515 - Romanticization: Friend or Foe?
What and why do we romanticize?
"If you romanticize someone or something, you think or talk about them in a way which is not at all realistic and which makes them seem better than they really are."
Collins dictionary
Some examples of things we tend to romanticize in life are:
Travel,
Children/family/getting married,
Being single,
Being a starving artist,
Living in the city/countryside,
Living in a post-capitalist socialist queer utopia commune,
Living together with/apart from a partner,
Kitchen table polyamory,
A new partner,
A partner’s potential.
As for the case for romanticization, a 2003 study suggests these findings:
They found that people's perceptions of their partner were influenced by both the "reality" of their partner's self-image and their own idealized projections.
People were happier in their relationships when they saw their partner more positively than their partner saw themselves.
People were also happier when their partner idealized them.
Over time, positive illusions had self-fulfilling effects:
People reported greater satisfaction, less conflict, and fewer doubts when they initially idealized their partner more.
People came to see themselves more like how their partner initially viewed them.
Over the course of the study, participants tended to adjust their idea of what makes an ideal partner to more closely align with the qualities they saw in their actual partner.
This can be seen as a form of cognitive dissonance reduction, where people align their ideals with their reality to maintain a positive view of their relationship.
However, idealization can have negative effects as well. A set of three studies from 2014 suggest that too much idealization can be detrimental:
In the first study, when people were tricked into thinking their partner saw them as way more amazing than they actually were, they physically moved away from their partner. However, when asked directly about their feelings, they didn't report any changes. This suggests that feeling over-idealized might affect our behavior without us realizing it.
Studies 2 and 3 found that there is a “sweet spot” for idealization, but only when it comes to abilities (like being good at sports or music), not personality traits. Too little or too much idealization of abilities was linked to lower relationship satisfaction, less willingness to accommodate a partner's needs, and more feelings of being threatened.
The researchers noted that these inflection points suggest that an optimal level of perceived idealization occurs when a partner is perceived to view oneself slightly more positively than one sees oneself.
If you find yourself over-idealizing…
Try some of these if you think you might be over-idealizing:
Get an outside perspective.
Try reverse romanticization! Try out romanticizing what your current relationship/living situation is (This could be an offshoot of the romanticize your life phenomenon)
Could be a journal prompt - write out a very romantic, idealized version of your life from someone else’s perspective.
You can get a friend to help if need be.
What are the things that jump out that are actually easy to romanticize? Which parts are difficult?
If this is extremely hard to do, that could be telling.
Examine your perfectionism. If you’re someone who is prone to perfectionism, get curious, and find a way to embrace imperfection.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we are diving into the world of romanticization and idealization. We've all been there daydreaming about the perfect relationship, idealizing a new job, or fantasizing about living in a different city. You might find yourself thinking, if only I could be with this particular person, everything would be perfect. Or once I move to this new place, all my problems will disappear. What happens when these rosy visions clash with reality? Why do we tend to paint such idealized pictures in our minds? More importantly, is this tendency to romanticize helping or hurting us in our relationships and our life choices?
Today we're going to explore the psychology behind romanticization, discuss when it can be beneficial, and when it might be holding us back, and offer some practical strategies to find a healthy balance when dreaming big and staying grounded in reality. If you'd like to check up on our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show in written form, you can get our book, Multiamory Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. You can find out about that at multiamory.com/book. Or just go to your local bookstore and ask them about it.
Dedeker: Emily and Jase, what is your historic relationship to Lofi girl?
Emily: Lofi hip hop beads that you can study/relax too, that girl?
Dedeker: Yes, that girl.
Jase: I feel like she's like a metamore to me. I feel like she's always at all of my friends' houses. She's in your room sometimes.
Dedeker: Yes, she is in my room. Well, to be fair, I tend to gravitate towards the Lofi raccoon herself.
Jase: The newer Lofi raccoon.
Emily: There's like a Zelda version I think, where she's wearing a billion outfits.
Jase: There's a billion versions. I definitely see her around a lot. She's a real social butterfly. Ironically since she's sitting by herself with her headphones on in all of the pictures.
Emily: I feel like she lives in a really cool place and looks really adorable. Also looks like she's smart because she's studying and there's always a cat or something with her. Just all of those things together look like she really has her life together.
Dedeker: That's really interesting thread to go down because I want to hear from the two of you. Why do you think that she's so popular? Not just Lofi girls specifically, but I guess the other metamours who live in her house. The Lofi raccoon or the Zelda diversion or whatever. I want to talk specifically about the visual. Many people have already covered the whole Lofi phenomenon and things like that. That's not what we're here for.
Jase: I do feel like the visual like Emily said, it's that she's usually in a pretty beautiful location. At least the color palette of it is very soft, warm, and inviting. There's usually nice lighting. The rendering of the picture is really nice where there's some nice light and shadow, some interplay there. A lot of soft edges. Everything in the scene is very soft. I think like Emily's saying, she seems smart because she's studying all the time, but she's also journaling or reading or doing a lot of the things that I think a lot of us feel like we don't have time to do maybe is part of she's aspirational. I wish I had more time to just for hours on end listen to Lofi and write in my journal
Dedeker: To handwrite also.
Jase: Handwriting yes, exactly.
Emily: There's something very sensual about that. She's sitting there listening to music that you also are getting to listen to. She can look outside the window and see the beautiful scenery that she is near and then tactically like a petter cat or write things down. She's using all of her senses.
Dedeker: Ah so interesting.
Emily: It's romantic. It's beautiful.
Dedeker: That's interesting because my favorite Lofi Raccoon, there's some similarities but also some differences. Lofi Raccoon is usually in his little single bed in what looks like maybe a dorm room, maybe some cozy little room in a house that he might be renting. He's not handwriting. He has a laptop. He has a laptop that he's poking at on his lap, but then also has a nice warm drink next to him.
The whole reason why I'm bringing this up, I hope that you haven't switched off your podcast players because you're sick of this discussion about Lofi YouTube videos. The whole reason why I'm bringing this up is that I theorize that what Lofi Girl and Lofi Raccoon are doing for us visually is they're taking something very mundane and making it look very romantic. I know for myself when I have to sit down to do a mundane task, such as writing, getting through my inbox, pulling together an episode, where it's like, I just need to sit down on my laptop and do this work.
Maybe I don't really feel like doing it. I throw on Lofi Raccoon or Lofi Girl and it's almost like this-- I have this example of this could actually be really romantic and really nice. There's like this solidarity. It's so interesting that when I was pulling this episode together, I started looking at different Lofi videos and I found a bunch of these videos that came up around specifically how to romanticize your schoolwork or going to school in particular.
I think this is the offshoot of the romanticize your life trend. Yes, I know we're a few years late to the party. This was a trend in 2020, at least it began in 2020 on TikTok and on YouTube that was about, again, these tiny very plebeian quotidian mundane type of moments in your life that we can really lean in and make them soft and romantic and nice and sensual in a particular way. That's my theory.
Jase: I think it makes a lot of sense. I also like that idea of, it's like this aspirational, I want to feel that chill while I'm studying. I was actually just looking at pictures right now of Lofi Raccoon on his little laptop, and he's sitting in bed working on his laptop and the clock says midnight or something like that. I'm just like if I'm working on my laptop in bed at midnight, I'm stressed and trying to get something done.
Dedeker: Jase, I'm so glad you mentioned that because they've since changed his clock. His clock actually is chill on it now.
Jase: That's good.
Dedeker: Used to stress me out too sometimes with Lofi Raccoon and it'd be like, "Oh no, that's not a good time."
Jase: That's no good. Anyway, just the idea that he seems so peaceful though. If I could be that peaceful, even if I had to crunch till I get something done, that'd be cool.
Emily: Yes, exactly. I think so many of us are looking for that outlet to escape from the intensity of our everyday lives that mundane is even a little bit romanticized at this point because so many of us are working so hard in the grind trying to churn out content or get that next deadline that paper done if you're a young person or whatever it might be. Because we do that so often the idea of something that's more mundane is romantic. Like, "Wow, if I could only just have the time to sit there and enjoy myself and curl up in my corner with a good book and a cup of tea, wouldn't that be wonderful?" I don't know the last time I've done that except for on the subway commuting to my job.
Dedeker: You brought a cup of tea on the subway.
Emily: No, I just sit there with my water bottle and my Kindle trying to have nobody come and visit me. Scare me.
Jase: It's interesting though because on the other side, I feel like sometimes romanticizing can lead us astray. I'm actually thinking like, Emily you mentioned creating content as if that's a relatable thing to most people. I think that most people are not content creators. Content creator is a type of person that most of us interact with because we consume the content that's made. I think there's definitely a tendency to romanticize that job or that life. Very much so. That's why it's like, I forget what it was, there was some survey of high schoolers.
Dedeker: It was like why all the kids want to be content creators.
Jase: The number one job is content creator that kids think they want when they're young.
Emily: You don't, kids. You don't.
Jase: It's interesting because I even find myself fall victim to it, even as a content creator, and being very acutely aware of the stress and the pressure and all of those things, but looking at other types of content and being like, "Oh, I bet they have a really chill, great life making their content more than I do," and realizing, I'm falling into the same romanticization trap of thinking, "Oh, well, I'd be happier if that, versus romanticizing my own life." I think it really varies which direction it's going.
Dedeker: Yes, and we're going to get into that. Just briefly, before we dive into the meat of this episode, as I was researching the romanticize your life trend, it's interesting because there's a fair amount of criticism that's come out. I think this falls in line with maybe the curation that specifically people who post content to TikTok are known for in the sense of people being like, "This isn't realistic." Maybe the normal working person can't afford to curl up on a Saturday morning with their tea in their book and have it be all cozy and nice.
Then on the other hand, there are people who are like, "No, this is just an offshoot of things like mindfulness or trying to develop a gratitude practice for what your life is right now." The really famous example on TikTok is someone making the most amazing-looking avocado toast I've ever seen in my entire life. This idea of you're putting in this extra effort not to impress somebody else, but literally just to treat yourself. There are ties to positive psychology. There's, of course, the Hygge trend of like, we're really good--
Emily: What?
Dedeker: You know, I'm only Hygge.
Jase: Hygge.
Emily: No, I don't.
Dedeker: You never heard of Hygge?
Emily: No.
Jase: H-Y-G-G-E. Hygge.
Dedeker: It's this Danish concept. It's about contentment and coziness and comfort.
Emily: Cozy core.
Dedeker: Yes, cozy core, Hygge core.
Jase: Specifically, for getting through the winter as a positive thing rather than like, "Oh, we've just got to white-knuckle it through this cold time of being dark all the time." Instead, it's a way to reframe it and embrace.
Dedeker: We have to romanticize winter.
Jase: To make it not suck so much.
Emily: I definitely need to do that this year because I'm actually going to be in winter and not just like an LA winter.
Dedeker: Yes, it's going to be your first non-LA winter. Oh my God. You're going to have to--
Jase: Look up some Hygge.
Dedeker: Get some Hygge on.
Emily: Oh, boy.
Jase: Get your Hygge on. Let's start diving into this a little bit. To start off, we have three different ways people have defined romanticism here or to romanticize something. This is just three different ones, but to help illustrate what's going on here. The first one is just a dictionary definition from the Collins Dictionary, and that says, "If you romanticize someone or something, you think or talk about them in a way which is not at all realistic and which makes them seem better than they really are."
Emily: Okay.
Jase: This next one is from a research paper on romanticized beliefs in relationships by Angela Castellini. This says, "Romanticized beliefs typically stem from the romantic ideals within our culture and include assumptions about what love is, what relationships should look like, dot, dot, dot." Then this last one is from a more formal definition that's in that same research paper. "To romanticize is to deal with or describe in an idealized or unrealistic fashion, make something seem better or more appealing than it really is." It seems like a lot of this has to do with this not based in reality, that we're perceiving a thing as better than it actually is.
Dedeker: It's like putting an Instagram filter or like a beauty filter-
Jase: A beauty filter, yes.
Dedeker: -over something.
Emily: They're all It's the negative framings of this, even though--
Jase: That is interesting to me, too. It all feels negative in those definitions.
Emily: Even though when I think of like, "Oh, it's so romantic," or they're really romanticizing this specific thing, that feels a little bit nicer. That idea feels a little bit nicer, but here not so much, which is really interesting to me.
Dedeker: Sure.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: I wanted to open up the discussion to talk about first, what are the things that we've seen others or ourselves idealizing or romanticizing?
Jase: Content creation. Hit that one already.
Dedeker: Yes, we hit that one already. Stuff like travel. This is when I think about a lot as someone who travels a ton, and particularly this year has traveled so much that I'm getting a little bit sick of it. The whole tourism industry is fueled by romanticizing travel, right?
Emily: Oh, yes.
Dedeker: Romanticizing certain destinations. Then, of course, visual social media makes us even worse that we get these very curated related images of particular places that make them seem a lot more romantic and beautiful and picturesque than they actually are in reality.
Jase: Yes, that's an interesting one, too, thinking about how we experience travel of, are we trying to do things to stay in that romanticizing mode, or how much are we confronted with things that jar us out of it? I don't remember if we've ever talked about it on this show before, but there's even that , which is a term in Japanese for specifically this deep depression that some people can get into after they travel to Paris for the first time because they've romanticized it so much in their head, and the reality is so not that it shatters a lot of their dreams about how great life could be or what the world could be and get really depressed about it.
Emily: I bet they get depressed coming to the United States for the first time as well.
Dedeker: There's that, too. I always remember there's this photographer. I don't know the photographer's name, but he did a whole series of-- He would go to these very, very famous tourist and he would--
Jase: Right and turn the other direction.
Dedeker: Yes, he would go to the place where people always take the picture, but then he would turn 180 and take a picture of what's across from the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal. It's so interesting because it's all the horrible Chachki shops or just people's homes or a bunch of trash or a bunch of tourists crowded around trying to get a picture. It is that jarring, like, "Oh, no, there's a reality to this beautiful and interesting place."
Jase: Absolutely. I feel like our phones have a lot of built-in, like remove all the people from this photo just makes that illusion even worse. Where it's like, "Yes, I want to distance myself, even in my own photos, from the memory of what this was actually like to be here."
Emily: That's an interesting point is that you're romanticizing the travel after the fact as well. Isn't that a thing that the anticipation of the travel is the most exciting and the thing that you remember or that you feel good about the most?
Dedeker: I think we get more joy out of the anticipation of many things rather than sometimes the thing itself.
Emily: Yes, that's really fascinating. I know a lot of people out there really romanticize having kids or getting married. Of course, there are people out there who love both of those things and are super excited to start a family, super excited to get married. Of course, there are a lot of really challenging things that come with both of those. I think that we tend to talk about those things less. Maybe that's changing now to a degree, especially having kids.
There was a recent New York Times article and then also subsequent Daily Podcast episode on the fact that child-rearing is bad for your health in the manner that we're doing it now, which I found really, really fascinating. I do think people are understanding that there was this idealized version of both of those things and are trying to come to that with more reality now than they once were.
Dedeker: Also on the flip side, I think what gets less coverage is that people can also idealize the opposite of being single and not having children.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. A grass is greener situation.
Dedeker: Yes, there is definitely a grass is greener quality to a lot of the things that we idealize or romanticize.
Jase: Another big one of those is the whole living in the city versus living in the countryside. That it's like, whichever one you're in, it's easy to romanticize the other. Of like, "Oh, these cool experiences I could have in the city," or, "Oh, gosh, it'd be so peaceful to just live on a farm and live off the land." That kind of thing.
Emily: I've never wanted to live in the country. I'm a city girl. I love it.
Dedeker: Emily, Okay, but you've romanticized living in New York for 200 years now.
Emily: Yes. I will say this. This city has kicked my ass multiple times. It is very hard to live here, really day in and day out. The subway is no joke. It takes forever to get places. You don't have a car. I don't have a car. I've sold my car. Yes, all of those things are really difficult, but I still love it. I love it here.
Dedeker: Okay. That's the thing is, I think that I don't want to get too far ahead here, but there is a certain quality of romanticization that helps protect us and balance things out when things are difficult when the reality of things are difficult.
Jase: Absolutely. I think that children is another really good example of that, of it can help you get through those hard things like you were saying about New York, that your romanticization helps there. Another one here is being a starving artist.
Emily: Rent romanticized that for people in the '90s.
Dedeker: Oh, yes. There's another duo here that I want to present, which is this idea of, I think we see a lot of people who might romanticize something like the good old days, whatever you can that to be. Sometimes it's like the good old days of traditional gender roles. The good old days.
Emily: Trad wife.
Dedeker: Yes, the Trad wife, this very traditional family structure. Then on the opposite side, I'm sorry all you lefties listening, we also can romanticize something similar, which is the future good old days of living in a post-capitalist, socialist, queer, utopia commune.
Emily: Polyfidelitous.
Dedeker: That's when all our problems are going to be solved and everything's going to be perfect. It's not going to require any hard work or sacrifice or discomfort once we topple capitalism. Where I'm like, "We have also a lot of examples of communes, utopic communes on big or small scale that either completely did not work out or demonstrate to us this shit's still hard to pull off."
A tiny version of that is so many people in the non-monogamy community have this romantic fantasy of we buy a bunch of tiny houses on a piece of land and then I can live with my polycule and everyone has their tiny house. I still think that's a very romantic image, and also I find it so romanticized by people that a lot of people really don't think about the reality of the cost and how you actually negotiate and navigate these things.
Jase: What happens when now the house you own is stuck next to these people you've broken up with or have a bad experience with?
Dedeker: Or you have conflict about how you want to manage all the childcare, the collective childcare together, and things like that.
Jase: I'd say another few to throw out here that go in a group is wishing you lived with a partner or wishing you didn't live with a partner, or wishing that you lived with a larger group. Like, "Oh, I wish I had a live-in triad altogether, or quad or something." Or wishing you had more space. Wishing I had a kitchen table polyamory. Those are things that-
Dedeker: Idealize. Yes, for sure.
Jase: -we can romantic, like idealize. Exactly. "Oh, it'd just be so peaceful and calm and we'd all share chores. It'd be so much easier. We'd save money. It'd be great. We'd have sex all the time." That kind of romanticizing.
Emily: Here's a big one that I've gotten stuck in at the beginning of a relationship, especially it's the potential that a partner might have, and that can mean a lot of different things. Like perhaps what it is that they are going to be in my life eventually, or the fact that they're saying that they're going to start this amazing startup someday and they're working towards that and so I can see the potential there.
Or if they just made this little tweak, then they would be perfect, whatever it might be. There's so many things that I think we romanticize in terms of looking at another person or even just romanticizing the idea of another person, a new person in our lives, and what that might do for us and how we might feel better about ourselves if this person acted in a slightly different way or if we just had another person in general.
Dedeker: Totally.
Jase: I often find myself romanticizing having a different job or not having a job of going back to gig, more freelance work, not having a regular employer, but I remember back then sometimes romanticizing what it could be like to have something more stable where I wasn't always having to hunt for the next thing. It wasn't all on my shoulders. I've definitely repeatedly done that on either side.
Dedeker: I very heavily romanticize my time when I first started traveling and when I was first working on the book. When I'm feeling particularly stressed or busy or overwhelmed, I'll be like, "Oh yes, those were the days when all I had to focus on was writing this book and just being in a cafe and yada, yada, yada, yada," but of course, I always gloss over being stressed about money the entire time and being freaking broke.
Not that I'm rich now by any means, but at least there's stable income. Of course, back then I totally would've romanticized having stable income. I think stable income is not something that counts as being romanticized because there's very real benefits to having stable income.
Jase: It's legit.
Emily: Definitely, but some people do romanticize the idea of like, "If I just had this much more money, I would be happier."
Jase: Sure.
Emily: That is absolutely--
Dedeker: I could relax.
Emily: Sure. That is absolutely true in some cases, but a lot of studies have shown past a certain point, more money is actually not going to do much more for your mental wellbeing or your happiness. That's interesting too. We've talked about all of this with each of these a little bit, but can being romantic about something or idealizing it, can it ever be helpful or is it always hurtful?
Jase: I think we hit on that a little bit with the New York thing. Where you, Emily, romanticize New York and you have as long as I've known you. I know it's been since before that as well. You also admitted New York really kicked your ass and that there's a lot of things rough about it, but for you, that romanticization helps make it all worthwhile and that overall your net experience is more positive than it would be I think for someone like me who doesn't romanticize New York as much. I would probably experience more of the negatives more strongly than the positives.
Emily: I think you're probably right. It's just fascinating. All of us have different perspectives on things that we care about, and I think that romanticizing something can really shine a light on the things that we do care about and allow us to, in those really difficult times, be able to handle it maybe a little bit better than if we were more neutral about it. Maybe that is a good thing.
That can mean our relationships and stuff like that too or having kids, I have no romantic ideals whatsoever about starting a family or even getting married. Maybe I did once, but I don't anymore. I think if those things did happen and it got really tough, I would have a really hard time with that. It would be really difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel there, or really take the good times and try to forget or understand that the bad times won't always be there.
Dedeker: I have a very strong pragmatist streak that tends to rock at me.
Emily: You don't say.
Jase: Really? Huh? I would never have guessed.
Dedeker: I don't think that it's necessarily helpful to just take all of our ideals and throw them in the garbage. To take this romanticized fantasy of the socialist queer post-capitalist utopic society, whether it's big scale or small scale, I don't think it's good for us to be like, "Well, the reality of that is not as romantic as we all think it is and so therefore, we shouldn't even strive for that."
I do think we need our ideals to have something to strive for, but we also always need to rectify with what inevitably happens when our deals crash into reality. That doesn't mean that our ideals are broken or silly or misfounded, but it's like we are going to have to find a way to deal with that. I suppose that's what I'm trying to get to the heart of in this episode of how do we deal with something that's romanticized and when it overlaps with reality and how do we manage that? How do we come to terms with that?
Jase: I've discovered something recently about myself that whenever someone's going to start telling me about a research study, I get excited like kids at storytime. I just want to sit there and it be-- Just a couple weeks ago I saw my dad and he started talking about some study and I found myself in that like, "Ooh, it's story time. Tell me about this study." I'm excited for Dedeker to give us a little bit of study storytime.
Dedeker: Aw.
Jase: To talk about a couple coming up here in a second and how it relates to romanticization.
Dedeker: All right children, it's study story-time. Put on your cozy little Hygge hats.
Jase: Oh yes. Sit on a little cushion on the ground.
Dedeker: Come sit by the fire.
Emily: Have a kitty curl up in your lap.
Jase: Oh, yes.
Dedeker: Exactly. How romantic. We're doing such a good job at romanticizing our own podcast.
Jase: This episode.
Emily: Well done.
Dedeker: The two studies I'm presenting make a case for and against romanticization/idealization of a romantic partner specifically. This first one is a 2003 study by Murray Holmes and Griffin titled, Reflections on the Self-Fulfilling Effects of Positive Illusions that was published in Psychological Inquiry. These researchers conducted a longitudinal study of dating couples over the course of a year. It was relatively small. It was 69 couples. Nice.
Jase: Nice.
Emily: So nice.
Dedeker: 138 individuals. The participants completed questionnaires at three-time points over the course of the year. The researchers would ask both members of each couple to describe themselves based on a list of 22 interpersonal qualities, describe their partner based on the same qualities, and then describe their ideal partner on these qualities as well.
Just for some examples, these qualities includes things like caring, intelligent, lazy, selfish, moody, jealous, stubborn, and the list goes on. They also measured relationship well-being at these three-time points as well. They identified and defined this concept of what they call positive illusions, as in the qualities that people see in their partner that the partner didn't see in themselves. In other words, the ways that--
Jase: Because we're getting both themselves and the partner.
Dedeker: The ways that somebody idealized their partner in a way that they did not idealize themselves clearly. Now they found that people's perceptions of their partner were influenced by both the reality of their partner's self-image and their own idealized projections. People would both project but also be influenced by basically how badass their partner thought that they themselves were.
They found that people were happier in their relationships when they saw their partner more positively than their partner saw themselves. People were also happier when their partner idealized them. Like a two-way street there.
Jase: In both directions that made people happier?
Dedeker: Yes. Over time they found that these positive illusions had self-fulfilling effects, as in people reported greater satisfaction, less conflict, and fewer doubts when they initially idealized their partner more, and people came to see themselves more like how their partner viewed them as well.
Jase: Wow.
Emily: Damn, this is really interesting to me as well. Wow.
Jase: That it's like the way your partner sees you influences how you start to see yourself.
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: Wow.
Emily: You don't say.
Dedeker: Well, and this is also why, I mean, the study doesn't go into this, but why there's that classic example of if you're in a negative relationship, where a partner has not been very nice to you, and has said some not very nice things to you--
Emily: That's what I'm saying.
Dedeker: Yes, it can also affect the way that you see yourself. Over the course of the study, participants also tended to adjust their idea of what makes an ideal partner to more closely align with the qualities they saw in their actual partner. They explain this to say that this can be a form of cognitive dissonance reduction where people are aligning their ideals more to match with reality in order to maintain a positive view of their relationship. This is a small thing. I couldn't tell. Is this cool or is this yikes?
Emily: I think it's just reality.
Dedeker: Okay, because on the one hand, I can see that there's something ironically that's romantic about, "Hey, the more that I get to know you, and the more that I fall in love with you, the more you come to embody my idea of what the ideal partner is or should be." There's something really nice and romantic about that. On the other hand, if your ideal partner does not match with who your partner actually is, and therefore--
Emily: You hear those words literally come out of your partner's mouth that this isn't the ideal partnership, these qualities and traits aren't ideal for years.
Dedeker: Then you start to shift your ideals to match that. I guess it could be both cool and yikes.
Emily: Yes, or you just realize like, "Oh, shit. I guess I'm not the ideal partner. Can I be the ideal partner to anyone?" This is so fascinating and makes complete sense, but also, I think it shows how important it is to have enough self-efficacy and understanding of self to be able to say like, "I am good despite what anyone else thinks or says about me." I think, unfortunately, that cognitive dissonance, it gets larger and larger over time in one direction or another.
Dedeker: Sure. Eventually.
Emily: This was only a year.
Dedeker: Yes, that's true.
Emily: If we're talking a lot longer than that, that can get even more difficult. Somebody is saying shitty things about you? Maybe leave them. How about that?
Jase: Absolutely. I want to come in and I'm going to lean a little bit more on the this is cool side of things, because of a couple of things. One is--
Emily: That's a good partner.
Jase: Yes, that helps, but I think the idea of your ideal partner, what you think the traits of an ideal partner are that those becoming closer to what your actual partner is, could partly be accepting influence from that partner.
Dedeker: Oh, interesting.
Jase: As you get to know them and understand their values, some of those, you might go, "Oh, you know what? Yes, actually, I value that, too. I've learned something. I've been shaped by you." That's something that Gottmans talk about is accepting influence from a partner is a really important marker of relationship success, and happiness is being open to be changed a little bit by your partner. They're talking more on in a given conversation, but I could see that principle applying a little bit more generally as well, that we're both affecting each other.
Then as far as us coming to think about ourselves more like our partner thinks about us, to me, it's just like, there have been lots of other examples of the Pygmalion effect. This idea that we're more likely to perform to the standards that other people expect of us. Not 100%. It's not perfect. You can fight against it, but that generally speaking, we will tend to line up with what people expect of us already. I could see some of that being at play here in a positive way, and I could imagine how it would happen in a negative way, even though that's not what this particular study was looking at.
Dedeker: Now, on the flip side, feeling idealized by a partner can backfire sometimes. I present to you the second half of Study Story Time. A 2014 study by Tomlinson et al. The Costs of Being put on a pedestal: Effects of Feeling Over-Idealized. This was published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. This is actually three separate studies conducted on dating and married couples. In the first study, basically, when people were tricked into thinking, and I'm going get into this. Just--
Emily: Because I'm in--
Dedeker: Hold your horses. Just hold your horses. Just bear with me.
Jase: Okay. They were pranked.
Dedeker: Yes. When people were pranked into thinking that their partner saw them as way more amazing than they actually were, they would physically move away from their partner in interviews for the study. However, when they were asked directly about their feelings, they didn't report any changes about their partner. The researchers interpret this to suggest that feeling over-idealized by a partner might affect our behavior without us realizing it. It may want us to put some more distance and make us a little bit more uncomfortable with a partner. Now, here's how they got punked.
Jase: Okay, what's the trick?
Dedeker: Yes. The trick was that basically, they would separate the couple. They would tell one person, "Hey, I want you to list one positive quality of your partner, and your partner's going to do the same." What they would actually tell the other partner is like, "You need to list 30 positive qualities of your partner, and wouldn't tell them that they're not telling their other partner the same thing." They're creating these conditions where this person thinks that they and their partner have been given the same task to make a very short one-item list of positive qualities. They do that, but then they're confronted with their partner has come up with 30.
This very dramatic, overachieving student response to the prompt. Now, is this a perfect way to create this sense of being over-idealized? It's not. There's definitely some issues with this, but I think it's really interesting.
Jase: Is it I'm moving away from you because I'm so embarrassed you didn't know how to follow instructions?
Dedeker: Maybe.
Emily: Or it just makes you feel uncomfortable to have somebody say so many amazing things when you're like, "Whoops. I only did--
Dedeker: Maybe that's true.
Jase: That's what they're getting at.
Dedeker: Yes, "I only did the one. Oh, no."
Emily: "Oh, God."
Dedeker: In studies two and three, they found that there is a sweet spot for idealization. That was only when it comes to abilities specifically. Idealizing a partner's ability at sports or music and not necessarily personality traits, but they found that either too little or too much idealization of a person's abilities was linked to lower relationship satisfaction, less willingness to accommodate a partner's needs, and more feelings of being threatened, your own autonomy and independence being threatened. Now, of course, I had to dive into like, "But what's that sweet spot?" Basically, the researchers found that if you perceive that your partner thinks you're a little bit cooler than how you see yourself, that's the sweet spot.
You don't want your partner to think you're way cooler than you think you are, and you don't want them to think that you suck more than you think that you suck. You want to feel like your partner thinks you're just a little bit cooler than how you would rate yourself on the coolness scale.
Emily: Damn, Dedeker. Both of these studies are like gut punches.
Dedeker: Why? Why is that one a gut punch for you?
Jase: Oh my gosh.
Emily: Well, because I am dating someone right now who very much talks about the fact that he does not want to put anyone on a pedestal. That's very much a thing that he doesn't want to do with partners in general. I think that it has to do a lot with that feeling of being threatened and lack of autonomy and stuff like that. That to give over to the idea of pedestalization would mean that you would take away some of your own personal autonomy. I have to say, I've been in situations where somebody idealizes me, and it does make me recoil. It does make me be like, "I don't know about this. This is a little intense. This makes me feel like this person's whole world is about me." I really don't want that.
That's fascinating to me. Of course, I agree, also. You want that sweet spot. You want somebody who looks at you and is like, "This person's awesome," but not that they're so awesome that they are every single thing in the world to you, and they have nothing else going on.
Jase: Yes, I think that's a great point about why that sweet spot's there. I can understand someone having an experience or just learning something that turned them off of that idea of holding someone on a pedestal. I agree. That's good, but maybe it can result in them feeling like they need to swing hard the other way, and it's like, "Well, hopefully, they could find that balance of like, 'Yes, I can think you're cool without idolizing you.'"
Dedeker: I want to validate that, though, because I think all of us have had experiences on both sides of this. For me, I know the times when I have been in a relationship where I very much put the other person on a pedestal, it has not gone well. When I've over-idealized someone, that means I'm more likely to self-sacrifice. I'm more likely to have a negative self-image. I'm more likely to not want to speak up and not have boundaries because I think, "Oh, my God, this person is so awesome, and I barely deserve to be with them." Then sometimes, if you're with someone who also intentionally or unintentionally takes advantage of that, then it can be a really bad situation.
I think I've come away from those situations really wanting to be careful about putting someone on a pedestal and idealizing them or over-romanticizing them. Then, yes, like you were showing, Emily, that to be on the flip side of that also can be a turn-off weirdly, because it can feel like someone doesn't actually know or love you. They love this ideal version of you.
Emily: Yes. It is interesting. That sweet spot is ideal, and it's fascinating because I've been in a situation where I've been in the middle of both sides of this with two different partners at the same time, and that's a lot. It's fascinating to see the differences between how you act and how other people react to you in the moment, so I think if we can just all calm down. Also, we understand that it's important to idealize people to a degree because that's how we love. I love how awesome my friends are and how much I will say to people like yes, that person, one of the smartest people I will ever meet. I regularly say that about you, too, among many other things. That's fairly ideal, I guess.
Jase: I think something that's worth noting here, too, is that this study mentioned specifically that this sweet spot had to do with abilities. Which I guess would include something like saying the smartest people you'll ever meet kind of a thing. That's kind of about an ability versus a personality trait where it sounds like maybe with personality traits, there's no upper limit, I guess, to thinking someone's like, oh, they're just so kind, or they're so patient. Something that's not skill-based. I don't know if that's what they meant here, but they specifically mentioned that this sweet spot thing had to do with abilities.
Dedeker: Well, do we think that this holds up outside of a romantic partner context? Emily, would you be happy if New York thought that you were just a little bit cooler than how you thought of yourself?
Jase: Oh, boy.
Emily: That's a great question. I don't know if that's possible. I understand that New York is cooler than me, and I'm fine with that. I'm okay with that.
Dedeker: I think what we've talked about already, where you've had this experience of even before you lived in New York, romanticizing it, idealizing it, moving to New York, and having maybe a more realistic take on what it's like to live in New York and yet still having these positive feelings about your living situation. Does that fall into this sweet spot category of idealizing a little bit, but not to an unrealistic degree?
Emily: I think it does. Absolutely. I understand the things that I need to do to live here well, and that comes from within as opposed to me trying to be like, well, I have to find all of these external things about New York to make it cool, to make it live up to that romantic ideal. I'm learning how I can thrive best here and how I can use all of the things that are wonderful about living here to my advantage because they're always going to be there, and I'm not going to be able to do all of them. If I can enjoy what I can do, then it'll continue to bring joy to my life.
Jase: That's great. I think with all of this, we clearly have a lot of thoughts, and we've all had a lot of personal experience with romanticization, both with partners and with other areas of our lives. I imagine that our listeners have experienced the same thing of, like, "Oh boy, I can relate to a lot of these different things. I can imagine these situations." We're going to move on to the last part of this episode where we get into what are some things that we can do to try to do like Emily was saying of how can we use that romanticization to help us. Then also how can we avoid letting it influence us into making decisions that we might regret or making irreversible choices that we won't end up being happy with because we didn't know all the realities of it?
Dedeker: What do we do with all this information about idealization, romanticization? I went and looked through a back catalog, because I was like, "Oh, we did an episode about how to have healthy relationship expectations last year." No, it was 142, which I'm pretty sure was six years ago at least. Maybe seven years ago, maybe 200 years ago. I don't know. You can go back to episode 142 about relationship expectations.
We're going to flag that as one that we should probably update and rerecord pretty soon here. I think that that's maybe the general advice is anything that you can do to be able to enter into a relationship with "healthy" reasonable expectations. I realize that that is subjective. That is something you got to figure out for yourself. Yes, go check out that episode for more ideas about that.
Jase: Another thing to look at is your media and social diet, taking an inventory of it. There was a study that suggests that people who consume more romance films or dramas are influenced by them. They're more likely to expect very deep intimacy very quickly, intense and satisfying sex, and a sense that love has to conquer all obstacles. All you need is love kind of vibe. I think that one's interesting to think about how the type of media, so not just the amount but like what are the types of media we're consuming and how might that be affecting what we think. We should be expecting or what it is that we think we would be happy if we had. I think that's an interesting one to look at.
Again not to say don't watch movies, don't read romance books. Maybe it's look at how there are certain patterns in these and do those line up with the things I want? Is there any way I could change that? This is I would say maybe leading with the carrot instead of the stick for yourself. You could say, "Hey, what if there is an area where I want to expand my horizons outside of this rather than looking for a book that's showing terrible relationships that are super unromantic, and everyone's having bad sex?"
That instead it could be, "Well, what if I just try to broaden my diet with more of a variety of other types of stories about people who are single and happy, especially if that's not the focus of the story? Or people in different types of relationships or just different types of books or movies or videos or even songs." Just kind of ask that question of, where are your ideas about the ideal relationships partners, lifestyle, city, job, having kids, whatever it is? Where is it coming from, and how influenced am I being by these things I'm consuming and enjoying without really picking them apart?
Dedeker: This next one I called, put on your hat of Jade. I think this is good for if you suspect maybe you're over-romanticizing a lifestyle, a type of relationship, a place to live. Just if you suspect that you can try on that particular lens of what are the ways that this could look negative? Or what would be my guesses about how this might actually play out in reality? If this is hard to do, it can be really helpful to get an outside perspective. This could be things. I don't know, talking to someone who's been kitchen table polyamorous for several years.
Talking to someone who actually lives on a commune, for instance. If you live in Southern California, I highly recommend going and doing a tour of the LA eco-village. I've done a couple of tours there because I think they do a wonderful job of both highlighting the wonderful things about living in an intentional community as well as the challenging things and the reality of it as well. You literally get to go into someone's house to have a sense of what their living conditions are like.
Stuff like that, like seeking out some actual real experiences. Go talk to people who've actually lived out in the countryside that you want to move to or in the city that you want to move to. Again, it's not to say go find someone who's completely sour and totally jaded and let them influence you but like at least get a variety of perspectives to the best of your ability.
Jase: I love this one because I've definitely found when I've been trying to make certain difficult decisions that that has been a really helpful one to find those counterarguments of why working for this company sucks? Or why doing this type of job sucks? Or why living in this certain place or traveling to this certain place sucks? Of reading those to get a sense of, is that actually a thing that's really going to bother me or not and trying to get a sense of it. It's always hard to know for sure. I think with Emily with romanticizing New York to go back to that one, there are so many movies out there that I'm sure you've watched.
Emily: I've watched Sex and the City front to back like 10 billion times.
Jase: Sure, and I'd say though that movie kind of over-romanticizes New York life, similar to How I Met Your Mother where everyone's got a little bit too easy of a life. There's plenty of other movies like Taxi Driver or something like that that really show kind of the shittier side of New York life. There's a lot of stand-up comics who joke about how shitty New York life is. I think you have access to more information to see are those things I feel like I could handle in exchange for getting the romantic thing that I want to do.
I think the same could be true with, like I said, jobs, relationships, even having kids of rather than hiding your head in the sand about how shitty that is to really confront that head-on to get a sense of like, "No, for me, that's okay. Those will be okay even if I know they'll suck sometimes." That's a really valuable exercise.
Emily: Yes, if you can get a trial run of any of those things not that you can trial run a kid.
Jase: Rent a kid.
Emily: Rent a kid for the day, but I did come to New York for a month and lived with a partner. I was in the midst of trying to find an apartment and find a job. It was good to see, okay, this is what the day-to-day would look like. This is what I would have to deal with when it's 30 degrees outside, and I'm not used to how cold that is, all of those things. It was good just to be able to be here, not on a trip, but be here because it was a precursor to me living here.
This next one is called reverse romanticization. If you are in a situation where maybe you're romanticizing a different life, like a different area to live in or potentially a different partner, something like that, instead try to romanticize what your current relationship or living situation is. This could be like an offshoot of the romanticize your life phenomenon. You can take out your multiamory journal, write this down in there, write out a very, very romantic, idealized version of your life from somebody else's perspective.
Maybe somebody sees you and is like, "Oh my gosh, they get to live in this amazing city, have this amazing job, live with an amazing, wonderful partner or multiple partners. How awesome is that?" Try to frame it in that way. You can get help from a friend if need be, especially since some of your friends may see your life as something that is really inspiring and something to aspire to. I think it would be important to just play that out and see the connections that you can find to maybe my life is really awesome and the grass doesn't necessarily have to be greener in a different area or in a different place.
Dedeker: That also doesn't have to be the whole point of the exercise. It's not about necessarily trying to force you to be happy in a situation that you're not necessarily happy in, but it's to highlight, are there things that jump out as you do this exercise that are actually easy to romanticize? Are there parts that are really difficult? If you find this exercise just extremely hard to do in general, that could be telling that there's a lot in your life or in this particular situation or relationship that you're really struggling with and really don't like. That could be telling of maybe it is time to actually make a change. This could be a different version of almost a gratitude exercise or a mindfulness practice.
That's a little bit different from just writing out what you're grateful for. It's like putting on this lens of, how would somebody else look at your life and find it to be their ideal or their romantic fantasy. I have to do this a lot when traveling recently because I've been so tired from travel that I have to remind myself that, yes, from someone else's perspective, this is very adventurous and very romantic and a great privilege and I'm very lucky. Sometimes that could help take the edge off of the harder parts of traveling.
Emily: I was very jealous of y'all's traveling this year because I'm about to travel, but I do wish that I could travel more and I really want to travel more next year, but I understand. I understand where you're coming from. The reason why--
Dedeker: It's helpful to hear that from you. It's good, again, to have that reminder.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. Getting that outside perspective can help. I've also found sometimes it's hard to accept. A friend who would always really emphasize how cool I was and influential because of this podcast and that that's great. I'm doing great in my life. I just would want to be like, "Shut the fuck up. Get away from me. I can't handle this."
Emily: Wow. Goodness. Over idealizing. That made you recoil and in disguise.
Dedeker: Over idealization.
Emily: Finally, you can examine your perfectionism. If you are someone who is prone to perfectionism, get curious about that. Get on top of that shit. Realize that maybe it means that you want everything in your life to be perfect. If it's not, then you're looking at all of the things out there that could be or idealizing or romanticizing something that is not what you currently have. Just because it's not "perfect to you" find a way to embrace imperfection.
As we've been saying, New York is not perfect. Yikes. There are parts of it that I think for a lot of people would be really, really difficult to live here, but it's part of its charm to me. I understand that it's definitely not perfect, but it is beautiful and gritty, and intense and I love all of those things about it.