No matter how much I acknowledge the difference between reality and the fictitious world, this idealism seems to follow me into my personal life. I will always hope that the romance I write about can exist, that those inspiring Facebook love stories can happen to a dreamer like me. But these high expectations of a spouse and a relationship can make love a true struggle for someone who writes about love, incredible worlds, and characters we wish were real. My relationships have been full of men who could not keep up with my energy, my “expectations,” or my need for romance and appreciation. I have accepted that I will likely always give 110% and get nothing more than 60% back from a partner.

Have Your Voice Heard: Become an Odyssey Creator

I hope someday someone will make me as happy as I always try to make them in these relationships. What a curse it is to be so invested in relationships, to give everything you have without cutting any corners or half-assing it simply because you want your spouse to know the same love as the characters you write about. What a curse to do for them what you pray they will do back, praying that they will create a new love story with you as the main character. My life up to now has not been easy, so I hoped that the universe could at least give me the romance I write in my novels: the ultimate fairy tale and the blessed soulmate destiny. But no. I will instead suffer the curse of one-sided love, of relationships that fall apart in my hands, of men who admit they cannot keep up with who I am or what I dream of being.

Note to Self: You will never be loved like you deserve because people in some sense do not understand you. Your expectations are too great, your heart too complex, your soul something that burns the eyes of most who try to see it. You are too intense, too determined, too hopeful. Although people like to read your work, they don’t want to live in such a world. They give up so easily when they realize that the vision you have built takes work. You ask them to move into the universe you have already created, but for some reason they grow to hate it; they become homesick, go crazy, dread the thought of having to stay forever. Maybe it is too overwhelming, childish, colorless to the average human eye. You can’t say what it is about this place that pushes people away, but of the few worthy enough to enter, none have ever fallen in love with it the way that I would have hoped. You’ve come to accept that this world will be yours and yours alone... even on the loneliest of days... with only your imaginary characters to fill it.

I’ll never understand why I had to watch my past boyfriends waste and morph into people that no longer showed the same enthusiasm, the same romance they had shown from day one. They gave up on themselves, on me, and on the relationship as a whole. When I kept the bar as high as I always had, they lost their will to reach up and hold onto it. I’ll never understand why the destruction of one part of their lives (death of a family member, job switch, health issues, etc.) made them lose hope for the girl that loved and supported them through it all. I tried to be empathetic, but during my worst times I had always clung to love, to people who gave it and wanted it in return. To me, love was the hero in tragedy. I guess to some, that doesn’t hold true; and that there has been the greatest blow to my soul.

To be a writer, a dreamer, and an idealist has ruined love in some sense. It makes me cling tighter to the characters I have created, because I know for sure that they will never fail me. It makes me want to guard my heart and live only inside my dream world during the times I want to feel such unselfish and unconditional love. But most of all, it makes me want to never settle for a partner, to never accept a spouse who believes romance is silly or childish. All I know is that if my male characters are out there somewhere, I will wait until they find their way home...to the magical world I have created in their honor!