The Problem With Seeing The World Through Rose-Colored Glasses

In today’s day and age, our world has been undoubtedly consumed by the idea of a perfect love. Even social media platforms perpetuate the idea that seeing the world through rose-colored glasses leads to a happier mentality. While rose-colored glasses may have its benefits, it can also bias our expectations and impair our judgements to the people we love and the world around us.

The problem with wearing rose-colored glasses is that we often overlook how love can bias our everyday thinking and perceptions. We can put others on a pedestal and expect them to reach unrealistic standards simply because we want them to be an embodiment of everything we could aspire to be.

While wearing rose-colored glasses may feel wonderful at first, dreamy and utopian, it comes with consequences and damages. You won’t really be seeing the other person for who they are; you only see them as a projection of what you need them to be. In relationships, it’s normal to have respect and admiration for each other, but what’s unhealthy is letting it distort how you view the other person or alter your perception of reality.

When we have rose-colored glasses on, we fail to notice these subtle perceptual changes to the extent that we miss major red flags and flaws in our relationships. We see and believe what we want to be true, and we see our person through such a romantic and optimistic lens that our viewpoint of the other person becomes a reflection of our unconscious beliefs and convictions.

Seeing the world through rose-colored glasses is synonymous with looking at the world through a ‘love conquers all’ attitude. Love has this blinding effect on everyone as it unconsciously creates barriers between how we perceive others and who the other person really is. And the heartbreaking fact is, when we finally see our relationships for what they are, it can be disappointing and devastating to find out the truth.

Although love yields satisfactory and positive emotions associated with human connection, we need to be more wary of how we push others to achieve the unattainable in our minds, as well as how our perspective can limit the experiences we are able to experience. Otherwise, we are destined to live in a figment of our imaginations which is just an impractical reality invented by one’s expectations and desires.

Rose-colored glasses are capable of influencing our perception, but we can change that narrative. We can be cautious of the effects and consequences that come with rose-colored glasses, and we can choose to not let it shape and define our mental processes, knowledge structures, and the constructs that mediate our perception and understanding of the world.

When dealing with matters of the heart, it’s always important to remember that love takes effort and time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither does this apply to love.

So let love be, and let it flow naturally. Once you do, you’ll be able to see the other person for the person they are, and not the person you’ve hoped them to be.