inventing characters

Dear Friends,

I began the journey into myself today!! I started Eat Pray Love, and I am amazed at how much it moves my thoughts and my spirit already.  I am only on page 18.  


I stopped literally in mid-sentence to blog about something Elizabeth Gilbert has written because I wonder if it reflects my own life, and my own question about the way that I handle relationships--something every single woman in the world regularly contemplates.  Of this, I am certain.

She writes:  "David and I met because he was performing in a play based on short stories I had written.  He was playing a character I had invented, which is somewhat telling.  In [this kind of] love it is always like this, isn't it?  ... We invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place."


I took a step back from my book, and whispered aloud to myself "wow!"  I think I've done this in so many of my relationships--and I think the writer and dreamer in me is partially to blame.   First, I pick the wrong guy, the very wrong guy.  Then, I envision this person to be more than what I even know them to be--and I fall in love with my own fantasy of who they are. I wind up heart broken and ending relationships that weren't right because I created something that wasn't even there to begin with.  


But, the trouble is... I don't know how to do it any other way.  Though, I am determined to learn how.  


Love Always,