Am I too romantic?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-28-2003
Am I too romantic?
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Wed, 07-19-2006 - 4:57pm

So in my constant quest for relationship answers, I thought I'd pose another question. I have always had kind of a belief that if you really love someone, sort of some type of emotional or physical abuse, you stay with them no matter what, you forgive them no matter what and do not just move easily on to the next person. The only man I've ever loved and who I thought loved me devestated me, b/c when I needed time to take a break and see other people, he basically said "screw you" and moved on. I know many say that they would do the same in his position...but to me, if you really love someone, you give them the time they need to figure out their sh*t. To me, if you really love someone, you don't let your pride or your ego take the place of being with them b/c you miss them too much. If you really love them, you recognize that not all people realize who the "one" is for them at the exact same time their SO figures it and one of you may need more time than you or may need to date more people to figure it out. (Hence the popular saying "if you truly love someone let them go, and if they are really yours they will come back to you" seems based on tht whole idea) Don't get me wrong--I'm not saying my ex should have taken me back automatically--I think I should have had to prove I wouldn't do it again and earned his trust, but I also believe if he really loved me, he would talk about it with me and give me a chance to earn back that trust.

I also believe if you true love is very rare--that if you truly loves someone they are one of the people that you can imagine spending your life with and want to be with. That even if they leave you, if you truly love them, you still think of them often and that makes you happy--that you miss them in your lives and don't just find it easy to move on and marry someone else. I still miss my ex after 5 years, and I still can't imagine being with anyone else since to me, he was my soul mate. I feel if he loved me, he'd have felt the same way and wouldn't have been able to be with someone else. Yet everyone else in this world seems to move on and find someone else they love very quickly--within a year or two.

Many people have of course told me I'm just too "romantic" and that's what i'm looking for isn't realistic--but if it isn't realistic why does the idea of this type of love pervade society? People must at some level believe in or want this type of love since it is this type of love that fills movies, fairy tales and romance novels. Also people commonly talk of finding the "one" or their SO being the "one". We all search for the "one" person we say we love more than anyone else--and we all want to be made to feel like the "one" by our SO. During wedding vows we pledge to love only one another till death do us part. And occasionally you hear of this type of love--people who couldn't forget each other no matter how much time passed or what happened between them (Charles and Camilla is a good example). So if its really unrealistic to think that way, why is it so pervasive in society and in our dialogue of love? Seems like everyone wants this type of love, but fails to practice it in reality.

I'd really like to think someday I'd find someone who doesn't want to live without me--who finds me so special he can forgive me my wrongs b/c the alternative--being without me, is too awful. Who doesn't find it easy to fall in love with someone else. Who cares about my happiness more than his own. Who, even if something happened to tear us apart, would think of me for years, and jump at the chance to get back together if we were ever in contact again. I know i certainly feel that way about my ex--so its possible for at least one person to feel this way. So am I the only one??? Am I just too romantic to expect/want someone to feel this way about me? Does this love not exist? That they will keep coming back to me and giving me chances, forgiving me (short of evidence I have actual malicious motives) simply because they can't see themselves with anyone else? Does this type of love exist or is it really just a fairy tale? Is it really just unrealistic to expect to find someone who loves me so much they will want to be with me and not anyone else no matter what happens?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 11-22-2005
Wed, 07-19-2006 - 7:08pm

I don't think romantic is the word for it - your idea about love is all about you and it sounds completely selfish and self-absorbed. Love isn't about how much pain and misery a person can take while you fumble your way through life - it's about respect, support, giving, understanding, friendship, honor, integrity etc.. How in the world could you possibly expect someone to wait around for you while you date other people and figure things out? If you loved this person you would not need to sample what else is out there.

Your perspective is seriously skewed.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-28-2003
Wed, 07-19-2006 - 7:47pm
I don't think its selfish or self absorbed b/c I'm not asking for anything I wouldn't give myself. And no, I wasn't asking him to wait, I guess I just figure if he really loved me, since he hadn't fallen in love with someone else yet when I came back, he would have still loved me and taken me back--recognizing that people make mistakes and not everything can be on the same timeline and his was. To me that's what true love is--recognition that people can make mistakes and might not be on the same timeline. Selfishness in my mind is saying "well if you're not ready exactly when I am for an exclusive relationship than sionara and see you." That's not love, that bending someone to your timeline and your priorites. See my response on the guy talk board for further explanation.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 07-19-2006 - 8:17pm

I'm about as opposite from you in my personal views on love as it's possible to get. So please take everything I'm about to say with the appropriate grains of salt.

No, I don't think that "love" equals being with someone come heck or high water, and being willing to live in misery just to be with the "loved" one. To me, that's self-abuse. My observation, both in my own life and the lives of dozens of friends and acquaintances, is that it is very very possible to love someone but not be able to be with them. Not because of abuse. Because love does not equal compatibility. Love does not equal commitment.

Love is an emotion, and it's as frangible and potentially ephemeral as any other emotion. Love is NOT an action or set of actions. Commitment IS an action (or set of actions). Love can lead to commitment. It can also lead to devestation and destruction.

So why are there so many fairy tales about the one true perfect love? For the same reason there are fairy tales about magic, about secret princesses suddenly being found and showered with wealth and happiness, about people flying like birds and swimming like fish. Just because there are pervasive myths about mermaids and centaurs doesn't mean those creatures actually exist. Same with the kind of love you describe. It's an ideal, not a reality. Kind of like a perfect Utopian society. Humans have the capacity to dream amazing things--it's one of our greatest and most wondrous talents. But reality is another story entirely. Many things dreamed, even dreamed by large numbers of people, will never happen in real life.

I've romantically loved a pretty good number of people in my life. And there are a few overlapping characteristics between my version of romantic "love" and yours. When I think back to my truest loves, the thoughts are most often happy ones. I cherish my memories of past loves above many things. And I'm grateful that a few of my past loves are still part of my life in one way or another.

Where I diverge from you is in my pragmatism. I broke up with my past loves for good reasons. One man in particular, V, I loved very very much. He changed my life in so many great ways--he opened doors for me I'd never known of, and his presence in my world has made it immeasurably better. He loved me too--he's said so and I believe him without compunction. So why did we break up when we were 21? Because we weren't the right team for a long-term romantic relationship. We couldn't have lived together. I like a bit of pop culture; he refuses to own a TV or enter a movie theater. He wanted to spend several years living in a big city; I hate the noise and crowds and smells of urban centers and wanted to be in the country. (Ironically, we live in the same suburban town right now!) He is a wanderer--he can pack up his truck and leave home for months on end, crashing with folks he's just met and making new friends wherever he goes; I have strong roots and close ties to chosen friends, and would be really unhappy to leave them for long periods of time.

You see what I mean? We loved each other, but we couldn't be together and be true to ourselves. One of us would have had to force-fit to the other's mold, which would turn that one of us into somebody else--somebody other than the person the other had fallen in love with, actually. And neither of us wanted that in any way. We loved each other as-is. Still do, too. Last year I got to watch him marry a wonderful woman who is a much better partner for him than I ever could have been. To me, true love means being sincerely, to the depths of my soul, happy for my love that he has found a partner for his journeys. Even if that's not me. (He's happy for me in my life and marriage too. He's said things about seeing me now that confirm that to my way of thinking, he definitely did and does love me truly.)

There's another similarity, yet divergence with your definition of love. To me, loving someone means wanting them to be happy even if what makes them happy isn't in my best self-interest. That includes them not being with me, if not being with me is what will make them happy. This doesn't make me less sad when I lose someone I love because they need to not be with me. But in an important, subtle way, it helps.

The truth is that I think your expectations are unrealistic. But that's my opinion, and I kinda think I'm not your type, romantically. ;-) Is it possible that one day you'll meet a man who feels the same way you do? Sure. But the real nuts-and-bolts of relationships might intrude on you and him in unpleasant ways. I hope not, and I'd be thrilled to be wrong!

I'll be curious to see what other responses you get...

--fc

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-06-1999
Wed, 07-19-2006 - 8:36pm

FC hit all the major points I wanted to from your original post. Pervasive myths (don't forget vampires), magic, flying, etc. Same thing with knights. You realize all those tales we love take place in a time called the Dark Ages, right? Don't forget world peace. She also hit on a major point about love that you are happy for their happiness, even if it doesn't include you.

So I'll focus on this bit "To me that's what true love is--recognition that people can make mistakes and might not be on the same timeline."

You left him for what you viewed as a fault in him. By your definition of love, if you 'truly' loved him, you never would have left. You would have accepted him for who he was, faults and all and never walked out. Yet if I claimed you didn't love him since you left, you would be rather insulted, right?

Love is an emotion. Anyone can feel it for any reason they choose. To say "you did X, so you don't love me" is insulting to the person feeling that emotion. You are claiming to know better how they feel, than they themselves know.

Take it for what it is. You loved him, he loved you. It didn't work. You both moved on (he with more success than you, but not for lack of trying on your part).

I agree wholeheartedly with FC. You can be desperately in love with someone and that doesn't pay the rent. It doesn't change who you are and it doesn't mean you are really compatible. It's just an emotion. It's not magic.

Brokk...

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-28-2003
Wed, 07-19-2006 - 9:28pm

"You left him for what you viewed as a fault in him."

Not true. I left him b/c I felt it would be irresponsible to marry him or ANYONE until I had more experience dating and could say with certainty what was right--call it a need to do due diligence on my part--I'm very leery of divorce and never wanted to marry the first person I seriously dated.

And, I guess, maybe I'd have a better attitude about this if he had shown subsequently he truly loved me. f he had told me, "after all this, I've just come to the conclusion its not going to work, but I'll always love you and hope we can even stay in contact occassionally", I would have accepted it. And I would have wished him well and prayed for his happiness. But tossing me out of his life w/o a word of explanation the second me started dating his current "love" and never contacting me again after several years of dating and friendship...well that's not love. And yep, I'll fully admit I'm bitter about that. I'm bitter that someone could profess to love me, profess to care about me and then treat me like that. I'm bitter that someone who could do those actions seems to be rewarded with a loving relationship while I struggle desperately to find the same person. Maybe I'm also bitter that he seemed so genuine seemed liek he truly loved me and then was able to treat me like that--b/c those things aren't love. I'm truly mystified as to how a person can claim to love someone, get so close to someone and then do those things. Its made me realize when push comes to shove people most always act in their own interests and to be honest, its made me lose a lot of faith in mankind.

"Kind of like a perfect Utopian society. Humans have the capacity to dream amazing things--it's one of our greatest and most wondrous talents. But reality is another story entirely. Many things dreamed, even dreamed by large numbers of people, will never happen in real life."

Maybe I do always want the "ideal" but what's wrong with that? Should I accept less than the ideal? Should I accept people acting less than perfectly just because many people are too weak to act the ideal? Maybe I feel like I SHOULD strive for the ideal rather than accept less?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 07-20-2006 - 2:48am

Er...

"Maybe I do always want the "ideal" but what's wrong with that? Should I accept less than the ideal? Should I accept people acting less than perfectly just because many people are too weak to act the ideal? Maybe I feel like I SHOULD strive for the ideal rather than accept less?"

Um, in your initial post you declared that "true love" absolutely 100% means accepting another person's flaws and mistakes.

There's a pretty immense disconnect between that and your statement above. You expect that your true love will accept all your flaws and mistakes, no matter what, to be with you...yet he must act perfectly? Not a good model for a relationship. And that *is* what you're asking for, both expressly and implicitly. I expect you'll probably argue with me, and find fault with my logic. But this *is* what you project to the outside world, including every man on earth, since none of us live in your head.

An interesting fact of life is that what you think and feel inside yourself is, in the final analysis, totally irrelevant to anyone but you. How you act and what you say (based on your thoughts and feelings, or not) is all that anyone else, even a life partner, will ever see and know. Thus, it's all that matters.

The statement about leaving your ex because he was flawed was brokk's, not mine, so I'll leave that one to him.

But the truth is, no one knows how your ex felt about you except your ex. He may well have loved you passionately and with every fiber of his being. It's not for you to say--he, and only he, can judge his own emotions.

And when you dumped him to go date around (and if I recall correctly, it wasn't the first time you'd dumped him), he may have been bitterly, horribly hurt. And that hurt may have taken over his feelings of love. I've had that happen too, both in someone who once loved me, and I've done it myself. Hate is an emotion that lives perilously close to love, I'm afraid. In his hurt and anger at your rejection of his love (and when you left him, he may well have seen it that way--again, he's not in your head, all he's got to judge are your words and your actions, and the actions speak far louder), he may have decided to treat you the way he did.

Can you see that many people could consider his treatment of you a "mistake" brought on by hurt and thwarted love? Just like you made a mistake in thinking it was a good idea to leave him and date around?

You can certainly seek men to date who fulfill most of the qualities you'd like in a husband. But if you hold out for perfect, you will end up alone. No one, but no one, including you (or me or brokk or anybody else) is perfect. That is the way it is, not an opinion or me being condescending or mean. If you feel the need to strive for an ideal, strive to behave ideally yourself. That's all you can ever control in human interaction anyhow. If you're lucky, you'll find someone who also strives to improve himself. People like that *do* exist. A few may even live near you and share a few common interests...

--fc

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-06-1999
Thu, 07-20-2006 - 9:39am

"Not true. I left him b/c I felt it would be irresponsible to marry him or ANYONE until I had more experience dating"

I'm sorry, but you are posting conflicting things on different threads. In our recently long discussion of your life and dating problems, you posted this sentiment repeatedly.

"Now I have a lot of regret for dumping the only guy I've ever been in love with--this was honestly the only problem we had, I just felt that was who he was and would never change."

From this statement, I made the small leap to you dumping him based on a fault in him. Something you couldn't accept. In your own words "the only problem we had".

"I guess, maybe I'd have a better attitude about this if he had shown subsequently he truly loved me."

Ya, know, when you dump someone, you lose all rights to demand they prove they loved you after you dumped them. Call me crazy, but when I'm dumped, the last thing on my to-do list is to go crawling back to them declaring my love. Actually, I'm more likely to want to sabotage their life and make them miserable. That's called "hurt" and wanting to lash out. The people who can hurt you the most are the ones you love. That's the deepest most severe kind of hurt. It's the kind of hurt where you don't want to ever think about that person again, because it hurts so much. It's the kind of hurt where you want to throw yourself head first into a new relationship to help you forget about how much you were just hurt.

Don't mistake someone's pain and anger for a lack of love. If he loved you less, it wouldn't have hurt so much and you might have been able to remain friends. I personally have never managed to remain friends with ex's. I've tried and failed enough times to prove it's just not in my nature. Seeing them hurts too much, even if I was the one who initiated the breakup.

Brokk...

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-13-2005
Thu, 07-20-2006 - 10:59am

Well Risk it, first of all, in all of your posts, there is a common thread - you are always asking "am I too this, am I too that?"


You aren't TOO anything. You are you . Ever see a guy who was so dissheveled, confused, somewhat stupid, walking down the street? That guy has a girlfriend. Ever see a girl that was just so unappealing to you that you had to look away? She has a boyfriend. It is not you.


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-28-2003
Thu, 07-20-2006 - 3:58pm

You're right...I worry too much about what others think and should have more confidence in my own beliefs.

I really do believe (probably b.c I have felt this way myself) that leaving to see other people, or having doubts DOES NOT NECESSARILY mean you don't love that person. I recognize that I may love someone but need some time to deal with my own issues or have some freedom--maybe even if to clarify my feelings. Someone saying "if you leave me, you don't love me" is just dogmatic and presupposes everyone is exactly like them. I really do believe that if you LOVE someone you accept they may not think exactly like you and are open to hearing their reasoning. In fact, the fact that many on these boards keep focusing on their hurt or their betrayal if someone did that to them only proves that the person who leaves is the only selfish one--the "left" person obviously has no thought or concern as to why "leavor" might have needed to do what he/she did or make any attempt to understand it, the "leftee" is simply to busy thinking of their own hurt to even consider what the LEAVOR NEEDED or WHY he/she might NEED it. Similarly, I really believe if my ex really loved me, he would have at least been open to hearing my reasons for why I acted as I did before coming to any decisions. To me, that's what TRUE love is really about--considering the other persons needs equally if not higher than my own. (As an aside I do practice what I preach and really belive in this. For instance, I've never been cheated on, but if I was, I wouldn't automaticaly say "you cheated, you're gone"...I'd listen to WHY they cheated and try to understand and THEN decide if I thought it was workable.)

I guess if anything, these posts just illustrates people think differently. It just makes me sad that more people don't feel that if you really love someone, they should listen to them, try to understand where THEY are coming from and be open minded before making dogmatic rules like "if you leave me you don't love me." Understanding and attempting to bridge differences is what love is really about--its not about making dogmatic rules. (And NO I'm not someone should take continual abuse, I'm just saying in the case something happens once people should be willing ot understand and work on it rather than call it quits). Just because YOU feel that way does not mean that held true for the other person. And that's all I really expected if my ex really loved me--to not just apply his own rules based on his own views, but to realize I may have different views and be understanding that those views or actions did not mean I didn't love him, just because him taking those actions would have meant that for HIM. I guess I'll be much happier when I find someone who believes the same way I do and is ready to listen and give second chances rather than apply dogmatic rules.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-28-2003
Thu, 07-20-2006 - 4:10pm

I actually just came back from a great session with my therapist on this. I now realize I broke with him not b/c I didn't love him or because there were flaws with him, but because I expected perfection (ie I worried b/c he didn't have exactly what I wanted in one regard) and didn't know if it would be fair to him to always feel that what thing wasn't the EXACT ideal of what I wanted. I had been given so many messages that if I felt there was anything less than perfect about him he COULDN'T be "the one" and I would be "settling." I basically believed that you wouldn't have even the teeniest bit of thoughts like that with THE ONE b/c he'd be your every need fulfilled. I listened to those messages about finding a a "PERFECT" prince charming and didn't pay any attention to the fact that I was delirious happy with him. And because I didn't want to be unfair to him or give HIM less than I thought he deserved (i didn't want him to be with someone who had considered him less than their perfect Prince Charming) I broke up with him and endeavored to find someone "perfect". In a way, I was protecting HIM by breaking up b/c I felt so badly that I didn't think he was PERFECT.

However, as soon as we did break up, I realized I didn't give a damn what anyone else was saying, and didn't give a damn about finding someone "perfect"--that I had been so happy with him that I could certainly accept the fact we didn't necessarily have the long, philosophical conversations that would exist in an "ideal" world but didn't exist in him. Just like everyone says to me now, I basically realized that NO ONE is perfect and I had thrown away an amazing person who I truly loved b/c I expected PERFECTION. Basically, I let my programming that I needed to find the PERFECt man, get in the way of being with a real man who I was in love with and happy with. A big mistake on my part, but certainly not a selfish one or a mean spirited one, I just let the programming about the PERFECT man get in the way. And unfortunately it HAS led to permanent consequences.

I really do think if he'd loved me, he would have let me explain all this--but he never has, and I guess I need to accept that that's life.

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