You Were So Much Better In My Head

I made him up. He wasn’t real, but a figment of my imagination. We went out late at night and drank too much vodka. The alcohol caused me to twist his words, caused me to create a skewed perspective of him.

I pretended that waking up next to him felt right. That the connection we had was better than it actually was. I admired him, thought he was dreamy and mysterious, so I daydreamed about him all the time.

That’s the problem, when you think about someone too often. You start to picture them as something that they’re not. They become someone who doesn’t really exist, as if there’s a ghost standing in between your image of them and who they actually are.

In my mind, he was sweeter, our conversations were deeper, and my feelings towards him were stronger. In reality, he was an asshole. He talked badly about his friends and he boasted about himself far too often to cover up his own flaws.

I was fooling myself. I hoped a relationship would grow out of what we had, which really wasn’t anything to begin with. That’s what causes a strong, independent woman to weaken, thinking a man is good for them, even though he’s not. We fail to acknowledge all of the bad that he is, all of the characteristics he has that clash with our own.

We hold on tightly to the few good qualities he has or the few good moments that we shared together. We fixate on this perfect image we have in our mind based on those few good moments, as if that’s really how it’s going to be all of the time. We hope they’ll match up with our thoughts about him, despite our inner gut telling us otherwise.

I knew he was never the right guy for me, just like most women do when they start dating the bad boy, the emotionally troubled, the drunk, the player, or the fuckboy. We spend nights wondering if he’ll change his ways for us. That image generates an excitement all on its own, only to be taken away as soon as he proves otherwise. And he always proves otherwise.

We all know the type—his words are smooth, as if well practiced in the mirror. The romantic gestures he makes are clichés, but he does them so well that your mind fails to acknowledge it. He talks about romantic getaways and makes promises regarding your future together, causing you to fabricate this perfect little relationship in your head even more. Your mind is on a constant high as he plays this part, painting a picture of the ideal man, then taking it away when his actions refuse to follow suit.

It’s best to bring your head back down to reality when facing a man like this. Realize that your heart doesn’t deserve to be played with. You shouldn’t daydream your way through a terrible relationship.

What I really need is to find someone that makes me want to stay—someone that makes me wants to face reality and view them as they really are, instead of trying to change their image within my mind.

In the end, we were never anything serious. We were just a concept I held on tightly to in hopes that one day it would become true. I’m grateful this image finally shattered and I found out who he really was before I let my mind’s skewed image of him take over.

Now that I’ve accepted the reality of it all, I’ve finally let go. I am free of a relationship that was never meant to be and am ready to move on.