Imagining we can see what we hope and want to see, even when it’s not there, is one of the stranger tendencies we hu-mans have – especially when it comes to the opposite sex. It’s probably only matched by our ability to be completely blind to the dodgy character traits of someone we are spending time with, even when they are completely obvious to everyone else!
The tendency to fantasize is a strong one for me when I’m looking at rows of female faces on a dating site. I often feel like I have absolutely nothing in common with most of the women on there or feel in any way attracted to them. But when I do come across someone with a shred of appeal, especially if they seem to be at all interested in me, they take on the aura of a goddess, a shining star of womanhood who seems to have all the attributes I want in a partner.
Like a man dying of thirst in the desert who sees a cluster of trees that should show the location of a fresh cool spring, when there’s actually nothing more than a stunted sapling that is itself dying from a lack of water, my mind has a dangerous tendency to embellish everything about any woman who seems in the slightest way like someone I’d like to get to know better. It’s if we meet that I have the painful realisation, usually within a few minutes, that she was a mirage dreamed up by my over-optimistic imagination, which had also filtered out everything about her that didn’t fit my wish list. Along with that is the realisation that she may well be feeling exactly the same about me – which is not a great start for any kind of connection.
It might be possible for the two of us to kid ourselves long enough to develop some kind of fake relationship. But sooner or later, someone is going to say or do something that is a contradiction to the mutual dream we’re living in, and the whole house of cards will come crashing down. In its wake will be a sense of betrayal that can be hard to recover from, and which can make us approach future potentially romantic encounters with mistrust, so that disappointment and disinterest become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But after talking about this to a friend who is a mindfulness teacher, I think I’ve got an antidote to this painful process. The idea is that, when I meet someone new, I cultivate an attitude of openness to the actual person they seem to be and have a complete lack of expectations, so there’s no room for fantasizing or feeling let down. I discovered that by being fully present with, and paying attention to, whoever I’m with, I can cultivate a greater awareness and appreciation of who they really are. And from that place, there is at least the possibility of developing a genuine sense of connection and closeness with them.
This avoidance of judgement and expectation also feels like a good stance to have towards everything else, as a way of being fully and authentically present with myself and whatever is going on in the world. And in the dating site world, it means that my first encounter with any stranger will be more real and enjoyable, and that whatever the outcome, the experience of meeting them will have been an interesting and enriching one. And if by chance I do find myself becoming fond of, and attracted to, the new friend I’m making – and she seems to feel the same – that will be lovely icing on the otherwise tasty cake of life, that I can only be grateful for.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock