10/10/2025
🚨 Part 2: The Idealization Trap: Why We Date Our Emotional Projects
Welcome back. If Part 1 helped you spot the Deal Breakers and avoid buying a ticket to your next divorce, this part is about the hardest job in dating: getting out of your own way.
You saw a Deal Breaker, but your brain said, "I can fix him/her." Why do we do this?
1. The Idealization Trap: Mistaking Potential for Reality
When I look back at my own dating experience, I always say, "I married well" and "I married the right person." That clarity didn't happen by accident; it happened because I eventually stopped falling for the idea of who someone could be. In fact, I walked away from a couple of relationships because they were filled with some of the "deal breakers" I shared in my previous post.
When we date, we often fall in love with the idea of the person—not the person standing in front of us. We see their 10% potential and ignore their 90% reality.
The Project Manager: We become the Project Manager, convinced we can coach them out of their anxiety, discipline them out of their financial instability, or love them into emotional availability.
The Unpaid Therapist: If they need professional intervention (e.g., for volatile anger or substance abuse), your job is not to be their dating partner and their therapist. That’s a path to burnout and inevitable failure.
Here's the Rule: If you wouldn't sign a contract for the person exactly as they are today, stop dating them based on who you hope they might become next year.
2. The Relationship Tune-Up (If It’s a Growth Area)
If you have genuinely confirmed it’s a Growth Area (a fixable skill deficit where they show willingness), approach it with curiosity, not criticism. The goal is to learn a new language together.
Use "I" Statements: Stop the character attacks. Focus on the behavior and its effect on you. Say: "I feel unimportant when you check your phone while I'm talking," not "You are always distracted and disrespectful."
Acknowledge the Effort: Growth is slow, painful work, often requiring a partner to fight against decades of learned behavior. When they take one small step, applaud the effort. Reinforce what you want repeated instead of complaining about what you don't want. You can’t motivate them by constantly telling them they are failing.
Demand Change: For Growth Areas to work, the partner must be self-aware, apologize for the impact, and actively show commitment to change.
3. Finding the Courage to Walk Away
If you recognized a Deal Breaker in Part 1, the work now is self-preservation.
Trust Your Gut: That chronic anxiety, the loss of sleep, the feeling of walking on eggshells—those are your body's physical red flags screaming at you. Don't let hope rationalize what your body knows is wrong.
The Responsibility Test: The inability to take responsibility for mistakes is the ultimate sign of emotional immaturity. If they can never say, "My bad, I hurt you," they aren't capable of the partnership you deserve.
Check Your Own Engine: Hopefully you've learned from past relationships. If you are the only one growing and fixing, that itself is the biggest Deal Breaker you need to notice.
Your relationship doesn't need to be perfect, but it must be fundamentally safe, respectful, and growth-oriented. Choose differently this time.
Ready to get clarity before you commit? If you're struggling to diagnose whether you should stay or walk away, email me today at wib@newhoperesources.com to schedule a session.
