Have You Ever Fallen in Love With Hopes and Dreams?
It’s happened to us all that, after a few years, your partner’s different behaviors and habits begin to bother you. Looking back, you already knew your partner behaved this way, but it all just went unnoticed. The reason is that you fell in love with hopes and dreams.
The infatuation phase of a relationship can cause real havoc. It can blind you and take away your common sense to the point of thinking that you’re capable of doing crazy things for the other person, someone you see as perfect. But what’s hard to realize is that this isn’t real. This perfection only exists in our thoughts. Your emotions, expectations, and hopes and dreams blinded you. Things are not as they seem.
Being in love with hopes and dreams
When we believe that a person has changed, what we should consider is whether we saw the person as he or she truly was from the beginning. Most likely the answer is “no.” During the beginning of any relationship, you create an image of your partner that makes you perceive them as an incomparable beauty, the epitome of perfection and marvelousness.
Nobody’s perfect, as you should have assumed. However, that image you create in your mind of the other person, which is the result of a deep love for them, becomes part of your reality during that time. Thus, you end up believing your own lie, ignoring any attitude that bothers you or that you don’t like. In fact, this is one of the reasons why many people repeat harmful relationship patterns.
“Better to be free. Better to be alone and go for a walk in this pile of nothing, than to keep clinging to false hopes and waking up later on a handful of broken dreams…”
-Edwin Vergara-
Juan’s story
Juan was very confused and fed up. He hesitated between continuing the relationship or ending it completely. It seemed like everything had exploded. Suddenly, it seemed that there was nothing he liked about his partner. Her complaints, her manias… Everything was chipping at his patience. He wanted to see the situation from another perspective to figure out what had actually happened, but he couldn’t.
What happened to Juan was that, at first, everything was wonderful. He saw his partner as a beautiful, perfect, responsible, and very good person. However, with time and without knowing very why, everything changed. The person he had fallen in love with had very bad days that Juan found unbearable. Mood swings, absurd complaints…
Juan’s partner wasn’t comfortable with the relationship or didn’t know how to deal with what was happening outside the relationship, for example, work-related stress. However, the problem was that when Juan spoke to his friends about the situation, it seemed like he was referring to two totally different people. So much so that, in reality, the people he was talking about didn’t even exist. They weren’t real.
Juan didn’t see his partner as she was, and he never did. At first, the hopes and dreams he had of the relationship only allowed him to see her as perfect. His feelings prevented him from seeing any flaws. He still wasn’t seeing his partner as she was. His emotions just didn’t let him. Juan had never known who he was really with.
Learning to see others as they are
Learning to see others as they are is difficult, but not impossible. Isn’t it true that you don’t have the same expectations with a friend as with a partner? The same is true for siblings, if you have them. You see these people as they are, with their good and bad sides.
However, when you start a relationship with another person, you usually see only their good side in the beginning. But, with time, you end up only focusing on the bad. This causes serious problems and can change the relationship dramatically.
The important thing to be aware of is that, when you fall in love, the image of your partner is distorted towards perfection. Knowing that this happens and taking it into account during this period opens the door to another reality, that in which the person has good and bad sides. In addition, it’s important to bear in mind that just as the other person has certain attitudes and behaviors that we love, there will also be others that we don’t agree with nor like at all.
We shouldn’t blame ourselves for having fallen in love with hopes and dreams. Romantic love makes this to happen. But the moment we realize this and become aware of it, we can do something to change it. Have you ever fallen in love with hopes and dreams?
