When Fantasy Collapses
How projection, fawning, and one first date changed the way I understand relationships.
My third attempt at meeting a man from the Facebook dating app, felt like the stars aligning.
From his photos, he was what my friends now recognize as “my type,” dark eyes, dark hair, a kind smile.
I loved the way he dressed, simple, polished, and stylish without being performative.
He appeared self-possessed, warm, and genuine.
I wasn’t picking up on self-absorption or glaring red flags, that for me are motorcycles, Burning Man, fast cars or extreme sport photos.
We matched, and I sent the first message.
I told him I liked his style, and his photos.
We started a conversation that had been different from the previous dating app chats I’ve had:
He went right to the point, and asked directly:
What are you looking for?
I loved that question, because for me, it signaled intent.
It communicated, I am serious about what I am searching for.
And I don’t want to waste my time here.
I told him I was looking for a relationship.
After my situationship ended, I’d realized I wasn’t good with unclear, undefined connections and was ready for something real.
He said he was looking for the same.
We both agreed that it took a lot to make the pieces of this fit.
I learned he was a doctor at a hospital, working crazy shifts, with two kids two hours away.
I liked that he had a career, something he was passionate about.
And I also liked that he didn’t advertise this on his profile.
He wasn’t flaunting his profession, using it as status bait.
That signaled humility to me.
He asked me why I didn’t have kids, I asked him with his schedule and kids, how he had time for a relationship.
It felt good to ask real, direct questions.
15 minutes into the conversation, he said he wanted to meet me.
I had enough information to say yes, and appreciate when men ask directly, early.
He told me he was leaving town in a few days, and we found a way to meet for breakfast the day of his departure.
After my asking questions, like where he lived in San Francisco, he told me traveled out of town between shifts, and that his home base was in the Midwest.
He wondered if that was okay, if I still wanted to meet.
Like I have been doing during these conversations, I tracked my body closely.
I felt some activation chatting with him, a bit pulled out of myself, noticing some people pleasing parts online.
Of course I wanted to meet him.
I knew he was a doctor, had style, liked food, and wanted a relationship.
And he was coming on a bit strong, saying things like if we connected, maybe he’d move to Sonoma when he moved to the Bay in August.
These kinds of statements activate my attachment system, as well as hope for a relationship.
I had two moments in our convo where the speed of things made me dizzy.
I wasn’t sure what these somatic sensations meant, but I was noting them.
He’d been staying in hotels during his shifts, to be near his kids who had moved here months prior.
He’d told me he would stay closer Sonoma the night before we met, so that we could meet up and have time together.
On that Tuesday morning, he texted to say he would be running late, that some things out of his control were happening.
I let him know if we met for an hour or two, that would be better than waiting weeks to meet each other. He agreed.
I’m not a fan of endless texting and fantasy building and prefer meeting in person.
I could tell he was trying: to keep me posted, to be respectful of my time.
He finally said he’d be available at noon.
So I drove to Marin to meet him at the hotel I thought he was staying at the night before, only to find him checking into it the day he’d told me he was leaving.
He hadn’t mentioned pushing back his trip, and I thought he had a flight booked for that afternoon.
My nervous system was disoriented, and unsure what was happening.
I felt dizzy again and had to sit in the lobby as he was checking in.
Having to reconcile what he’d told me, versus what was happening was confusing.
My first impression of him was unsure. He looked different in person than his photos.
I found him attractive, but with the change of plans and near cancellation, I also felt destabilized.
Lunch over sushi felt like a bit of an interview, each of us asking serious questions.
What are your long term goals and plans, he asked.
I didn’t know how to answer that question, and felt some pressure to respond, to give him the answer he wanted.
I was already imagining our future, traveling together, raising his kids.
I shared I had raised step-kids, implicitly letting him know I was capable of this.
Even though I didn’t know if I wanted to raise two young kids again.
There was a kind of intensity between us, and I felt pulled towards him.
I wanted to be with someone with whom I could have this kind of honesty, straight talk with.
I liked that he had wisdom and maturity.
I respected that he’d moved to the US 10 years prior without speaking a word of English and passed board exams to become a doctor here.
I appreciated his intelligence and tenacity, and that he loved his kids and his dog.
But dating apps create fantasy, accelerate intimacy, and make you believe you’re on the same page:
And you forget you don’t know anything about this person.
In many ways, dating apps invite us to relate to an imagined person before we’ve met the real one.
Before we’d even sat across from each other in real life, I’d constructed an entire future with him.
My own longing had started to fill in the blanks.
I’ve been lonely this past year.
My system relaxes when I have someone to share life with.
Looking back, I wasn’t responding to who he was.
I was responding to what he represented. Stability. A shared life. Relief.
So when we finished lunch, most of it uneaten because my stomach was in knots, he walked me to my car.
He had to drive back to the city that afternoon, to sign child support papers with a notary.
He’d pushed his trip back a day.
He was meeting with colleagues that afternoon to have drinks.
He was coming off of an 80 hour week, exhausted, running on fumes.
Yet running full speed ahead, with shifting plans.
No wonder I’d felt spun out.
But by that time I was so invested in the fantasy of possibility, dizzy with my own desire.
To have a nicer home, domesticity, maybe some kids around.
For life to feel a bit more supportive, for a man to relieve the pressure of doing it all alone.
I was so ensconced in the fantasy that what happened next is not a surprise.
He walked me to my car.
We hugged, and our lips found each other.
I didn’t feel relaxed and couldn’t settle into the kiss.
I felt the swirl of hormones, but did not want to go further.
He asked if I wanted to go into the hotel room.
I said no.
I knew he had plans, and I felt confused and rushed.
We continued to kiss, and he asked again.
I said no.
I was ready to get in my car and drive home.
Except on the third ask, an old part of me came online.
The part that had gone with male desire a hundred times instead of listening to mine.
The part that wanted to be chosen.
The part that wanted to be with a man I perceived was high caliber.
The part that a hundred times before, had said yes when she meant no.
And I went inside the hotel room with him before my body was ready to be there.
I found myself going along with things I didn’t want.
I’d become practiced at overriding my own signals in order to preserve connection.
The experience hurt because two things were happening at once.
I had ignored the signals in my body.
And the fantasy I’d built around him was beginning to crack.
I left feeling heavy.
I realized that after I’d said no a few times, my body froze.
I went into a fawning response.
I became so disconnected from my own signals that I didn’t notice I’d crossed my own boundaries.
When I got home, he texted to ask if everything was okay.
He’d felt my uncertainty and withdrawal, and had even inquired about it in the hotel room.
I told him I was not okay.
That I’d crossed my own boundaries, and that it didn’t feel good in my body.
That I wasn’t blaming him.
My body had shut down, and had gone to a place I’d lost access to.
I realized we had been relating to each other as objects.
Him, the object of my fantasy for a domestic life, a more resourced future. The relief for my loneliness.
Me, perhaps the object of his male desire. A woman who might soften the relentless pace of 80 hour weeks. A future partner waiting in the place he was about to move.
Neither of us were lying, manipulating, or using the other.
We were doing something profoundly human.
We were relating to imagined versions of each other before we’d had enough reality to know who either of us actually was.
A few weeks prior, while reading psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, I’d stumbled across something that stopped me in my tracks.
He writes that before we can truly recognize another person, we first have to “destroy” them.
Not literally, but in fantasy.
The imagined person has to fall apart, and only from there can the real person emerge.
This ‘destruction of the object’ had happened on our first date.
The fantasy object on both sides had died.
This “destruction” had been the destruction of the illusion we’d created of each other.
Suddenly I understood why the encounter had affected me so deeply.
I wasn’t just grieving the way I’d abandoned myself to be chosen by him.
I was grieving the collapse of the future I’d imagined in less than a week.
And feeling the residue in my body, my nervous system, that had surfaced old patterns.
But it’s only after this fantasy collapsed that I could see him more clearly.
I told him I couldn’t imagine being with the whirl of his life, the 80 hour weeks, the constant travel, the unsettledness.
That I spent a lot of my time in contemplation and aloneness, in a season of life that required this.
The question was no longer whether he wanted me.
It had become:
Could I actually live inside the reality of this man’s life?
But what happened next surprised me.
I shared with him that I had fawned, my body hadn’t been in the room, that I needed to feel relaxed, to trust someone first. I shared that I had been disoriented with his changing plans.
While he didn’t fully grasp my trauma language or exactly what happened, he stayed in relationship with my experience.
He listened carefully, and didn’t defend or make excuses.
He offered reassurance and care.
We agreed to try again, though I think we both knew this would never happen.
The repair didn’t erase what had happened, but it changed something fundamental.
Winnicott writes that after the object survives our “destruction” of it in fantasy, we can finally say:
Goodbye, fantasy.
Hello, person.
We’d disappointed each other, and we survived, perhaps even grown as individuals.
But the relationship didn’t have a container strong enough to survive the collapse of fantasy.
As I sat down to put words to this experience, I thought I would writing about fawning.
The multiple times I have left my body to go with male desire.
How this experience showed me the places where I still need to heal.
Where I keep repeating old patterns that are no longer serving me.
It allowed me to see the places that need tending to.
To witness the teenager who couldn’t say no.
To see the adult who keeps trying to be chosen.
But what happened when he chose to engage in the repair, is that something fundamentally shifted inside of me:
I discovered that my emotional experience could be held by another.
That another human being could survive my disappointment.
It mattered less to me whether the relationship continued.
But the holding of my experience made me feel like I mattered.
Like I hadn’t been used, or exploited.
That two human beings with different nervous systems and desires collided.
In this case, what I’d felt: the dizziness, the being pulled out of myself, the desire to be chosen, and the consequences of this, had clarified the ending:
Our lives were fundamentally moving at different speeds.
I recognized that the 80 hour weeks, 2 young kids a 2 hour drive away from my place, would make building the life I desire difficult.
That I had enjoyed imagining us together.
But I wanted a man who had time and capacity to build a relationship.
Imagination and capacity are not the same thing.
And that the quicker you can meet reality, the less painful the fantasy has to become.