Zeny is in love. She's in love with love since she's 12. She watches one romantic movie or telenovela after another.
She dates. Different men. But her images and expectations about love and men sound like a film script. It's full of fantasy.
At 27, Zeny took a job as administrative assistant for a married CEO. Months later, her boss invited her to dinner with champagne and romantic music.
It was like one of Zeny's favorite movies and telenovelas. She fell in love and made love with her CEO boss.
In-session, Zeny was telling me that she felt love towards her boss. A state of bliss "till death do us part."
So it was a shock to her when her boss finally told her he's ending the affair. That he no longer loved her. She felt so hurt, devastated, and betrayed.
Zeny's desperation and outrage propelled her to try Psychotherapy. She felt her life was ruined from thereon. She became too restless and out of control.
The sessions helped Zeny unpacked the romantic fantasies that were so deeply ingrained inside her mind. She's a victim of romantic myths she still clung to from her childhood.
That one big thing left her totally unprepared to handle rejection and reality.
Over time, Zeny started to become more whole. She began to experience a growing self-love and well being that's not based on unrealistic, toxic myths about romance and love.
"In love with love." Beware of the romantic myth! It can move you to live your life with a restricted, narrow, or even false view of one's self and the other.
Psychologists would use the term "love addiction" to refer to it. "Many who believe their love is normal are instead acting out an addiction," as William Berry in Psychology Today put it.
Each of us is a human being. Life has many dimensions. They're not interchangeable one for the other.
And most importantly, it's based on reality. What really is. Especially love and romance.
Dr. Angelo Subida is a clinical psychotherapist, author, and speaker. He is author of books "Inner Healing," "Secrets Of Your Self," "Chess and Life," among others, blogs, and articles. He has appeared frequently as an expert on psychotherapy/life recovery issues on national television, radio broadcasts, print media, and webcasts, including GMA 7, TV 5, ABS CBN 2, Q-11, 700 Club, Radyo Veritas, Inquirer Radio, Smart Parenting Magazine, Business Mirror, among others, and has served as resident therapist/counselor for parents and kid-artists in the highly popular ABS-CBN 2 Voice Kids TV singing reality show. Dr. Subida is an eclectic, multidisciplinary therapist and originator of his own revolutionary high-tech, high-touch counseling plus model. His areas of specialization include parent-child therapy, clinical infidelity treatment, relationship/marital counseling, separation/divorce therapy, anger management, depression, addictions, psychotherapy-spirituality integration, and innovative chess therapy. For more of Dr. Subida, you can find him at www.drsubida.com.