2024-03-04
39 分钟Pushkin.
Todd Barrett's knew exactly how his boyfriend should be treating him.
The right standards were very clear.
They'd been set out in all the fairy tales and Hollywood rom-coms that he'd grown up with.
I had certain expectations for how he should be treating me.
I was thinking, well, he should just be asking me how my day was.
He should just be doing these things.
And reality is that it's a much more complicated dynamic than that.
Many of us share this kind of naive view of relationships.
We expect near perfection from our romantic partners and assume that accepting anything less would be settling.
We want a soulmate who understands us, a rock who supports us in all we do,
a therapist who heals us when we're hurt,
and a lover who fulfills all our desires and makes us feel incredibly attractive.
These roles is less they're infiltrating the relationships from day one to year 10.
These are things that we've internalized and they become indistinguishable from our voice compared to our culture's voice.
They just feel like absolute truths.
The eventual collapse of Todd's 10-year relationship was a wake-up call.
Todd had been demanding way too much from his boyfriend.
It was more than any real person could reasonably deliver.
So Todd decided to recalibrate in his future relationships.