Dating Tips and Advice 22: Real Love or Romantic Fantasy?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Real Love or Romantic Fantasy? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How can we expect to find real love based on romantic fantasies? Many of us say we want 'real love', but that thoughts and feelings we have about it are often based on fairy stories or Disney movies. How is that ever going to work?
OK, so maybe I am a bit being dense. Maybe what we are really trying to do is make reality out of our fantasies. But, wait a minute. Isn't what grows out of fantasies just more fantasies? Doesn't reality grow out of what is real?
Is it such an odd idea that love grows out of what is real rather than which is a fantasy?
What is so bad about reality, anyway, that we want to escape it? After all, were are not stupid, we must have a good reason for escaping if that is what we are doing.
Ah, yes. Maybe what we try and escape from is not reality but our negative fantasies. Just like we grow up having a built in set of romantic fantasies; maybe we also grow up with a built in set of negative fantasies. Maybe we confuse cynical, fearful, or negative fantasies (which we inherited from others) as reality?
If that is true no wonder we try and escape that supposed 'reality'.
Sometimes life is beautiful and wonderful (which confirms our romantic fantasies). Sometimes life is hard and a struggle (which confirms our unromantic fantasies). Perhaps those two sets of fantasies battle it out till we are ready to let go of them both. Then we can step into reality and face life just as it is.
Does this all seem too unromantic? It isn't really. When we focus on falling in love with life itself we discover a natural romance that just does not happen in films, TV or in the pages of Hello magazine.
I like to think that love grows out of the real moments that happen as part of normal daily life. (Maybe that is also a fantasy, but it may well be reality too). We build our capacity to love through what is 'normal' rather than always looking for something 'special'. Then what happens? The 'normal' becomes 'special' - eventually.
We grow in our ability to love though giving attention to the real things, and the real people, in our lives that we find lovable. Sometimes it also helps to stretch ourselves a bit and be at least respectful and tolerant of some of what we don't find lovable. Then if we do meet 'someone' they will more likely to think, "Wow! What a catch!", as our life will already be so full and rich.
If we focus on real love, rather than fantasies about love, our life will have more real love. What is more attractive than love?
However, we need to be careful about not having unrealistic fantasies about our ability to handle reality. Some mornings we may wake up feeling like Darth Vader with hemorrhoids and want destroy everything!
At those times we need to treat ourselves gently rather than giving ourselves a hard time for not feeling more 'loving'. Being kindly toward our own frailties is a perfect way to learn to be kindly towards the frailties of other people.
