~Don’t Put Us On A Pedestal~

[Guest guest]

~Don't Put Us On A Pedestal~Not

long ago a man proudly told me that he puts his wife on a pedestal,

that he idealizes her and considers her to be far superior to most

other mere mortals. Knowing as he does my interest in how couples

relate to one another, perhaps he expected me to applaud him for

holding his wife in such high regard. And to think what a lucky woman

she was to have such an appreciative partner! What I really

thought, however, was how little trouble this man must have gone to

over the years to actually get to know his wife. I wondered whether he

had ever seen her for the flesh and blood person she truly was, or just

his own idealized version of what he felt a woman should be? And

far from thinking how lucky she was, I began to pity her, empathizing

with how distant and alone she must feel, way up high on that pedestal

all by herself. Pedestals, after all, may be fine for still, cold

marble statues, but they don't offer much freedom to dance for warm,

red-blooded human beings! I'm sure the man thought he was

doing his wife some kind of favor, but the irony is that putting your

partner, friend (or anyone you love) on a pedestal can be just as

damaging as constantly criticizing them. When you elevate

someone to icon status and hold them to impossibly high standards,

you're actually devaluing—not honoring—the person inside. You're

denying that person's very human right to be whole—to have not only

virtues but faults, to make mistakes, to hold incorrect beliefs, and to

have all those dark, sad, confused places within that we all do. And

since much of our growth as human beings comes precisely from these

troublesome aspects of ourselves, you're denying your partner's right

to grow as well. Putting

someone on a pedestal means that you're worshipping a fantasy figure of

your own making instead of understanding and appreciating the actual

person in front of you. Rather than encouraging and empowering your

partner to be all that they're capable of being, even though that

inevitably includes a few warts, you're trying to force them to conform

to the superficial and controlling image of what you want them to be. Not

only is such an attitude wrong, but it also hurts both of you as well

as the relationship itself. Living under the psychological burden of

someone else's unrealistic expectations, partners on pedestals get the

message that to be loved, they have to be perfect. They can never

really relax and just be themselves, as they live in terror that their

human flaws will be "found out," that someday they'll really screw up

and pay for their mistakes by losing love. And naturally, partners on

pedestals can't risk confiding any faults or weaknesses to those who

hold such unrealistic expectations of them, so they're often forced to

suffer alone. Besides the agony that this causes to the

partner or friend on the pedestal, any real intimacy or sharing that

the relationship might have enjoyed becomes impossible. Partners and

friends on pedestals may keep on denying crucial parts of themselves

just to maintain the status quo, or they may eventually rebel from the

confining strictures placed upon them and come crashing down from that

pedestal, "misbehaving" just to claim back the parts of self that have

been too long denied. I'm

not suggesting that partners or friends shouldn't admire, respect,

honor, and even adore each other. A relationship like that is what we

all really want, after all. But to be happy and successful,

friendships and relationships must be based not upon unrealistic

ideals, but upon the utual ability for partners and friends to see and

appreciate each other as the authentic, lovable, fully HUMAN beings

that they are. And wouldn't you rather cuddle up to one of those than a cold marble statue, anyway?Love~All~Ways*~Karma*