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Delusional mindset in relationships

This week I had a few interesting conversations on and off-line. One of them was about relationships.
It’s very difficult to write about it without giving away too much personal details, but my question was this; In a relationship, how much are you making it up to be what you want it to be?

Say you met somebody at a very interesting situation. Maybe you were overseas, maybe you met him/her completely by chance. Like you were on a train you otherwise would have never taken. Whatever. You know what I mean.
It’s so romantic, and you fall in love, maybe you might even marry this person.

But the inevitable happens.

We all know relationships require work. A LOT of it. You stick it out, try everything, but that’s not working.

You think to yourself- Well, we’re meant to be together. Otherwise, why did we meet in such a crazy way?

This is very similar mind set to what Carrie said in Sex and the City movie.
For those who have NO interest in the show, I apologize- but in the movie, the women go to Abu Dhabi, and there, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) runs into her old boyfriend Aidan (John Corbett). Sure, you run into exes everywhere, but of all the places, in Abu Dhabi?!

She is married, but she decides to go for a dinner with him. Her friends are concerned that she might be “Playing with fire”, but Carrie says
“It must mean something”.
-End of SATC reference- You can relax now. ;)

Anyway, so I am wondering when are these mindset right, and when are they completely delusional?
I’ll be honest; I’ve been there before. You fall in love with somebody, and you think that person is the love of your life, and few years later-what was I thinking!?
In a way that is a happy state to be in, because you are not hurt or depressed. You are over the person.

So, when things go sour, how long to stick it out? You’ve tried everything to save the relationship, when do you call it quits?
You feel like giving up….but we’ve met in such a romantic way-it must mean we’re meant to be together.

Or are you just being stupid to put up with it?

How do we know?

This entry was posted on Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 8:13 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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  • http://www.napkindad.com The Napkin Dad

    What it sounds like you are really saying is once you have created a romantic story about your past do you destroy that story by not having it continue in a predictable way. Does it deny the romance’s existence to say the romance didn’t last forever?

    I remember when I got divorced I felt like I had to throw away my romantic story of our beginnings. But eventually I realized that was not true. Throwing away the incredible start to a relationship because it didn’t work out in predictable fashion is like saying you have to dismiss any incredible home run in baseball or touchdown in football because your team eventually lost the game. You don’t have to.

    What you do have to do is be willing to rewrite the story in your head with the real events, not the predictable, cliche events that may or may not have happened.

    That is one of the reasons I loved the two movies ‘Before Sunrise’ and its sequel that came out 9 years later, ‘Before Sunset’. At the end of Before Sunrise, they promise to meet in 1 years time at a certain location. 9 years later they meet by accident and what they both imagined, fantasized about, did not take place. But something unique and real did.

    That is how it is in real life, romantic or not.

  • http://www.amotherworld.com amotherworld

    The time when a person falls in love is beautiful. You can capture that memory and hold it dear for life. It was a moment in time that is to be cherished… even if it doesn’t last forever.

    Everything is temporary so we must enjoy the phases in our lives because they can’t be repeated. We have to appreciate these phases for what they are, even if it was a short moment in time.

    Just because you had a beautiful beginning to a relationship but it goes sour, still doesn’t take away the fact that there was a beautiful beginning.

    As we change and evolve, we can’t expect relationships to remain the same.

    I think we all are guilty of having romantic notions and delusional mindsets. Is it harmful? Maybe not – if it helps you get through difficult times. You don’t want to be fooling yourself but when circumstances are complex, having a certain mindset can help to cope with the reality.

  • http://www.yukaripeerless.ca Yukari

    Thank you Marty for lovely comment. You are so talented to articulate what I wanted to say. I really wish I could write like you. I have not seen the movie and will check it out for sure.

    Maria-wow. Your comment is beautiful too.
    “Everything is temporary so we must enjoy the phases in our lives because they can’t be repeated. We have to appreciate these phases for what they are, even if it was a short moment in time.

    Just because you had a beautiful beginning to a relationship but it goes sour, still doesn’t take away the fact that there was a beautiful beginning.” -Loved this. So true… thank you.