By Kristen Tobias, M.A.
There is a ubiquitous thought pattern during the flurry of new love…your beloved is wonderful. Everything about them is viewed through rose-colored glasses, which includes inflating their attributes and ignoring or downplaying their flaws. Wonderfulizing has many advantages; especially that it helps to facilitate a connection between two individuals. Some experts have even proposed that the ability to think about another in an exaggerated positive fashion is a necessary condition for the development of romantic love.
Wonderfulizing (like its counterpart awfulizing) is a term that describes irrational thought patterns wherein individuals think in a rigid or inflexible manner that is inconsistent with reality. People and events are only wonderful or awful, and variations in this view are vigorously defended against. Imagine if your friend had the audacity to point out a major flaw in your new beloved. This “affront” would likely be met with profound skepticism and loud protests. At this stage, individuals cannot bear to think about their beloved as any less than absolutely, positively wonderful. Wonderfulizing (in the case of mutual love) typically leads to a blissful mood state, because after all, you have just fallen in love with the most perfect person on the planet. Optimism and dreams about the future abound. We are resistant to messages that threaten our concept of the beloved other.
You might now be wondering if I am going to propose the abandonment of wonderfulizing, because this practice consists of irrational thinking. Consistent with REBT theory and my personal beliefs about love, I dare not! However pared down love can be in terms of its attendant neurobiology and cognitions, and it remains an immensely gratifying, beautiful experience that cannot be fully explained by science. Importantly, wonderfulizing does not generally cause unhealthy negative emotions that move us away from our values and goals.
Nevertheless, wonderfulizing can become problematic. To paraphrase the philosophy of Dr. Raymond DiGiuseppe, wonderfulizing works until individuals wake up one day and realize they shacked up with a mere mortal. Imperfections in appearance or behavior can be viewed as horrible, and fallibility as intolerable. When the image of our beloved is finally challenged, we may engage in a number of irrational thought patterns that are not helpful to us. We may flip the switch and awfulize, demand that our partner change so that they conform to our ideal of them, or generalize their self-worth from whatever facet of them that we find displeasing.
To reiterate, it is not the wonderfulizing per se that causes disturbance, but rather how we think about our partner once this phase has ended. Just as we work towards unconditional self-acceptance, we might also need to work on unconditional other-acceptance. Our beloved is a fallible human being with good qualities and bad qualities, and is too complex to ever be rated in his/her entirety. It might be that we realize there is something about our beloved that is a deal breaker for us, something about the other that is truly not in line with our values or desires. In this case, we may judiciously choose to end the relationship. In contrast, if you take the time to uncover (and challenge) irrational thinking about your beloved, you will be less disturbed and more fulfilled in your relationship. Relationships are constantly in flux and flexible thinking can get us very far in terms of relational happiness and longevity.
When the fog of new love starts to evaporate, it will behoove us to think about our beloved rationally. He/she will not always behave in a way that is consistent with what we want, and displeasing qualities are bound to surface. This is not an awful reality, nor does it mean that the person is no good, or that the relationship is no good. Importantly, no amount of demanding that the person act in a different way will guarantee any meaningful change, and this thinking will likely disturb us and is far from an aphrodisiac.