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There is a difference between seeing the best in people and refusing to see someone’s flaws. There is a major discrepancy between giving someone the benefit of the doubt and allowing someone to step all over you. And there is just no overlap between having hope and being delusional. If you put your romantic partners on a pedestal, you may think that you fall within the first description of each of those sets of traits, but you actually fall into the second category.
Putting partners on pedestals is something that many of us start doing at a young age. We have these dreams, starting in our teen years, of someone who will be just perfect for us—the yin to our yang—and will sweep us off our feet and ride away with us into the sunset, possibly saving us from our crazy families. That’s what all of the classic movies make us believe will happen. The media will have us believe that there will be signs that your person is perfect for you, because he’ll only like the muffin bottoms while you just like the muffin tops. In reality, the signs will be more like…your partner remembers to re-stock the toilet paper in your bathroom for you, knowing you always forget. Or, he can tell you when you’re being a lunatic in a way that doesn’t feel so bad. Relationship “perfection,” as it turns out, isn’t very perfect-looking.
But, still, many of us never grow out of that phase of putting our partners on pedestals, and every new relationship brings this flurry of ecstatic, over-the-top emotions and hopes. It’s a bit unhealthy, and certainly unfair for the people you date. Do you put your romantic partners on pedestals? Here are the signs. Take them down from there, now.
You refer to them as “types”
When telling friends or family about a new man you’re dating, you use the word “type” a lot. You say things like, he’s one of those “athletic disciplined types” or he’s one of those “free-spirited, open-minded types.” The fact that you keep referring to him as a type means that you’ve already put him in a box and you hope he stays there.
