FANTASY BONDS: a fantasy bond is created by an illusion of fusion in which real feelings of fondness and attraction are replaced by the form of being in a relationship. In other words, we come to see ourselves and our partner as a single unit. We then fall into roles created by the fantasy.
So many times people create fantasy bonding in their relationships with another. Women tend to do this more than men due to socialization, fantasy thinking, and emotional addiction that develops from childhood.
Women are socialized for fantasy thinking and living – think about it. Research shows that from the time a little girl is in the womb, by the time she is born she already is “socialized” to some degree and by the age of 9 months has learned helplessness. Then we add Disney movies which are total fantasy of “Prince Charming” and “Cinderella” where a girl is rescued by a handsome man and “Beauty and the Beast” where a woman can change a man into a prince like person, well we have added fuel to the fire. Then girls have more fantasy added to their mindset when they play “dress up” or “make up” or “house” where they envision being beautiful on the outside so they have another person want them and end up having a family living in a house with a “white picket fence” or “happily ever after.” Are these things bad for a young girl? Is fantasy so really bad that we shouldn’t go there?
When girls grow up having to be “pretty” but not too pretty; smart but not “too” smart; witty but not “too” witty; a mother who is in “charge” but not “too” in charge; sexy but not “too” sexy, and so on, we set young girls up for creating fantasy bonds in relationships more than men.
I had a female client who was going to be married to a man who was totally wrong for her. Everyone could see that this man was not good for her in so many ways, yet she ignored all of their concerns for her. She defended him to people who didn’t know her well, but to her close friends she confided that she was very “lonely” in the relationship because he was not emotionally nor physically available to her. In fact he did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and wasn’t that concerned with her feelings on wanting intimacy that he wasn’t providing. He even told her that she either “got on board” with accepting his way of thinking or she could move on. Being the type of person who felt it was better to have someone in their life no matter how bad they were together, than have no one at all, she created this entire fantasy bond with him and moved forward and married him. Now she is miserable, depressed, defeated, and so “mind bombed” by him (process of finding her faults and magnifying them so he feels powerful) that she questions “what is wrong with me” instead of “what is wrong with him” that he would do this to her. She had to work her way back to separating herself from him in her “fantasy” of them being “one” and a “relationship” to the real truth, she was alone and never ever had a “relationship” or “coupleship” with him.
Fantasy bonds keep people in relationships that they should run from. Fantasy bonds can create trauma bonds, emotional bonds, among psychological and physical illness’s. Fantasy bonding can set up a person to create a pseudo-personality in abusive relationships to where a victim gives up their beliefs, family, friends, and self in the attempt to fulfill the fantasy of the perpetrator and survive.
Look seriously at your relationship and see if fantasy bonds are keeping you from happiness and joy. Does your 3 brains – gut/intestinal, heart, and mind – tell you that your happiness is in jeopardy because you have created destructive thinking, bonding, and relationship behaviors to where you give up who you are for what someone else is trying to make you.
Fantasy bonds are bonds that can be broken and one can heal from them. For more information and/or help contact Dr.Kathie Mathis, Psy.D at California Cognitive Behavioral Institute.
