How to tell if you love a person for who they are or the image you have built of them inside your mind

The idea of love is mostly linked to romance and focusing on one person. It’s great that self-love is coming into the picture from time to time but the truth is, love exists all around us in millions of ways but we have become so hyper-focused on the idea of “The One” that many start neglecting ourselves and those around them when they start chasing “The One”.

The focus of this post is on identifying actual feelings and what’s behind them, the outcome is for you to understand why you feel a certain way towards someone and if it truly serves you well or not. Let’s take the topic of “situation-ships”: a romantic or sexual relationship that is not considered to be formal or established. So in other words, two single people do relationship stuff while one is hoping for commitment and the other doesn’t think about it at all.

It has become very common these days to be involved in these situation-ships and sometimes in multiple ones at the same time. There are so many aspects around this type of relationship but for now, I would just like to focus on the feelings around them and specifically the feelings of the person who is attached to the hope of this becoming more than what it already is.

I am not here to tell you what is right and what is wrong, the choice will always be yours and your intuition will always be the right answer. What I am simply doing is making you aware.

Think about 3 people you love the most, not including a significant other. Take a moment to be aware of the type of love you have towards them and how it makes you feel, now think about a significant other or anyone you feel/felt in love with. Notice how your emotions change, your body reacts, and your thoughts become. It helps to write these things down so you can see them in front of you and after you do that, think about the big question: was the image you saw in your mind of this person their actual self or what you would like them to be?

This could take time and genuine honesty and if you are not telling yourself the truth then there is no point in you continuing to read.

However, for those of you who answered truthfully and admitted that it was the image you created in your head that came first, keep reading.

Attachment begins there, that moment when you create the idea of this person and start basing your expectation on it rather than what is happening in reality. To give you an example of how this plays out in real life, think about something small that person did which made you extremely upset. Maybe they took a long time to reply to your text, they canceled on a plan you two made, etc…

Even though they are small things, they still had an impact on your emotions and that is exactly what happens when reality does not fit the fantasy you created in your mind. The image you had in your mind was what you fell in love with all along so it makes sense that you would feel enraged when reality betrays your fantasy. 

Let that sink in and when it does you will probably ask: what do I do about this now?

The answer is that you need to look behind these emotions of yours and focus on the images and fantasies in your mind. You did create them out of nowhere, your subconscious presented them to your conscious mind because it's trying to protect you from something you don’t want to face. That thing is emptiness and lack of self-love which your subconscious does not believe it can provide and that’s why its easier to spend hours fantasizing about that person and what they can do for you instead of confronting the reasons why you can’t provide these things and emotions to yourself

The choice is now yours, you can either remain stuck in this cycle of hope and loss or you can choose to value yourself and attract someone who knows your worth.

 

Published By: Zaina Armoush

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