Dating Trap 4: Dating The Potential Not The Person

One of the biggest mistakes people make is to fall in love with someone’s potential.  You fall in love with who that person could be rather than with who that person is now.

How many times have you thought, “He/she would be perfect if only ….”?  You think the person you are dating is great in many ways and you think that with just a bit of work, you could transform that person into someone amazing!

There is a truth to the saying “Love Is Blind.”  Because you want a relationship to work out, you only see what you want to see, rather than what is, and one way of doing this is by focusing on someone’s potential.

Another form of this is when you become the ‘rescuer’ or the ‘fixer’.  You always go out with someone who is wounded, is the underdog, and who needs help.

When you do this, you take on the ‘parent’ role in the relationship.  You’re always in the ‘one-up’ position. It becomes your mission to rescue your lover and to help them achieve the potential you know they are capable of.

If you find that you are always playing the rescuer or the shrink, you are consciously, but more likely unconsciously, seeking out an uneven relationship.  While you know from your own relationship history that those kinds of relationships don’t work out to be happy and fulfilling ones in the end, there is actually a good reason you do this.

At some level, deep down inside, you believe that if you love enough, give enough and do enough for your partner, you’ll save your partner from their problems.  And in return, because they are ever grateful and dependent on you, they will never leave you.  This belief is so deeply buried, it’s not easy to realise you are holding it.

Unless you’ve done a lot of work on yourself – reading, therapy or coaching – it isn’t easy to understand why you keep repeating certain patterns.  If you want to understand your patterns, get a good therapist or coach.  But even if you don’t understand ‘why’ you do what you do – just be aware of the pattern – and don’t get pulled into it.

Watch out for these signs:

• You  keep telling yourself and others that your partner just needs a bit more time to sort themselves out.
• You are still making excuses, months or even years later
• You keep putting your partner’s need before your own – you feel like a bit of a martyr
• You are only happy if you are helping your partner
• You like to feel needed by your partner
• You like it when you can help your partner even when no one else can
• You feel responsible for you partner

It took me awhile to figure out that this was the trap I kept falling into.  I’m a psychologist and a coach and a big part of my job is to be able to see people’s potential.  For years I thought my job was getting in the way of my relationships.

It wasn’t until I thought more about my own background of constant abandonment by different fathers that I became aware that I was living out this fear in my current relationships.  Whenever I met and fell for someone, I saw their potential, not who they were. My role in these relationships was all about helping them reach their potential.

These men did end up financially better off, living in nicer homes and yes, living more of their potential.  The funny thing, however, was that when they reached this point, I was feeling emotionally starved and didn’t feel I was getting in return.  And how could I get in return?  My focus was disproportionately on them and not me.

I also found that, at this point, I lost interest in the relationships.  It was always me that ended the relationships.  It was a case of I now no longer had the ‘guarantee’ that they wouldn’t leave me – so I ‘rejected’ them before they ‘rejected’ me. I look back now and realise I repeated this pattern in several relationships.  I probably would do this again if I wasn’t aware of this.  Being aware means having the choice to do things differently.

“It is important you explore which qualities seduce you in a prospective partner and which hooks lead you into a relationship.  “The more you understand about yourself, the more aware you will be and the more empowered you will be to see the truth.” Annie Bennett (The Love Trap).

The Problem With The Potential, Not The Person Trap

The dangers of the Dating the Potential Not The Person Trap include:

• You ignore the “red flags” that are there to warn you this isn’t the right relationship for you
• You focus on changing your partner  – while you avoid taking responsibility for your own life
• You cling on to a relationship that isn’t going to fulfil you.
• Your partner may begin to experience you as controlling and resent you
• You don’t experience getting your own needs met
• You can feel resentful, especially when the relationship fails, “after all you’ve done.”

If you want to up your chances of being in a happy and long term relationship, then fall in love with someone as they are now . . .  . not who they could be.