afresh, separating so you can find each other again, keeping a healthy distance from each other… These are expressions we’re all familiar with!

Our cartoon depicts a young lady suggesting to her partner they sleep in separate rooms. At first it was for the sake of comfort, then it became a philosophy: space to breathe, joie de vivre, rekindled desire, the key to a lasting relationship.

Clément’s keen eye has done it again! The Réservoir Productions team seem to have done a lot of loving. A big thank you to Julie Grangeon and her editor-in-chief for their confidence in us.

Please don’t hesitate to write in with your opinion and experiences relating to our comments.

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Thanks to the magic of the internet, today we are doing a joint post with the Dr. Karen whom I’ve only known for a few weeks. We bumped into one another through our cartoon series on the “Our Love Life” and we decided to collaborate on a common post. Karen writes the main content and we do a summary and also the creative cartoon. The topic we agreed upon was suggested by Karen: trying to change the other in a couple.

In her article, Dr. Karen speaks about the expectation that some people have upon entering into a relationship. She says that some people believe that he or she will be able to change the traits of the other person — whether the traits are undesirable, somewhat irritating, or just a new behaviour they’d like the mate to have.

However, to maintain such an expectation is a recipe for disillusion and frustration. You can invest a lot of time and energy into trying to change someone but most of the time, even if it works for a little while, the original behaviour will return, in one form or another.

Change can be done but only if someone really wants to. Yet, it is a difficult process and, therefore, people often don’t change. Certainly, trying to get someone else to change is even harder, as well as inappropriate.

Enjoy the cartoon and share your thoughts and stories with us. To read the full article, go to Dr. Karen Sherman’s blog

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This is our 5th and probably last illustrated excerpt from the book “The Top 10 Myths about Love and Coupledom” (available only in French for the time being).
[Disclosure and reminder: we have no commercial interest in this book nor in its publishing company Dangles. We do not even know personnaly the author, at least as of today. Read this post to learn more about our illustrated excerpts.]

Just because love strikes without warning doesn’t mean we automatically know “how to love”. Loving is a learned skill!

Read the rest of this entry »

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According to the author of the book “The Top 10 Myths about Love and Coupledom” (available only French), we generally perceive jealousy to be a required ingredient in romance. We sometimes go so far as to believe that our partner couldn’t possibly be in love if jealousy isn’t involved.

The reality behind the myth is somewhat less romantic. Read the rest of this entry »

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“Can love last forever?” By reading this third chapter of the book The Top 10 Myths about Love and Coupledom (book only available in French), we understand that the debate surrounding this issue can go in circles because of various forms of love that exist.

The author describes the triangular theory of love using the work of Robert Sternberg (link to his site) who organizes the love phenomenon into three components. Read the rest of this entry »

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In his book« The Top 10 Myths about Love and Coupledom » (book only available in French), Yves-Alexandre Thalmann states that: «The concept of a soulmate must be the most widespread myth in the world of romance. When asked, most people admit that they believe in soulmates. Although they might not do so consciously, they secretly harbor hope of one day finding their soulmate. » (translation)

Read the rest of this entry »

To launch our illustrated excerpts, we have chosen Yves-Alexandre Thalmann’s The top ten myths about love and coupledom / Dangles Editions (book and author site currently only available in French).
The author unravels 10 myths – which he refers to as lies – about falling in love.

Let’s start with our first illustration.

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So what do you think about love? Is it a romantic illusion? Is it contingent on a predefined equation? Or is it a complete enigma? What has been your experience?

According to Yves-Alexandre Thalmann, romantic attraction is a process which can be dissected into seperate components: Read the rest of this entry »