Just another post about Idealists, love and relationships 
I believe idealists (and perfectionists) have a tendency towards black and white thinking. It is almost as I can hear my friend Jonas’ objection already, as he describes the idealist as a very complex and hm… sophisticated type. And black and white thinking may seem to contrast this view – it rather sounds a bit ”simple”, doesn’t it? I still think there is some truth to it though.
It seems to me that many idealists have trouble thinking in shades of grey when it comes to love. Especially Christian idealists. Within Christianity you can find two common believes about love and marriage, and it seems to me as they represent two extreme ends of some sort of love continuum. The two “love-myths” that I think of are 1) God has created one chosen romantic partner for each human being. Through prayer and leading from above you can find your one and only God-given spouse. 2) A marriage will work as long as God is a part of it, and as long the partners work really hard to take care of their love for each other. It therefore doesn’t really matter that much who you marry. It seems to me that a lot of Christian idealists, especially young ones, end up believing in some version of one of these two extremes.
The two extremes also come in a non-God version. Then they may look something like this: 1)The most important thing when choosing a spouse is to be deeply in love, and have the feeling of flying on pink clouds, you know, the feeling that only a “right one” can give. 2) Feelings are changing over time, and one can therefore ignore ones feeling when choosing a partner. A marriage will work as long as the partners work really hard, and feelings can always be created at a later point in time.
Being a young idealist myself, I’ve been moving from one end of the continuum to the other (I’ve not been walking down the continuum investigating the shades of grey, I’ve been jumping from really close to one extreme to really close to the other, as shades of grey for some reason doesn’t seem too tempting for an idealist), and for the time being I’ve ended up, finally, in some sort of grey area, close (but hopefully not too close) to the end where I want Mr God-given perfect and the feeling of flying on pink clouds. I have big trouble finding out how this area of grey looks like in real life though…
9. juni 2011 at 13:14
LOL @ “I can hear my friend Jonas’ objection already”
11. juni 2011 at 20:15
Jeg så videoen du linket til Lars. “Divorce – never! But murder…”
Om noen andre er interessert så er linken følgende: http://ht.ly/5bhSP. En fem minutters videosnutt hvor Piper, Carson, og Keller prater om “Sustaining the Covenant of Marital Love”.