Close Banner

This ad is displayed using third party content and we do not control its accessibility features.

Why There's No Such Thing As A Perfect Relationship

Author:

Sheryl Paul, M.A.

April 07, 2014

By Sheryl Paul, M.A.

mbg Contributor

Sheryl Paul, M.A., has guided thousands of people worldwide through her private practice, her best-selling books, her e-courses, and her website. She has her master's in Psychology Counseling from the Pacifica Graduate Institute, and is the author of The Wisdom of Anxiety: How Worry and Intrusive Thoughts Are Gifts to Help You Heal.

April 07, 2014

In every moment, you can choose to focus on what's working about your relationship and what you love about your partner or what's not working and what annoys you. If you're a glass half-empty type of person prone to negative thinking, this will be a challenge for you and you'll need to commit to a conscious and daily practice of orienting toward the positive. But the first step is to shift your belief that perfection is possible and allow the fantasy of the fairy tale prince or princess to shatter.

It's not easy to allow the fantasy to shatter. Many people have unconsciously carried and embellished this fantasy since childhood, and we live in a culture that encourages the belief that perfection exists. So when you start to let it go, there's a grieving process that often needs to occur before you can accept a realistic model of healthy love.

As one of my course members so poignantly shared (with permission to publish here):

I had a bit of an epiphany last night while taking a luxurious bath with candles and music, and I wanted to share it with you. The old me — before I learned the truth about love — would have taken this time to reminisce about past loves, remember times when I had butterflies, aka the agony and ecstasy and longing you spoke about today. But instead I just laid there in the bath with a dull hum in the back of my mind. Relaxing yes, but somewhat sad also. I realized in this moment that I could never "reminisce" like that again without all that I have learned: the pursuer/distancer dynamic, what "butterflies" actually mean, the media and it's powerful "joke" on all of us with the brainwashing in movies and songs of what love is supposed to be/feel like. All of this is an incredible breakthrough and pioneering research and I wouldn't want to go back to not knowing. However, what I recognized in the bath last night is that this new perspective is riddled with grief for me, and some loss, some emptiness, some disappointment, and also some relief!! I spent countless hours in my pre-teens, teens, 20s and even 30s (until I got married :) endlessly dissecting feelings, relationships, what he was thinking, all of it — and all of it is now simply gone — and simply silly. I have begun framing past relationships in the context of your teachings and can't figure out if I am pissed at the gigantic joke that has been played on me, or sad that the joke is over. In short, it's like finding out that Santa doesn't exist, and the grief, betrayal and loss of innocence that surround that.

I realized that this, too, is a transition: from lovestruck, Notebook-watching, slow song-listening innocence, to an awakened, aware adult. This transition feels like all the rest with the same dichotomy of feelings: glad to be aware, but sad to see the fantasy go, sad to see the naivety go, and a little dose of feeling duped!

If you have it in your head that somewhere out there a perfect relationship is possible, you won't be able to accept the imperfection of who is standing before you. What I hear all the time in my practice is some version of, "I don't like that my partner [isn't social enough / tells dumb jokes / doesn't have a rich inner world like I do / doesn't always "get" me / doesn't fit my ideal physical type]. He or she is wonderful in so many ways, but can't I find someone who has it all?"

And my response is, "When you find that person, call me and let me know."

Here's the paradox: When you let go of the cultural fantasy of perfection — and it is absolutely a grieving process as my course member shared above — you make room for the perfect imperfection of your good, loving relationship to blossom around you. For it's in loving what is human — in all of its irritating foibles, quirks and dumb jokes — that we soften our walls of fear and judgment designed to keep others at a safe distance and learn about what it really means to love.

It's what Robin Williams' character in Good Will Hunting says in one of the greatest movie scenes about intimate relationships:

"My wife's been dead for two years and those are the things I miss the most: the little idiosyncrasies that only I know about. And she had the goods on me, too. She knew all of my little peccadillos. People call these things imperfections; but they're not. Oh, that's the good stuff. And then we get to choose who we let into our weird little worlds. You're not perfect, sport. And let me save you the suspense. This girl you met? She's not perfect, either."

Have fun watching the whole scene here: