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Dating: Are We Fooling Ourselves?
Lessons Learned from Clinging on for 2 Years
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One time it took me 2 years to get over a person I’d dated for 3 months.
Yes, 2 years.
With much of that time thinking back to how great things were when everything was rosy. I felt a lot of regret for the way that it ended, thinking that I could have handled things differently and maybe extended it longer had I not “given up” too soon.
Despite one year going by and then another, my mind was squarely stuck in the past. It surprised me how much detail I remembered of the situationship despite the fact so much time had gone past.
I felt stuck… because I was stuck.
But the memories I had weren’t of anything particularly negative.
In fact, they painted this person under the brightest light you could imagine.
It seemed their “good qualities” held firm whilst the reasons for it ending and our incompatibilities slowly fell away.
So much so did my mind reaffirm their “goodness” that time seemed to warp them into someone completely different than they ever were.
Idealised, pedestalled; someone out of my league and most definitely someone I’ll never find again.
Or so I began to think.
Why else would I be so hung up on them for so long?
Looking back, I realise now that my fantasy of them took hold over the reality of who they were.
This lack of discernment between reality and my ideals cost me a lot of time and mental clarity.
It’s something we all do, from one extreme to another, but something we absolutely need to be aware of — not just in the aftermath of a situationship/relationship but also during the dating process.
Who is this person really?
How are they presenting themselves to us?
And what fantasies are we placing on them?
