CASTLES IN THE AIR

  Boy meets girl, he asks her out and they start dating. Girl is beautiful, smart, and independent but she can’t help it, every time she looks at boy she sees her future there. She sees their kids, the home they’d have together. She sees them dressed for events, she sees them old together. It’s only been a month into the relationship and she has built forty years with him in her head already. Every scene has been
played out. Does it make her desperate, flaky and insecure? No it doesn’t. You can say it comes from reading too much romance novel as a girl, maybe, maybe not. You can also say it’s because the relationship is in its first stage called the ‘honeymoon stage’ everything feels as wonderful as you get to know each other. You look at this person and all you see is perfection.

  Let’s delve into the boy’s mind at this stage. Ermm, he hasn’t even thought that far. He’s still thinking about getting to the final stage of you know what. Yeah sometimes, the reverse can be the case here, with the man building the castle and the girl’s mind not being there.

  Can you blame the girl for having her feeling of euphoria and seeing it last forever? No, you can’t. She’s only human but building castles up there alone can be very dangerous because you’d end up living it alone. You can’t build a house and put someone in there if they don’t want to be. You can’t even tell because you are not in their head. Your thought patterns are different so you can’t predict that they see and want that castle too.

  There’s nothing wrong with dreaming but don’t dream too much and alone. Things might be going on smoothly according to you but your partner has changed his mind and doesn’t want a relationship anymore and is thinking of a way out while you build castles. When he reveals it, the castles come tumbling down and you feel hurt and betrayed like you wasted forty years of your life. You are in pain because you see that dream and life you built in your head was just that, a dream. What will hurt most is that, only you felt that way.

  The trick is to take it each day at a time. Enjoy the moments that present themselves. Live in the present but dream a little. Get to know your partner better, enjoy the laughter and fun of being together. Let them do their own thinking and don’t jump to conclusion or try doing it for them. Take them as they present themselves, if they want more let them be the ones to say it and decide it in reality. If it ends, well, you didn’t build your world round them and put all your expectations in them.

  Build your castles on the ground together, it might be slow, it might be fast, it might turn into an uncompleted building but it sure does beat building a phantom castle alone in your head. Cheers!