It’s easy to get ahead of yourself in a new relationship. The beginning is novel and exciting. You are starting out on an adventure with this new person you’re crazy about. It’s so easy to fantasize and day dream up a future of the two of you together. You may imagine the two of you travelling the world. Going on adventures. Getting married. Raising a family. Achieving your dreams together and being extremely happy. But you have to catch yourself when you begin to do this and reel yourself back into reality. While it’s good to be excited and optimistic about someone, you want to be realistic and live in the reality of where your relationship is at as well. You’re just getting to know each other. You haven’t endured the years together that it takes to build and sustain a great relationship. That takes time. So while it’s good to be hopeful about your new union, you don’t want to get ahead of yourself. That’s often where disappointment strikes in a new relationship. It’s so easy to get let down and set unrealistic expectations when your mind conjures up romanticized premonitions of a future together that is by no means guaranteed.
So with that in mind, here are 15 reasons why you should never get ahead of yourself in relationships and make sure you live in the reality of the present moment as much as possible.
15Real Love Is Not Like The Movies
We often get let down in relationships when we’re always living with our head in the clouds. It’s not to say that your relationship can’t be filled with beautiful romance, but real life does not run by a script. Those perfect lines and perfect situations don’t always end up happening in real life. We’re all too concerned with our fears and insecurities that prevent us from taking those leaps of faith and pouring our heart out. For example, whenever I’m on a train (which isn’t often) and I see a pretty woman sitting nearby, I always replay that scene in ‘Before Sunrise’ when Ethan Hawke starts talking to Julie Deply on the train in Europe. What ends up happening is: I don’t talk to the girl due to my complete, all encompassing fear, or her 6 ft. 5” muscular boyfriend comes and joins her moments after the thought of going and sitting next to her pass me by. So as I live in this movie of what love should be like in my head, unfortunately I’m always disappointed with the result in reality. Real love is not like love in the movies because love in real life begins after the end credits.
14Don’t Put Someone On A Pedestal Until You Truly Know Them
When we’re really taken with someone, were likely to put them on a pedestal. We conjure up this romanticized vision of who they are in our heads. And often we don’t even really know this person. Yes, we know the best version of them – the carefully screened version that’s always in a good mood and always “on” and funny. It’s not until you’ve really spent a lot of time with this person – making decisions, seeing each other when you’re irritated or overtired and grumpy, until you really know exactly who this person is. It’s important to understand that everybody has their flaws and this person, who you see as god’s gift to the earth is going to have a whole lot of imperfections as well. Your relationship together is going to be far from perfect, but if you genuinely enjoy being being together, then that’s going to be what you need to build a substantial relationship together.
13Everything Is Good During The Honeymoon Period
Of course everything is amazing right now. The beginning is always the best. At least the most exciting and stress-free part of the relationship. For the first 6 months you’re together, exclusively, you’re basically still dating and getting to know each other. During this period, it’s going to be so easy to plan some forever future together because this relationship seems better than all your other relationships combined right now. But you might be forgetting that a lot of your past relationships started out in a way that isn’t much different — new, exciting, and energy-charged. But until you come down from the initial high of the relationship (first 3-6 months) you don’t have any idea how compatible you truly are as a couple. Not until you log some serious miles as a couple, go through some difficult periods and test your partnership, will you have any idea if your union has the legs to last. This is why — while it’s fun to be excited about a possible future with this person — you must remember that you’re both basically on drugs right now and you should always wait until you come down from the early high, before you start to put any real weight into a possible future together.
12You Need To Work Through Many Relationship Hurdles Before You Actually Know What Your Relationship Is Made Of
There are so many relationship steps you need to work through before you truly have an accurate read on your relationship and your compatibility. Steps like moving in together, going on vacation together, meeting each other’s friends, family, and spending serious time together where you get a full picture of one another’s moods. When you get ahead of yourself in relationship before you’ve began to work through some of these steps (honeymoon period), you’re running into danger because you don’t have enough of a sample size to start thinking about a future yet. No matter how good the beginning is, you must remain patient and understand that you have to go through hard times and serious life experiences together before you know if you’re meant for each other. The beginning of a relationship is often free of those prototypical relationship stresses. You’re typically in good moods around each other because everything is good. You also don’t usually feel comfortable unloading your sh*t on each other just yet and usually save those venting conversations for people you have a bit more of a foundation with. So you give each other the best parts of yourself, the highlight reel personality if you will. So understand that there are real steps that you will need to work through as a couple before you should allow your mind to start thinking about a “happily ever after” with this person.
11Stop Trying To Define Your Relationship And Just Live It
Most people who usually start to think ahead in their relationships are the hopeless romantic types. The ones who begin to daydream and fantasize of some future life together after only a couple of dates. I know this because I am also one of these people. If I’m really into someone, my mind always starts to go way down the road…asking the universe the question, “Is this the person I’m destined to marry?” You get smitten and immediately begin to plan out the entire arc of your relationship. I would even engage in conversation with the other person — who was most often the same type of hopeless romantic as I was — constantly talking about how great our “connection” was and why we were so compatible. I know, disgusting, right? Well, if you’re a diehard hopeless romantic and you fall for someone this is often where your heart and mind go. But you have to stop trying to define your relationship, talking about how great your connection is, and planning your future together, and just live out what your relationship is right now. It takes practice. It takes experience going through a lot of these situations until you learn how to do it effectively, but it’s a direct route to getting your heart broken when you begin putting massive expectations on something that is still very new.
10You’re Setting Unrealistic Expectations For Your Relationship
Of course the relationship you’re living won’t be able to compete or match up with what you’ve created with your overly active imagination. This is why getting ahead of yourself is just setting your budding relationship up for failure. Even what you’ve conjured about your partner in your mind is unfair to them. You need to allow room for your relationship to develop without judgment. And you need to get to know this person in a real way without your imagination getting in the way. The bottom line is that by getting ahead of yourself you’re putting your relationship and this person on a pedestal that’s impossible for them to reach. You’re setting an unrealistic expectation of what a relationship is supposed to feel like, and when things get tough (which they will), you will be more likely to flee because you’ve convinced yourself that this relationship should be perfect and free of difficulties. Even great relationships with wildly passionate love have their hard times. So you’ve just set an unrealistic precedence of a normal relationship that makes your current relationship that much more likely to fail.
9You’re Setting Yourself Up For Disappointment/Heartbreak
There have been so many times where I’ve romanticized a relationship in my head, only to have it come crashing down. As previously mentioned, you set an unrealistic precedence for what a relationship should feel like, which obviously falls short in reality. When you’re someone who always pre-predicts relationships and connections, it becomes an unhealthy way to operate in your romantic relationships, as you’re constantly getting destroyed because you’ve moved so far forward in your mind that when it doesn’t work out, it’s that much more painful. It’s to the point where you might actually start to plan a future with people who you’re sure your destined to be with in your mind, only to have it fall flat in reality. That’s not a recipe for success and happiness in your romantic life. And the type of mentality that is going to continuously lead to failed unions and let down expectations.
8You Will Come On Too Strong
Another big negative of getting ahead of yourself in a new relationship is the likelihood that you will come on too strong. It’s so easy to put too much pressure on the relationship if you’re moving too fast and placing too many expectations on it far too quickly. In the beginning of the relationship, you want to be light and fun. If you’re too serious, too soon, it’s very likely the other person is going to become overwhelmed and get turned off of you. What also happens is you begin to let go of everything in your life and become far too available to your relationship. While it’s important to prioritize your relationship, you don’t want to let go of all the activities you loved doing as a single person, as it’s just going to suffocate your relationship and lead to complacency and potentially turn your partner off. The best thing is to enjoy your relationship for what it is right now, and not put so many expectations on a future, but rather just enjoy the time you have together right now. That is how you continue to attract your partner and carry a healthy mentality through the beginning of a relationship.
7No Matter How Smitten You Are; Remain Patient
This is something that I always tell myself when I’m really excited about someone new, “Just be patient.” You always want to scream from the rooftops how much you like someone, but in the beginning of a new relationship you have to reel yourself in and let the relationship play out for a little while before you start declaring your love. This is something that takes age and experience to get better at, but it’s going to be of your benefit to have the maturity to move slowly when your feelings want you to launch yourself in. Particularly in the early stages of courtship, you want to at least hold onto some of your cards and remain at little bit mysterious, so the best way to do that is to be patient in the relationship. Try and take things slow, and just remind yourself that you’re still getting to know this person.
6Love Is Unpredictable — You Never Know What Can Happen
Things might be amazing right now but you never know what can happen. Things may be moving along perfectly and then something completely unexpected comes up. You may get to know each other better and find out that you aren’t as compatible as you originally thought. Perhaps they want something different in their future than you do, and their future vision doesn’t match up with yours. Maybe they even have an ex that’s still in the picture who could become a factor, particularly when your thing is so new and doesn’t have the years of foundation they built with their ex. Maybe you realize that you both have things you still need to do in your life that require you to be on your own. Love is the most unexpected thing on the planet and things can come up that you’d never expect. This is a major reason why you don’t want to look too far down the road — you’re just increasing your chance of potential disappointment and heartbreak.
5You Will Lose Yourself In The Relationship
If you move too fast in your relationship and plan too far ahead, it’s a likely sign that you’re becoming all-consumed in your relationship. You want to continue to hold onto your independence, hobbies, friend circle, and own self-care routines, and that is going to be difficult if you’re getting swept up in the moment. It’s attractive when you continue to hold onto your independence and do the things you love doing for you, which helps build attraction and desire in a relationship. It’s usually those who let go of their entire life when they get into a new relationship who get burned if it doesn’t work out. They become far too invested and dependent early on, which will potentially turn the other person off you or throw them for a major emotional loop if it doesn’t pan out. It’s never healthy to lose yourself in a new relationship, no matter how in love you may be. You want to be two complete people who meet and share life in the middle of separate identities, which allows you to bring your own unique offering to the relationship.
4Be Optimistic But Realistic
I think it’s important to be cautiously optimistic in a new relationship. Understand that, while there are strong feelings right now, it may not last or work out in the end. There have been so many times in a new relationship where I was so vocal and sure that the person I was with at that moment was “the one,” to only be chewing on my words months later when something happened and it was over. You shouldn’t be negative to the point that you sabotage the thing altogether, but you don’t want to be so idealistic and living in La La Land that you force something to work that isn’t meant to be. When you conjure up fantasies about a future together and move too fast, you start to get a little reckless and impractical. While love should be free, it’s important that you don’t get so carried away with something so soon. They always say, “fall in love but don’t forget to bring your head with you.” While you want to enjoy the excitement of something new, don’t forget to to be realistic about the current state of your relationship.
3You Might Be Overly Agreeable And Not Speak Your Mind
If you get ahead in the relationship, then you may become too agreeable and not speak your truth within the relationship because you’re trying to appease some future image of the relationship that you’ve conjured up in your head. It’s easy to self-sacrifice, appease, and mold yourself to be more like someone because you’ve already made it out in your mind that you’re going to be with this person. This is why you must live in the present moment of the relationship, be patient, and take your time, because it can become so easy to lose your independence if you’re trying too hard to make something work. This is often the case early on in relationships when you have strong feelings for someone — the inclination to over compensate and overwork to have your feelings reciprocated, even if that means not being completely honest with yourself and what you may want out of the relationship. While you want to enjoy the new relationship, being realistic and not getting ahead of yourself allows you to continue to hold onto your worth and make sure — that if the relationship works out — it works out for the right reasons…such as you’re a compatible match.
2You Might Romanticize Them Instead Of Get To Know Them
When you get ahead of yourself in a relationship it’s so easy to begin to romanticize the other person, rather than actually get to know them. You begin to look at them through rose-colored glasses and feel like they’re this perfect specimen who can do no wrong. You could say that you’re blind to a lot of things when you look at your relationship with this much of a whimsical idealism. You may miss out on important warning signs or red flags, or you just may choose to ignore them because you’ve built up this person so much in your head. A big part about being a high value person is having enough self-respect that people need to earn their way into your heart. If you hand over your heart so quickly to people without truly knowing them, you can get your heart broken or taken advantage of by people who are not worthy of your love. You need to take the time to get to know the person — make them show you who they are — before you put all your cards on the table. It’s important that you get to know each other in a very real way to see if you could legitimately have a future together, which is easy to lose track of when you’re smitten with someone and have already pre-conceived the entire arc of your future relationship.
1Relationships Are Built Through The Difficult Times
In the beginning of a relationship it’s so easy to say, “This is the best relationship I’ve ever been in!” or “I’m so crazy about this person! They’re the one.” Of course it’s amazing, you haven’t gone through a bunch of sh*t together. In the beginning you have absolutely no read on the true test of your relationship. You don’t truly know what your relationship is made of until you log some miles together and go through some hard times. In the beginning it’s easy to think you’re in a great relationship because you don’t have an adequate sample size of your relationship. You don’t even know what your relationship is until you experience difficult times that will help to battle test your relationship. When you get ahead of yourself, you evaluate a relationship in a blind way that discredits the work that is necessary to build a great relationship. So it’s important to remember when you’re first dating someone that it will take a while of growing and experiencing things together before you really know exactly what your relationship could be.
