Potential Fantasy: Are you in a fantasy of the potential in your relationship?

You're in love with their potential and it's not enough. 

It never will be enough.  Love can't live off of potential.  Love lives off of commitment, connection, and a conscious choice to face the reality of what is with courage and creativity.  Love thrives with accountability, challenge and growth towards the truth of who we are underneath all of those masks. Let me make this perfectly clear...Unconditional love is great when you're in spiritual bypassing vacuum.  Real partnerships ARE conditional and require what I call mature love. 

Mature love says, "I accept you as you are AND I'm going to challenge you to be the best version while also being perfectly clear about my boundaries and needs."  Mature love requires both partners to BE REAL and BREAK THE FANTASY OF POTENTIAL. Mature love gets out a map and says, "Here's where we are.  You're here.  I'm there.  But wait, we want to go there.  How do we get there together? How can you can be you and I can be me as we grow our we? How can we stand for three?

But when one or both people in the relationship aren't ready to drop their pin on the map and admit the truth of who they are, it's nearly impossible to get mature love. When the location is not revealed, how can you define the route to get where you want to go?  In this case, all you're left with is a fantasy trip.  You talk about it like it's going to happen, but the route and itinerary never come together to make it happen.  You never get where you want to go.  And either one or both of you end up in pain.  And instead of facing the truth and the actual pain, you might spend years thinking you're avoiding the pain by believing you are in a relationship that is mere fantasy and potential of what could be. 

Potential is for Fantasy Relationships  

Client: "He says he's willing to do the work.  I'm confident things will get better soon."

Me: "Is he doing his own work?  Therapy? Coaching? Men's Group?"

Client: "Not yet."

Me: "How long has it been since he promised he'll do the work?"

Client: "Two years."

Me: "Is he doing anything else to learn or study about relationships?  Any relationship or communication courses? Books? Podcasts?"

Client: "I send him things, but he's not really interested."

Me: "Okay, so he says he'll do the work yet he's not doing the work."

Client:  "I'm sure he'll get around to it."

Me: "If he hasn't pursued any growth work himself, what makes you think he will magically change this year?" 

Client: "Oh, but this time I'll put my foot down." 

And on, and on...into the fantasy that this they will be someone different than who they actually are and that you'll get the relationship of your dreams. 

The potential fantasy sounds like this:

"But they said they'll do the work. I'll wait."

"I'll give it two years and see what he can change."

"I can't expect them to change overnight!"

"Our commitment is enough."

"We're just going through a rough patch."

"She's stressed out a work.  That's why we fight so much."

"We have kids, a house, and a ring...We're living the dream!" 

Are you really?  Or are you living in a dream world, one in which you see what you wish to see in your relationship rather than the hard truth of what actually exists. 

How can you tell if you're living a fantasy relationship?

1) You project to the future - You obsess over the potential of the other person.

Let's say you've been with this person for over two years.  You've noticed some red flags that indicate you might have a difference in values.  For example, you obsess over personal growth work. You do weekly personal coaching around your own growth work and you're taking my Relational Empowerment Course on top of that. You obsess about getting your partner to join you.  You think about what it will be like if they join you in this.  You think about all the things you could do together if it were different.  And you face disappointment after disappointment. 

2) You escape to the past - You cling to the good times, even if they were a long time ago.  You linger in outdated versions of your love.  You're stuck in the first months of infatuation.  You're memories are mere distortions of what is real.  Remember the time we...? Can we go back to that time when...?

3) You wait - You often think about how they can be different to make it work.  You fantasy about how they could change.  You wait for the change as if its right around the corner.

4) You feel consistently "off" - You feel anxious or like something doesn't quite match up.  You sense at a gut level that you're being told a lie or that you're lying to yourself.  You might even dream of betrayals or feel vigilant and stuck in questioning.  You might live in resentment because your deeper dream of mature love is not being addressed. Inside you're screaming for it. Your body is screaming for it. This might even show up as feeling no sexual desire towards your partner.

5) You have a clear integrity mismatch - Words and actions don't line up.

They say they'll do something, but they don't do it.  They say they value something you value, but their actions reveal otherwise.  

Maybe they truly want it but don't yet have the chops.  Maybe they want to please you so they say "Yes!" when what they really mean is "Hell, no!" Maybe they are stuck in a trauma response which has them saying whatever it takes to gain a momentary experience of safety. 

Yo, if there is a significant discrepancy between actions and words it's time to face reality.  What is really going on here?  Get curious and stay curious until you figure out what is truly at play.

Are you in love with their potential?  Or are you in love with the actual person in your bed?  And when I say the person, I mean...the actual person, not the fairytale version of them. The version of them that is avoiding reality, pleasing you to avoid possible disconnection or the version of them that hasn't yet started the personal work that it will require to get empowered in their life and relationships. 

If you catch yourself thinking, "If only there is a magical moment on the other side of this pain..." it might be time to take a hard look at what truth you might be avoiding in your relationship.