Love requires grieving your expectations

To fall in love, you have to grieve the imaginary version of your partner that died when you learned who they really are.

When you meet someone new, you don’t know much about them yet, so you fill in the blanks by inventing a fantasy of your ideal lover to stand in for the parts of your partner you haven’t seen yet.

It isn’t foolish to fantasize—I think it’s sweet that we tend to assume the best of people—but inevitably your betrothed disappoints you that they are not as fantastic as you had dreamed. Who is this deficient, flawed person I hitched up with? How are they just a normal human just like anyone else??

The longer you know someone, the more this sheen wears away. And someone you’ve known for years? You might begin to even develop some contempt for them, like an annoying sibling that you bicker with when stuck sharing the same bunk.

But there’s one person you’ve had to live with for a very long time. Longer than anyone else. Do you know who that is? Are you ready?

It’s yourself.

You know all of your faults, all of your triumphs, every good and bad and courageous and evil thing you’ve done.

Self-love requires you to endure all that constant familiarity and yet choose to love all your shortcomings anyway. Your self-criticism cuts deeper than any jagged edge you could overlook in anyone else.

We aren’t disappointed in our partners. We are disappointed in ourselves.

We have a secret hunch that we are not as cool or sexy as we pretend to be for others, and are terrified that our partners could discover this!

Our partners have an awesome power over us, because they are the only people who can strip away the superheroic image we portray to everyone else around us. But there can be no true love without vulnerability—we desperately need our partners to undress us of our mythic regalia so they can be our sanctuary. They are both our keeper and our kryptonite.

Love is handing over to your partner the power to destroy you, and yet trusting them to say, “wait! there is nothing to destroy, because I loved the frail, oversensitive, anxious you that is the real you in the first place”.

The only thing to destroy are your expectations of who you wanted your partner to be. To grieve and let go of your dream partner, so they can be with you in reality.

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