Escaping Fantasy When Desiring True Partnership

Preparing ourselves for a life partner should be done with intentional effort, but how will we know we have found the right person?

Escaping fantasy isn't such an easy task, and it takes quite a bit of self-reflection. When preparing for such life-changing decisions like falling in love and choosing to share who we will spend the rest of our lives with someone, we have to ask ourselves: Are we seeking true partnership and not the idea of marriage? Are we chasing unrealistic trends to please some unmet yearnings, making it about the day, or searching for a partner to help with life maintenance?

Let’s take a brief look at the infamous relationship between Mark Antony and Cleopatra. This couple had a compelling love affair. However, this relationship had its complexities filled with betrayal, political plots, and the unfortunate self-destructing end.

We don't want to get drawn into the opinion of the soulmate connection, or the movie version of what passion and love resembles. Many theories were created to appease the inner child. If we still have some form of emotional inexperience, regardless of age, how easy it will be to mislead or be misled to illiberal behavior patterns that can become detrimental.

We may want to reflect on the first recorded relationship between Adam and Eve. They were not shy of a few mistakes, but staying in alignment with their union spiritually helped them through the loss of their home, child, and health. Following the line of love through biblical history, we will notice most of these men and women found their mates by adhering to divine instructions. When we allow the inner child feelings to make these decisions, we tend to make hasty and wrong choices.

Getting a clear understanding of what is the inner child and how we approach it can help us understand who we are in depth.

What’s the INNER CHILD?

The inner child is a metaphoric expression commonly used in the psychotherapist community. “We were all children once, and we still have a childlike ego dwelling within us—the inner child is the unconscious part of ourselves”—Diamond, Stephen A. PhD

Dr. Stephen continues to educate his readers on how to approach this childlike ego. That true adulthood is attached to parenting one’s inner child with love and acknowledgment. For most adults, this never happens instead the inner child was neglected, disparaged, abandoned or rejected, repeatedly. Like Anthony and Cleopatra, sometimes our destructive behavior can be display in many different forms. From subtle self-sabotage to severe self-destructive symptoms, violent aggression, and sometimes evil deeds.

But what happens once we have release fantasy?

Humans are social creatures. We naturally want magical connections with other humans. For continuous self-awareness and growth, it's imperative that we take responsibility for loving and parenting our inner child. Subsequently, we will build an actual adult relationship as interdependent adults, creating authentic connections.

Releasing the concept of soulmates or novelty version of romance can be difficult. Many have built relationships on this idea or even stayed in a connection too long because we failed to educate ourselves on the realism about what we believe. Reasons it will be hard to move away from the fantasy version of love because we never learned how to cultivate a normal relationship. An interdependent relationship is the healthiest way we can interact romantically or platonically.

In the next article we’ll talk more about how to cultivate the real version of ourselves, to attract a real-life partner, and why this should be a need before considering a life partnership.

I hope this has been a great reading experience for you. Don’t forget to share these great topics with friends and family. To improve who we are starts inward and expands outward—like a seed planted into the ground, the seed is good as its soil.