Why Do We Keep Painting False Images Of Those We Love?

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We all have that one person we meet in our lives. The one that makes us forget English, the one that we ponder over why our coffee doesn’t match the color of their eyes as we remembered them to be or how mellow the songs sound now than how they seemed to be. They were the ones that made the highlights of our days and how we looked forward to our nights spent with them. You remember the little details about them, freckles, hazelnut eyes, auburn hair and lopsided smile.

Times spent with them were always a blur. You wake up the next day reminiscing the moments. People say that this person you meet is never the one for you. Such perfection does not exist but only in the thoughts of how you played them to be. Which is true, to a certain extent. Why?

Because we paint them in images we want them to be. We tend to paint people in images of our expectations.

We always want our special someone to be of this and that when in reality the person we usually end up with is not exactly who we thought we’d end up with, instead, most likely the opposite of our thoughts. However, doing so, we tend to forget we are spending too much time looking and painting that someone in our heads that we forget to treasure those around us.

We build up expectations and when the reality of the situation hits us, we are often dumbfounded by it because we were too distracted painting that parallel version of our special person. Have you ever wondered, why we do so? Why do we paint a pretty picture of something or someone when the reality of any situation is to walk into something and approach it with understanding the consequences of it?

We fall in love and fall into something so quickly that we forget to remind ourselves that is the first step to start the painting of our expectations. Yet again, why do we feel like we need to have this perfect picture of our significant other? To prove to others how lucky we are to have a person of status? Riches? But then, that would only mean superficiality love. What about hardships face towards the relationship in the later part of life? Take for example, ideally someone of such riches faces bankruptcy, what will happen then?

You don’t need to prove to others what kind of perfect partner you can get. It is good to have an image of the person you want but do not let it overshadow you.

Here is a quote from one of my favorite authors, “Maybe we meet the right people at the wrong time because we wasted the right time with the wrong people” by Rania Naim on All The Words I Should Have Said. We spent so much time distracted that we forget that the ones that really care for us are just in front of us but we choose to ignore because we have expectations of our own.

Remember, you don’t need to feel like you have to prove to someone that you can do better. You don’t need to feel like you have to live up to someone’s expectations of your significant other because at the end of the day, it all boils down to you and what you can live with. It’s all about compromise and negotiation.