This is a somewhat philosophical/psychological question.
I am aware of the potentially big difference between who a person is and who we think he/she is. I tend to not really believe people who say they fell in love with someone they have only chatted with, without having seen or talked with that person, because there is so little this "love" can be based on that I think they have completed a mental image that corresponds to their ideal partner. This is something Marcel Proust (one of my favorite French writers) calls a "crystallization" process (read "Swann's way" in particular): a little something that we like about a person, along with a lot of unknown and the feeling to be interesting in the eyes of the other person, leads to the imagination building a mental image of the other that does not correspond to reality.
My SO and I had been coworkers for 6 months (physically meeting every day), then we left both to different countries and started chatting on WhatsApp occasionally, then more and more. I developed feelings for her, but when we decided to meet again, I realized how far she was from what I had pictured. In a good way, fortunately. We started a LDR, and as I got back home, one of the biggest problems I had was to remove from my mind the old mental picture, and replace it with my experience of her. This wasn't easy, and I thought I managed to do it. I developed more and more feelings for who I thought was "the real her", not a mental image.
This week (three months after our first week together) I flew to Romania to see her again. I had a shock: again I realized a big difference between her and the mental picture I had of her. Again, she was better than my mental picture, but since we were already in a relationship, it felt really strange being with her during the first day. I felt that my feelings were directed towards someone who somehow existed but was not her. Even stranger, when she left me at my hotel and got back home, she then contacted me on Skype, and I had the impression to talk with the person I had been talking to for the past 3 months, but not the person I had physically spent the day with. It took me a full day for this weird feeling to fade and for me to fully appreciate the fact that I was finally with my SO.
I guess this is part of the issues when being in an LDR, having to get used to being physically with the other person again after a long period of time. But I would be curious to hear other people's experience about this.
Also if anyone has advice on how not to build a too false mental picture of SO while being away, I'm all listening.
EDIT: when I say "mental picture", I don't mean the souvenir of the physical appearance of the person, but the full picture of who the person is (habits, mood, ideas, opinions, etc.)
I am aware of the potentially big difference between who a person is and who we think he/she is. I tend to not really believe people who say they fell in love with someone they have only chatted with, without having seen or talked with that person, because there is so little this "love" can be based on that I think they have completed a mental image that corresponds to their ideal partner. This is something Marcel Proust (one of my favorite French writers) calls a "crystallization" process (read "Swann's way" in particular): a little something that we like about a person, along with a lot of unknown and the feeling to be interesting in the eyes of the other person, leads to the imagination building a mental image of the other that does not correspond to reality.
My SO and I had been coworkers for 6 months (physically meeting every day), then we left both to different countries and started chatting on WhatsApp occasionally, then more and more. I developed feelings for her, but when we decided to meet again, I realized how far she was from what I had pictured. In a good way, fortunately. We started a LDR, and as I got back home, one of the biggest problems I had was to remove from my mind the old mental picture, and replace it with my experience of her. This wasn't easy, and I thought I managed to do it. I developed more and more feelings for who I thought was "the real her", not a mental image.
This week (three months after our first week together) I flew to Romania to see her again. I had a shock: again I realized a big difference between her and the mental picture I had of her. Again, she was better than my mental picture, but since we were already in a relationship, it felt really strange being with her during the first day. I felt that my feelings were directed towards someone who somehow existed but was not her. Even stranger, when she left me at my hotel and got back home, she then contacted me on Skype, and I had the impression to talk with the person I had been talking to for the past 3 months, but not the person I had physically spent the day with. It took me a full day for this weird feeling to fade and for me to fully appreciate the fact that I was finally with my SO.
I guess this is part of the issues when being in an LDR, having to get used to being physically with the other person again after a long period of time. But I would be curious to hear other people's experience about this.
Also if anyone has advice on how not to build a too false mental picture of SO while being away, I'm all listening.
EDIT: when I say "mental picture", I don't mean the souvenir of the physical appearance of the person, but the full picture of who the person is (habits, mood, ideas, opinions, etc.)
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