How falling in love with the “potential” of someone can hurt us.
Strap in…
When expectations reach failed heights, we come crashing down from overshot projections. When the idea(s) of another become fixed and rigid in someone’s mind, do we tell the subject(s) how high on the shelf we’ve put them? How loud is that whisper?
In relationships (platonic or romantic) we might be only attracted to their goals ahead of them and their goals accomplished behind them more than we look at what we could have in the “now”. We want to live love in their future exactly how we planned it, and it hurts to be living in anything less for way to long. Our past cannot be changed and our future is uncertain yet destined all in the same breathe.
But the surface appeals to us so much. The shiny stuff or rather the outer rim of a diamond, blinds us in a journey of love with another. The closer we get to this diamond, the closer we see the center which shines differently because it is the source of all light. But when the light shifts at certain angles we reject this shift. Why? Perhaps it’s not what you expected.
The root of the problem is that we have expectations that inevitably burn or hurt us. Nothing is worse than falling in love with the idea of a person and learning they were to become someone else. Truth is — they were always going to be something more or less than what we initially expected. Even the most prophetic thoughts were a shot in the dark. Everything is based on patterns allowing us to guess and at best make an educated guess when it comes to making decisions in comparison to now — the present. Don’t get me wrong, you gotta be smart out here enough to learn from your mistakes but most of the fun & future memories being had is because you’re too busy being present.
We try to “fix” time in accordance to our fantasy as if time operated strictly in our imagination and sadly it doesn’t work like that. Our fantasy owes no reflection of reality. The world is much more chaotic than you think, we can’t wrap what we think we know with what we can’t measure. Although we try, we fail in doing a good job at the task. We forget things change and nothing is exempt from that not even the sun. Truth grows, it expands and cannot truly remain truthful by being crystallized but we do that to ourselves at the very start by sizing up concepts and people with stats/graphs/facts.
You can be hurt by someone’s words as painfully as you can be hurt by someone’s actions. We are hurting because we’ve underestimated values, we’ve had high expectations, we’ve calculated the wrong equation to the wrong question. The formula did not fit.
How can we break this pattern of constantly being disappointed & hurt? Identify that this reoccurs. Identify this is a pattern. Once we’ve seen the pattern we are observant of its shape. A loop we keep finding our perspective in. It’s shape resembles an ouroboros — a snake not aware that it is eating its own tail. This infinite loop is broken only when awareness & actions of that awareness are made.
Follow this with practice of honesty & transparency. Share what’s on your mind, it’s okay it’s called communication. Create a space where judgements are non existent. Be be vulnerable. If you don’t, you could have delusional thoughts running wild unresolved only distancing you from friends & lovers. It’ll make sense why you are alone or always given up on.
If we aren’t honest & accepting that our greatest self is always beyond us, never grasped in full, we have to ask the person in the mirror “Have I created a world of delusional ideas of myself?” This question comes from a vulnerable place which is allowing honesty. Now we finally begin investigating something which never has been viewed beyond the surface. Only when we ask ourselves the hard questions we can start to be honest in addressing where our minds are.
The worst parts about these shattered expectations we keep experiencing is that we can’t erase it in our rearview mirrors filled with regret. The past has broken glass where we can no longer place our feet for foundation. Only if we realized, then, that our foundation was weak because of communication. Communication, that silly little thing we do to understand each other somehow becomes weapons to only threaten and distance ourselves. Communication. Even in hindsight 20/20 we realized that we lived on the surface of petty arguments that went too far, there was always something deeper to communicate about. Underneath that surface is our salvation. But our insecurities, miscommunication, & immature expectations never fails to kamikaze the “us” in trust.
Your “potential” is you on the most surface level. It doesn’t even really exist when you think about it, not yet anyways. When we fall for someone’s “potential” there are many variables to factor in, but none-the-less we try avoiding pain only to find exactly that.
Listen, take heed to the signs that you can fall in love with your imagination just as deep as you can actually fall in love with a person. When reality meets expectations we created, we know who really hurt us-ourselves; we see that we made our own weapons that destroyed us, but once we are aware, those tears will think twice about shedding home & going on that great run across those steep cheekbones.
