Judith Sherven and Jim Sniechowski Relationship Article

May 2004 Issue --> Relationship Article

Beware Romantic Fantasy

By: Judith Sherven and Jim Sniechowski

Chances are you never thought you needed to be rescued from romance. In fact, you probably feel you need more romance in your life, not less. The truth is that most hearts are brokenin the painful difference between the possibility of realromance and the insistence on the fantasy of romance -- with thereal thing taking the loss.

Romantic Fantasy versus Real Romance

Do you remember as a child closing your eyes and making a wish when you blew out your birthday candles? Remember how you hoped with all your heart your wish would come true. In all likelihood, those that did come true were made to happen by your parents or another relative, someone who had the power to bring your wish to reality. Didn't it seem like a miracle when you got what you dreamed of? All you had to do was wish and there it was!

If you can see a rabbit in a cloud or a face in the bark of atree; if your heart can be opened by the giant chords of a powerful symphony or you can discover something where nobody ever looked before, you might be praised for the wonder of your imaginings. You might even be called a genius.

Do you have to give up imagining? Not at all. The price of giving up imagining is the death of the soul.

But we need to make a critical distinction at this point, a distinction that's so important it carries the weight of whether you will have a successful relationship or not. You cannotprefer your imaginings over reality and you cannot allow reality to squash your dreams. You have to weave them together to make a whole and fulfilling life. Unfortunately, for too many, this distinction is not made, and they consciously or unconsciously choose what they imagine over what actually exists in and around them and are reduced to living in heartbreaking fantasy.

To experience real love and true intimacy, we have to understand that, because we are all confronted with differences, we cannot have everything we want just the way we want it. Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who turned out to be different than what you imagined? Perhaps the reality of this person was even pretty terrific, but he or she was different from your expectations and you had to adjust. Even when that works out well, there's still a feeling of loss when you have to let your fantasy expectations go.

For far too many, however, the loss is intolerable. Rather than having to "settle" for a person they can't help but see as ordinary and unexceptional when compared to their fantasy, they choose their own world of romantic make-believe. They prefer the stories they've made-up rather than having to live in the truth of who they really are and what it's like tobe with a real person who is different. And nothing is more effective at destroying real intimacy than opting for the images and emotions of romantic make-believe.

Romantic fantasies take many forms. They can be very subtle and hardly noticeable, or they can be outrageous and unbelievable. The key to spotting such fantasies is that they always compensate for a sense of loss, hopelessness or any feeling of inadequacy.

For example:

Niki can't stop her date's unwanted sexual advances because "I'm afraid if I say 'No,' he'll lose interest in me." So she ignores her own response and creates a fantasy about him -- that he's so much more open and honest about his sexual needs than she is -- and she lives inside that story rather than the truth that she doesn't want to go to bed with him and doesn't have enough self-esteem to make her feelings known.

Kareem looked forward to surprising Keesha by taking her to a new restaurant. After they arrived, she said she'd been there the week before with her networking group. Hewas crushed because he wanted to be the first one to take her there. Rather than adjust to the truth of reality and enjoy the timewith Keesha, he spent the evening sulking, caught up in feelingbetrayed mixed with not feeling special.

Anthony wanted his marriage annulled when his wife told him of her previous sexual encounters. He wanted to believe she'd been a virgin even though he hadn't been. Rather than working out a reality-based relationship with his wife who he claimed to love, he preferred the fantasy that a wife should always be a virgin for her man. Anything else would be degrading for him. "It breaks my heart to have to leave her," he sighed, " but I have no choice." Not one of these people has their feet on the ground. Each displays a dangerous preference for their idealized notion of "how it's supposed to be." They reject the differences between reality and their own fantasy and then have no way to intimately connect with the people they're with because they are unconsciously loyal to the stories they have contrived. For Niki, Kareem and Anthony to ever feel really loved, they will have to rescue themselves from their allegiance to fantasy.

Yvonne and Sam

We read about a young couple, Yvonne and Sam, in the Los Angeles Times. They married after the birth of their first child. She was 16. He was 21. They both were gang members and said they fully expected that marriage "would mean instant happiness."

"Why not," Yvonne insisted, "that's what our culture teachesus." Instead of effortless happiness, their marriage quickly plummeted into despair. Sam couldn't pull away from his homeboys, and he lost his job. Yvonne had another child, cried all the time and was beaten for her tears. This is a vivid illustration of the dangerous differences between the fantasy of instant happiness and the demands of intimate relationship in the real world. But their story has a happy ending. Together they changed their lives.

In desperation, Yvonne found her way to a very supportive continuation high school with an on-site day care and parenting program for teen mothers. While she worked to earn her diploma, the teachers helped her believe in herself and increase her determination to take responsibility and change her life. She gave Sam a choice: Leave Los Angeles and the environment they were trapped in, or she would leavehim.

They moved to a new town, started couple's counseling, and the violence stopped. Rising up out of the quicksand of unconscious fantasy and the pull of their allegiance to their families' and neighborhood's way of life, they renounced their self-sabotaging habits and made conscious choices to change their lives even more. Yvonne now attends college with plans to go on to law school. Sam works full time and is pursuing his high school diploma.

They began as children mired in hopeless romantic fantasies of effortless happiness, but they are doing the necessary lovework, committed to developing themselves as proud, positive, increasingly successful individuals. With continued counseling they are discovering themselves.

They are learning to identify and value their differences, becoming more intimate and loving with one another and good role models for their children. They're making their way, hand in hand, through the challenging adventure of leaving their past behind, interrupting the unconscious duplication of what came before, in order to find their own lives and be true to themselves and their children. After such a difficult start, they're learning to rely on their love to achieve the excitement and power of real romance and a new intimacy.

The Dangerous Price of Preferring Fantasy

Romantic fantasies, like drugs and alcohol, offer the hope of getting what you believe you can't get on your own. Also like drugs they are temporary and never ultimately satisfying. When the spell dissolves, you're lost in the pit of heartbreak, shortchanged by life yet again.

On the other hand, when fantasy is not a substitute for reality, it can be a playful source of pleasure. You can slip beyond the limits of daily life and play in a make- believe world. You get to go anywhere, be anyone and experience anything you like. However, enjoying romantic fantasies is one thing. Preferring them over reality is quite another. That's a crucial distinction.

When you expect your fantasy to come true in reality, bitterness and recrimination will routinely be part of the package. Remember, reality can be overwhelmed when it has to compete with the perfection of fantasy. When reality fails, disappointed love often turns vicious.

Have you ever physically or emotionally hurt someone just because she or he failed to match your dream of the perfect lover? Have you ever suffered the failure of not living up to someone else's dream image of the perfect love? We ask these questions during our trainings, and, without exception, the majority of both men and women confess they have experienced both sides of this problem. Chances are, you have too. Then, when a real life relationship makes its inevitable demands, you shrink from a feeling of personal inadequacy, afraid you won't be enough, afraid you will come up short. The trance of romance is deadly. When we're caught, we reject what is, preferring what "should be."

Who You Are Has To Be Sacrificed

The major problem with a commitment to fantasy is that whoever you are for real has to be sacrificed. If you're feeling scared, awkward, confused, angry or whatever, you can't show it. That would burst the fantasy. You have to create a substitute self. You have to pretend to be secure, comfortable, clear, composed, whatever it takes. However, your false self contains a huge trap, one that's not immediately apparent. A false self can never be enough, because its whole purpose is to compensate for your initial decision that who you are, as you really are, is unacceptable.

A false self never removes the feeling of being unacceptable, that's not it's job. It merely hides it, so that you become more and more afraid that if you relax you will be revealed ... and rejected.

When you condemn yourself as unacceptable you are unavoidably lost. Without a credible sense of your own self, you're left to depend upon other people's values, ideas and beliefs as the basis for your identity -- your family, community, or church; fads or trends; media deceptions; a life based on "how I'm supposed to act." You're like a child living in somebody else's world. You can't trust yourself. In fact, you can't really trust anyone else, because you don't have a reliable sense of self to make such decisions. Is it any wonder you might fear being rejected by others? You can't feel any safer with them than you do with yourself.

Too many people spend their lives more faithful to an imagined lover than to the people they could be with (or actually are with). They prefer to be special in the eyes of their ghostly lover rather than ordinary in the embrace of a real person. Beware your wish for The Prince or Lady Perfect. They always begin as images of hope and promise. In the end, they turn out to be demanding and unforgiving tyrants, permitting no real person to ever be enough -- especially you!

Judith Sherven, Ph.D. & Jim Sniechowski, Ph.D. authors ofBe Loved for Who You Really Are, The New Intimacy, & Opening to Love 365 Days a Year

Visit our website at www.themagicofdifferences.com

All data provided on this website is to be used for information purposes only. The information contained on this website and pages within, is not intended to provide specific legal, medical, financial or tax advice, or any other advice, whatsoever, for any individual or company and should not be relied upon in that regard. The services described on this website are only offered in jurisdictions where they may be legally offered. Information provided in our website is not all-inclusive, and is limited to information that is made available to and such information should not be relied upon as all-inclusive or accurate.

Bookmark this page now...

Beware Romantic Fantasy by Judith Sherven and Jim Sniechowski

Stumble It!

Other Relationship articles enjoyed by our readers.

Change Your Language, Change Your Relationship: How We Say Things Does Matter
by Sharon Rivkin

The Five Keys to Powerful Partnerships
by Layne and Paul Cutright

Prosperity with Your Life Partner
by Rebecca Bloom

Here's a Taste of What You'll Get With Your Subscription...

Each month you'll have access to a new issue of the online magazine that is full of fantastic resources and help from the experts that will give you motivational training, as well as the inspiration, and education that you need to Live the Story of Your Dreams!

Weekly doses of "feel good" and practical self-help tips with The Chronicles eZine…

Live Access to the Top Movers and Shakers in the world twice a month through the Real Life Legends Teleseminar Series...

It's all completely FREE and you can unsubscribe at any time!

	Click Here with questions or comments about this web site. © Copyright 2003-2010 . Healthy Wealthy nWise. All Rights Reserved. 205 W. Liberty St., Ste. 203, Charles Town, WV 25414 304.725.2502
Home \| Affiliates \| Current Issue \| Contact Us Privacy Policy \| Terms of Use \| Subscriber Agreement Questions & Tech Support