The Foolish Quest for Ideal Love in Maladaptive Daydreaming

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The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche remarked, "One loves one's desire, not the desired." This is certainly applicable to many perfectionists, who tend to strongly believe they have something to prove.

Some of our patients often tell us they need to experience some undesirable truth first-hand to believe it. Implied is the resistance to it, no matter how strong the argument and, often, how strong the evidence, as even experience can be contorted to fit one’s preferences.

And no truth is as repugnant as the one about ideal love, which, in reality, if we care to look, reveals its inability to save us.

Some individuals who struggle with treatment-resistant depression also struggle with dependent personalities and frequently engage in maladaptive daydreaming, stuck in fantasies of unlimited success or love, preferring them to the real world while using them as springboards to action, intermittently. These people, often beset with memories of abuse and/or neglect, tend to believe they’re owed the realization of each of their dreams. The universe, to them, exists within a sort of karmic structure wherein the ones who suffer most, however that may be quantified, earn the best rewards, which tend to embody beauty, intelligence, talent, and status, even if vicariously.

So, when a therapist challenges, or just explores, this cherished notion, they’re often met with anger or passivity, offense or acquiescence: “Of course I know it’s just a dream.” Yet for many, the fantasy of being rescued by a superior other is so encompassing that it comprises one’s entire purpose for being. Through it, they believe, they may become superior themselves, rising above the debris of their former, insignificant, and pitiful selves. Here, cultivating self-love depends solely on the acquisition of an idealized other. (So, the above-mentioned remark is often a defensive strategy, implying "Back off. Talking about this scares me too much.")

This fantasy is reinforced in popular culture, especially in movies like "Beauty and the Beast"—the beast made beautiful by the white magic of the beauty’s love. So, dreamers project their ideal onto a prospective partner of apparently high value. In essence, they wish to feel both inferior and superior, to feel above their past and those in it while being hoisted up from above.

This often transforms into an internal conflict, as the urge arises to feel superior even to the ideal partner; inferiority feels intolerable. They attempt to become important to the objects of their affection to, in the end, become more important than them. In my experience, these individuals (those who struggle with a pattern of idealization) often enter treatment after a series of failed romances and even treatments, which carried similar expectations.

While these patients may also seek out the “best” therapist, they seldom ask about what’s actually best for them. A preoccupation with the best is a trait of narcissism, which is, at bottom, an inability to adequately care for oneself and one's needs. If some of these people stay the course, they inevitably learn that their therapist isn’t the smartest or has the most experience, that they aren’t the most thoughtful or considerate, and that their lapses in logic are matched by their lapses in empathy. They sit with an imperfect person who seems to care about them, the other highly flawed human in the room.

The struggle becomes attempting to value the one who values them, attempting to discontinue the perpetual climb, and learning to value themselves through the other. Accepting what they have and who they are is the most challenging part of treatment.

And therapy is often a microcosm of reality. In our graduate programs, we’re taught that younger therapists may fare better with their patients, on average, than their seasoned counterparts because they make up in care whatever they lack in wisdom. Translating this to the rest of the world, we can perhaps say that the best among us are not necessarily of high status because they make up in authenticity whatever they lack in excellence. This means that seeking "the best" doesn't automatically imply the best option for you. A good therapy fit entails much more than qualifications, even more than intellect.

In the end, many of us will continue to seek out ideal partners (or even therapists), and while such humans may exist, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re able to make us feel lovable (although it’s more likely they don’t exist). Hierarchical thinking contributes to a belief that we need to climb above past mistreatment when, fundamentally, accepting it and moving forward tends to mean something else. Staying with it, using it, and even preventing it in and for others is the closest I’ve seen people come to anything resembling self-love. There’s no escape. And, significantly, those whom we consider well-adjusted don’t seem to need to.